New Polity

Academically Denied

From the purely intellectual standpoint, the notion of a left-wing media stands on a pillar of sand.  Noam Chomsky, professor at MIT and Justin Lewis, professor at University of Massachusetts have investigated the roots of this myth, summarizing the situation as one that leans “towards the right and the center, with voices on the left largely being excluded”. Perhaps the wide-scale acceptance of  the myth is based simply on no unified, leftist voice being able to refute a largely false claim.  In fact, the largest influence in the public media today are “corporate interests and bussiness interests”, rather than what the Right asserts, which to my knowledge is some omnipotent Progressive deity capable of out-funding conservatives and influencing nearly all of the countries news sources. How, logically, is it possible for a party of allegedly anti big-business constituents to attain unparalleled interest in one of the largest corporate news-bodies on Earth?  Chomsky contends that “the best strategy is to ignore that truth and engage in the simple strategy of asserting the opposite”, and that strategy is successful simply because of the vastly superior funding and appeal that Conservative media has over their liberal counterparts.  With asymetric advantages unparalleled in the world, Fox News can use its abrasive reporting style and opinionated, pundit-esque journalism to draw in untold masses of viewers.  The only opposite voice I can really see is Bill Maher, and as much as I’d love him on MSNBC (though i think a Bill Maher without profanity isn’t quite the same), his Progressive antics are limited to a much smaller audience.

You want to see liberal Media do you?

In every political setting, out of the mouth of every GOP hopeful for congress and especially out of the mouths of such delightful figures as Mr. Rove and Rupert Murdoch, comes the proliferation of one of the most widely-believed, unfounded claims in American politics, the Myth of the Liberal Media.  Of course MSNBC gives free air time for Democrat hopefuls to broadcast their message to audiences throughout the area, of course MSNBC has news anchors with an obviously biased and at times, arrogant take on the realm of the political, and of course MSNBC hosts back to back to back liberal talk shows that can be easily accessed by countless Americans… oh wait, that sounds like Fox.  It is utterly comical that conservative pundits are up in arms about president Obama’s remarks about Fox News.  Wasn’t it Mr. Murdoch’s completely objective news-source that gave rise to the “death panels” myth during the healthcare debate?  Wasn’t it Fox that proliferated the laughable Birther movement’s ideas as if they were possibly legitimate? And of course it is Fox that now hosts failed governor and Tea Party champion Sarah Palin.  To assert that our media isn’t largely tilted to the right would be ignoring the vast majority of evidence gathered in our time.

To read the Conservative/Libertarian Rebuttal click here.