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To: FlyLow; E.G.C.; imintrouble
“It took conservatives a lot of hard and steady work to push the media rightward. It dishonors that work to continue to presume that — except for a few liberal columnists — that there is any such thing as the big liberal media,” Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne argued late in 2002. Dionne, formerly a top political reporter for both the Post and the New York Times, asserted that the media are actually “heavily biased toward conservative politics and conservative politicians.”

But as a new election year begins, the news organizations who truly dominate the media landscape — such as the Big Three broadcast networks and influential papers like the New York Times — remain what they have been for decades: allies of liberalism and enemies of conservative policies.

The existence of a thing cannot be doubted by those who understand its nature and its causes. OTOH any belief, seemingly, can be adhered to by some who find consolation in it and can take pride in holding it.

The existence and power of PR, for example, are not denied by many. The desirability of the existence of that power can, however, be debated.

After studying the issue of the nexus between the media and political liberalism, I conclude that liberalism is simply a way of pandering to us by pretending that our economic fantasies are reality. We can all see things in retrospect, and our fantasy is that only malevalent or self-interested forces caused those who saw those things in prospect, and labored for them and profited by them, to get the credit for them. The fantasy is that the prudent and diligent prospective action is no more valuable than the easy second guess.

With that unlovely envy motivating prospective readers and voters, is it a marvel that journalists and politicians pander to that? Is it a marvel that journalists prefer to report ill of those with a good bottom line? And that journalist who do more of that prosper more than those who do it less?

Is it a marvel that politicians, faced both with the natural temptation of voters and the pandering of journalism, simply play to the reporters' gallery?

Journalists criticize everyone except other journalists; journalists individually pander to journalism. Like all liberals do. And the claim of journalism's "objectivity" is nothing else but pandering journalsm--pandering to the PR power.

But journalism's criticism is criticism from the left; it falls on the liberal politician as a friendly tug and on the conservative as a hostile attack.

10 posted on 01/23/2004 7:08:49 AM PST by conservatism_IS_compassion (Belief in your own objectivity is the essence of subjectivity.)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion
Media Bias Bump!!!!!!
12 posted on 01/23/2004 7:28:00 AM PST by E.G.C.
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion
WOW - more good reading!

Thanks and later!
13 posted on 01/23/2004 7:37:13 AM PST by imintrouble
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