How to Debunk The Myth of the Liberal Media

There's a myth that's been floating around for a long time, probably at least since the 1970s, that "the media", I think meaning mainstream journalism (but possibly also highly corporate Hollywood) is liberal. The myth has been ratcheted up, especially as reactionary commentators, e.g. Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, etc., fill the airwaves with hot air. In this article, you will learn just a couple of the many flaws in this propaganda.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• The ability to cut through reactionary jargon

1. Face Our Two Party System.
   
   Let's face it, we're (the U.S.) still bogged down in a two party system, and much of the partisan bickering is a smoke screen concealing a true lack of differences between the two parties. You'd think that if all political viewpoints had to be made into two options, they'd be extremely far apart, but they're not.
   
   In Europe, countries only the fraction of the size of the United States offer a much larger variety of parties and political perspectives that hold major offices. No fewer than eleven major pan-European parties were recognized by the EU during 2005 to the extent that they received funding. This list of transnational parties doesn't even include parties that are localized by country, of which there are scores. For more detail, please see "Resources" toward the bottom of this page.
2. Note What This Amounts To . . .
   
   Is that there is no currently "viable" liberal party in America, or at least not a major party that's on the left. The truly left wing parties in America number perhaps half a dozen, but they're rarely featured nor propagated in our mainstream media that's called "the media". The most popular of these (and likely the most moderate) is the Green Party of the United States, which we all know is itself marginalized, not to speak of the remainder of the obscure parties on the left. The plain facts here are that the Democratic Party only qualifies as left or liberal by default, since the Republican Party is so far to the right on the scale of international politics. In other words, the American center is well to the right of center.
3. Witness The Three "Choices" In Our Two Party System.
   
   We end up then with reactionary Republicans, moderate Republicans/Democrats (only nominal difference here), and then traditional Democrats. The last of these are considered centrists in Europe and probably even Canada, yet here in the U.S. they're both skewered and skewed as if they're way out on the left!
4. Critique A Misleading Methodology.
   
   So the right often counts up the number of "liberal plugs" given by the mainstream media, which usually means alleged spin in favor of the Democratic party or an issue such as being against the Iraq War. Regardless of whether these plugs/alleged spin exceed reactionary or Republican plugs, it's not even liberal! Usually what is meant by liberal (in these plug counts) isn't the left at all but rather "conservative light".
   
   If the mainstream media were truly on the left, they would be plugging the Greens, the Workers World Party, and the like, not the Democratic Party - doh! And issues such as opposition to the Iraq War, pro choice in terms of abortion, and nationalized health plans are MAINSTREAM center in the vast majority of advanced nations. They're not the stuff of some wild and wacky left wing.
5. Consider Now the Source.
   
   "The media" in America are funded by:
   a) The Communist Party,
   b) Tree-hugging hippies,
   c) Norma Rae,
   d) University professors, or
   e) Major corporations?
   
   If you guessed "e", you don't get an E. Even PBS takes a good portion of its funding from corporate grants! The rest, your CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX, CNN and even so-called liberal newspapers such as the New York Times and Washington Post all stay afloat based upon corporate advertising dollars! In other words, corporations sponsor the media (and this includes Hollywood movies).
6. Corporate Sponsorship Means Intrinsic Right Wing Bias.
   
   When advertisers fund media, at the very least they expect the status quo to be maintained and given a wink and a nod (so that they can continue to operate and expand). So it's an intrinsic contradiction to suggest that, for instance, all the pharmaceutical companies that you see sponsoring major news programs, advocate some kind of left wing checks on their profiteering. The same goes for anything from oil to sneakers. So any actual left wing media content is purely by accident.
   
   What we do get is pseudo-left wing content - the stuff that the Limbaughs of the world count as being "liberal media". This is set up so that Americans are left (pun intended) in the dark about what's actually on the left, and are hypnotized into thinking that for instance, the Kennedys and the Democratic Party are THE left, when in fact, the Kennedys and the Democratic Party are just the center painted left, or left by default.

Tips & Warnings

• Take a look sometime at politics in Canada and Europe (our closest peer nations) in order to put American politics in perspective. I've provided a link under "Resources" at the bottom of the page to help as a start.
• Realize that on "quality of life" type scales, America doesn't exactly sweep the top, even if we do in terms of GDP. Scandinavian nations in particular, and even Iceland, (whose political centers are much further to the left than are America's) often score highly on quality of life type scales regarding such things as health care, lack of poverty, education, and civil liberties. So it's not as if these countries are batty for being more liberal than is America.
• Even the right wing agrees with the phrase "follow the money trail" - because they know all too well how it operates.