Where Are The Liberal Media When You Need Them? Thoughts On Scott McClellan's Spiel

By Manifesto Joe

In the time I have worked in American news media -- 30 years -- we've had to deal with right-wingers' allegations of "liberal bias." It goes on to this day, despite many years of Fox News obviously functioning as the right-wing Republican answer to Soviet state TV. Even if you go back 20 years or more, to a time when some faint whiff of liberal influence on American media might have been evident, it pales in comparison to the partisan bashing one sees on Fox, every hour on the hour.

In his new, much-discussed book, Scott McClellan touches -- just slightly -- on the problem. That being that the right wing had a strategy, and that despite any rational opposition, they made it work.

Scotty only brings it up in the context of the Iraq war, and American news media's absolute failure to hold the Bush administration's propaganda up to proper scrutiny.

I suggest that this reverse bias strategy has been going on a pretty long time, and still is. The strategy was to cry "liberal bias" so often that the great lie would become accepted as truth, a la Joseph Goebbels. As a result, the right seems to have at least their U.S. hard-core 30% in tow, no matter what happens on the world stage.

It's common sense that a profession like journalism will attract more liberals than conservatives. There are some righties who go into the field (with backing from trust funds and inheritances, usually) because they think their influence is needed among these hordes of liberal reprobates in the profession. I have known some like that. But mostly, liberal types are drawn to these jobs. The jobs don't usually pay well as "college required" professions go, so that means you have to have a bigger moral and emotional stake in it than if you were going into, say, banking. One goes into journalism actually hoping to do meaningful work and make the world a slightly better place.

The right's strategy has been to cry "bias" so many times, and to assemble dubious inductive arguments with isolated instances of sloppy journalism, that eventually many people would buy the line. Over decades, they succeeded to a frustrating degree.

But, with Scotty coming forward like this about media cheerleading on the Iraq war, the ruse is beginning to fall apart. I remember the period of 5-6 years ago, and wondering where the hell our Murrows were while Colin Powell was lying to the U.N. Even Bob Woodward seemed to be shilling for the administration during that time. There was a total collapse of the scrutiny, the skepticism, the suspicion that comes with media at its watchdog best. You know, the traits that "liberals" usually bring to it.

The Free Press Action Fund has kept abreast of the reactions to Scotty's book, and there's more there than has been headlined in general:

... he takes it one step further, implicating the mainstream media for its role in "enabling" this propaganda: "The national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House" in spreading the president's case for the war, McClellan writes. The mainstream media didn't live up to its watchdog reputation. "If it had, the country would have been better served.

There's more:

The media's complicity in promoting this war was confirmed Wednesday night by CNN correspondent Jessica Yellin who said that network executives had pushed her not to do hard-hitting pieces on the Bush administration as the nation readied for war.

"The press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation," Yellin told CNN's Anderson Cooper. Here's the video:



This is all very familiar turf for me. I've heard it, from bootlicking editors, in many ways. "These people in your story, they're not OUR people." "We need to stick to the facts of the story." (I thought that's what I had been doing.) "We have advertisers, and we need to think about them." (Hey, that was when they were trying to be half-assed honest.)

Perhaps this has driven one more nail into the coffin of the myth of liberal media bias. If not -- give me a bag of nails, a coffin and a good shovel, and I will gladly finish the job. I can vouch from experience that it is among the most toxic of all political myths.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

The Debate, And The West Texas Sect: American Media Have Reached A Historic Nadir

By Manifesto Joe

For decades it has been noted that a highly effective device that characterizes modern ruling-class America -- (crypto-fascism, that smiley-face wearing a flag lapel pin) -- is news media that confuses and trivializes issues, ever digressing from substance and toward the most contemptible sideshows.

It's been a few days since the astonishing ABC News mishandling of the Democratic Pennsylvania Primary debate, so everyone's had a chance to watch YouTube and then just calm down a bit. But in hindsight, this remains one of the most obvious examples of a corporate media con job.

We got a great deal of time from moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopolous, you know -- going over the Rev. Wright, Hillary's Bosnia account, flag lapel pins, and so forth. This was a lot of time that could have been spent talking about the Iraq war (turning for the worse lately), health care, taxes, spying on citizens, and other issues of at least marginally greater importance. I really wish Hillary, and especially Barack Obama, would have, or could have, told these fools in so many words just how completely full of shit they are.

I suppose this shouldn't pose any surprise for people who have been watching the American media situation for a good while.

To digress a bit myself, the other day I was watching CNN Headline News -- my God, what tabloid trash that channel has become -- and heard one of their model-ish happy faces "ask," regarding the story of the West Texas polygamist ranch: Why is there so much fascination with this story? And this model-ish woman didn't even snicker.

This story is a prime example of how U.S. media usually serve the purpose of distracting the public, getting them to think about anything, yes, but anything, other than what really counts.

The focus of the polygamist ranch story, so far, has been largely lascivious. Dirty old men forcing "marriage" and rape upon 13-year-old girls, and so forth.

Largely ignored amid all this was a story in the April 13 Fort Worth Star-Telegram, one that I got around to about a week later. That's how good our national media are at getting to the marrow of things.

The headline on Page One was "Federal money helped finance polygamist sect." This illustrates how easy it really is to get a no-bid military contract. Here are excerpts from the story:

American taxpayers have unwittingly helped finance a polygamist sect that is now the focus of a massive child abuse investigation in West Texas, with a business tied to the group receiving a nearly $1 million loan from the federal government and $1.2 million in military contracts. ...

... New Era Manufacturing in Las Vegas, has been awarded more than $1.2 million in federal government contracts, with most of the money coming in recent years from the Defense Department for wheel and brake components for military aircraft.

A large portion of the awards were preferential no-bid or "sole source" contracts because of the company's classification as a small business, according to online databases that track federal government appropriations.

It's bad enough that this sect was functioning, sanctifying statutory rape, and eventually kicking a couple of thousand teenage boys out onto the road (you know, less competition for the smelly old men for the young girls) and so forth. Yes, it's all very contemptible.

But lost in all this was the use of taxpayer money to actually subsidize this outlaw sect's existence. And, nobody was even minding the store when it came to handing out these no-bid military contracts. (Hey, at least Halliburton doesn't allow its employees stationed in the hard-core Muslim Mideast to practice the four-wives custom. That's about all I would give them credit for.)

Back to the Democratic debate: No, it should come as no surprise that our news media have become the source of bread and circuses for a multitude of fools. Clearly, this seems to have become their job. But, in what could be the most crucial presidential campaign in U.S. history, we have people figuratively in polka-dot bloomers and red rubber noses who are more or less in control of the largest, most influential channels of public discourse.

I can only hope that the eventual Democratic presidential nominee will somehow persevere.

Call me a conspiracy theorist if you wish -- but I suspect that most of this has come about somewhat by corporate design. The goal has been to create toothless, diversionary TV news monoliths for the masses. I am sure that Edward R. Murrow, or even Walter Cronkite, couldn't get a decent gig in today's media. ("Dudes, you're too homely. And Ed, you smoke too much. Get a job at a newspaper. If you can find one.")

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.