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“Don’t Blame Liberal Media For Giuliani Gaffe”: The Go-To Explanation Among Conservatives For Almost Everything That Happens

We’ve had a terrific demonstration over the last week or so of why the belief in liberal media bias is so strong.

It isn’t because of actual liberal media bias. Academic research finds plenty of ways the press gets things wrong, but an ideological slant isn’t one of them.

Most bias has to do with the industry’s norms (stories involving the president get more play than articles about governors, and so on). In some cases, the self-interest of the media plays a role, whether it’s promoting freedom of the press, for example, or building up anyone who might take on Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination as a way to build interest in that snooze fest.

What sustains the belief in liberal bias? It’s the go-to explanation among conservatives for almost everything that happens, and has been for at least four decades. Repeat something long enough, without strong opposition, and people will accept it.

So the reaction to the Rudy Giuliani story, in which the former New York mayor claimed Barack Obama didn’t “love” America, invoked howls of media bias from conservatives. Some said it wasn’t a story at all — Giuliani hasn’t been in office for years, so who cares what he says? Isn’t there real news out there? Others were upset that Republican candidates were pressed to agree or disagree with Giuliani — look, the liberal media is trying to make conservative politicians look stupid!

But we had an almost perfect parallel in the coverage of Howard Dean’s complaint that Republican Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin shouldn’t be president because he didn’t graduate from college.

Giuliani left office in 2001, ran for president in 2008, has since been out of active politics but shows up on TV all the time. Dean left office a year after Giuliani did, ran for president in 2004, was Democratic National Committee chairman through 2008, has since been out of active politics but shows up on TV all the time.

Republicans were forced to take a stand on whether Obama loves America; Democrats were pressed to say if they thought a college dropout was unqualified to be president.

The Giuliani story was bigger only because attacking the president is a bigger deal than attacking one of many Republican presidential candidates, and New York (where much of the national media is based) trumps Vermont.

Both accusations were pretty much denounced by everyone; both sparked predictable partisan bashing and a few interesting reflections.

But liberals didn’t go crying about conservative media bias in the Dean-Walker case because they don’t see every news story as an example of prejudice against them. Conservatives do.

For example, they screamed that the media ignored the scandal ending the career of Democratic Governor John Kitzhaber of Oregon, but as Philip Bump explained, this too was caused by ordinary press norms, not ideological bias. Kitzhaber’s scandals were undercovered (at least in the national media) compared with those of Republican Chris Christie because Christie is running for president and he’s a governor in the New York area. Think about it. The press hardly ignored scandals costing Democratic Governors Rod Blagojevich or Eliot Spitzer their jobs. It’s just that Democrats never interpreted those firestorms as examples of Republican media bias.

There’s nothing wrong with pointing out when news coverage is wrong or wrong-headed. But ideology isn’t at the root of those mistakes and biases.

 

By: Jonathan Bernstein, Columnist for Bloomberg View; The National Memo, February 25, 2015

February 28, 2015 Posted by | Conservatives, Media, Rudy Giuliani | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“What’s Eating The Left’s Media?”: Wake Up Liberals, For Conservatives It’s Always The Eleventh Hour

The liberal media may be in a funk. MSNBC is getting some of its worst ratings in years, and Digby tells us that liberal blogs have experienced serious declines in traffic since the election as well. So why might this be happening?

There are two answers, neither of which would give you much solace if your job depended on raising TV ratings or bringing in more ad revenue for your web site. The first is that outside events, in the form of the natural ebb and flow of the political world, have conspired against the liberal media. The second is that the model—liberals talking about politics—is affected by that ebb and flow in a way conservative media aren’t.

Let’s take a quick look at the last decade or so in the life of liberalism. If we go back to the early stages of the Bush administration, we see liberals getting riled up just at a time when the Internet as a source of news and political engagement began to come of age. George Bush started an insane war in 2003, then there was an election in 2004. Then there was an extraordinary amount of ferment on the left as the direction of the Democratic party and progressivism itself was being argued over. Then there was an economic crisis and another election. Then in the first couple of years of the Obama administration, there were hugely consequential policy battles over economic stimulus and health-care reform. Then you had the rise of a political movement made up of fascinatingly, terrifyingly crazy people, and then another presidential election. All that happened without much pause, ten solid years of important political events that had liberals alternately excited and angered. When people are excited and angered, they read more and watch more. And so liberal media thrived across many platforms, and MSNBC, which had once given shows to the likes of Tucker Carlson, Pat Buchanan, Michael Savage, and Alan Keyes, made a decision that stepping in the direction of becoming a left version of Fox News could be good business.

But look where we are now. The policy arguments we’re having don’t seem as earthshaking. Enough has happened that liberals’ ideas about President Obama are complex and ambivalent. The next election seems a long way off. Republicans have succeeded in ginning up some faux-scandals, but none of them seems a real threat to the President, so they don’t look worth getting too worked up over. So is it any surprise that liberals don’t feel the need to read 20 blogs a day and watch five hours of cable news?

Furthermore, liberal media just aren’t built to be sustainable through any political environment the way conservative media are. Look at Fox News, which continues to lead its competitors in the ratings, and probably always will. The reason is that there is a symbiosis between the network’s perspective and its viewers’ predilections. If you watch Fox (or listen to conservative talk radio, for that matter) you’ll hear each and every day that the grand battle is going on right now, no matter what may actually be happening. You thought the election was the critical moment, my friend? Nay. The crisis has only grown since then. The fate of everything you hold dear is about to be decided. The crisis is at hand. Catastrophe is upon us if we don’t stop the liberals. Thus it is today, just as it was yesterday, and just as it will be tomorrow. Every liberal proposal is the End of Freedom, every liberal politician the most terrifying villain America has ever seen.

Fox’s continued success is a testament to the fact that anger is what keeps their audience coming back. As Palpatine says to Anakin, “I can feel your anger. It gives you focus. Makes you stronger.” If anger wasn’t attractive to them, they wouldn’t keep watching. Liberals look at shows like Bill O’Reilly’s or Sean Hannity’s and wonder how a person could possibly enjoy all that rage and contempt, night after night after night. But they do. As Alex Pareene says, “do you know who watches cable news all day? And at prime time? When there’s not an election on, or a war, or some terrorism? Older conservative people.” For them, it’s always the eleventh hour.

But what is the grand battle in which liberals are now engaged? For the first time in a decade, there isn’t one. Sure, you can make a reasonable case that the next three years are going to be decisive for the liberal project. But it doesn’t feel that urgent to liberals. They may find a thoughtful discussion of economic inequality moderated by Chris Hayes to be interesting, but if they miss it, it won’t seem like that big a deal. So at least some of them are tuning out.

 

By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, May 30, 2013

May 31, 2013 Posted by | Politics | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“A Ticket To Long Term Love”: The Liberal Media’s Gift To Mitch McConnell

After a recording of an opposition research strategy meeting was leaked to Mother Jones, Mitch McConnell is demanding that the FBI investigate the bugging of his office by the “political left.” This is silly. McConnell knows it’s silly. The meeting was almost certainly recorded by an attendee, not by “bugs” planted by liberal spies.

But the point isn’t really to catch the perpetrator. The point is this ridiculous splash on his campaign website, in which visitors are told that McConnell’s office was “wiretapped” by “liberals” and are encouraged to respond by sending all of their contact information, along with some money, to Mitch McConnell’s reelection campaign.

A good “victim of liberal persecution” story is a ticket to long-term love — and cash — in the persecution-fixated conservative movement. That’s why Fox hired Juan Williams and why people gave money to Michele Bachmann and Allen West. Mitch McConnell, who is among the least popular humans on the planet, especially in Kentucky, needs to get conservatives excited to support him, and a fantastical tale of wiretapping by leftist thugs will help.

He shouldn’t actually need this, though. The weird thing about Mitch McConnell is that he’s easily the best friend the conservative movement has in Washington, and yet the activist right-wing base hates him.

No one has done more to thwart Barack Obama than McConnell. But the CPAC rabble reserve their affection for loudmouthed clowns like Louie Gohmert, who has never accomplished anything. McConnell operates quietly, but more effectively than almost any other major conservative elected official in Washington. He is keeping liberal (or, more often, moderate) judges from being confirmed, he’s hobbling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and effectively stopping the National Labor Relations Board from carrying out its mandate. If Senate Republicans were led by a squishier, more moderate senator, one who actually took seriously the “tradition” and “civility” bullshit the chamber’s old men pretend to hold dear, they might not have been willing or able to carry out four straight years of delay and filibuster on every single piece of Senate business. Despite that, McConnell is derided as a squishy moderate. In fact, it’s only through McConnell’s considerable political skill that he’s managed to avoid a serious right-wing primary challenger.

That’s why McConnell needs this battle with “the political left.” His very bright campaign manager — Jesse Benton, whom you may know from the Rand Paul and Ron Paul campaigns — clearly knew that the smart move was to immediately hype the fact that The Liberals are Attacking Mitch McConnell. While Tea Party types distrust McConnell, they loathe all liberals. That’s why McConnell kept repeating that the “bugging” of his office was carried out by “the political left,” and that’s why he broadly attempted to associate that phrase — though not assign responsibility for the taping — to the Kentucky liberal group that recently made headlines for a racist attack on McConnell’s wife. (A racist attack that much of “the political left” criticized as racist.)

If you want proof that this is working, check out this column by the National Review’s Michael Walsh, a man who used to write under a pseudonym as a parody of Hollywood liberalism, and who now writes under his own name as a much funnier and more cutting (if unintentional) parody of hysterical right-wing ranting. Walsh is pleased that Sen. McConnell has recognized the essential truth of modern politics: That the Left is vicious and unrelenting.

Good to see that Senator Mitch McConnell has finally figured out what some of us have been shouting for years: The Left plays to win and they don’t much care how they do it. When they say, “by any means necessary,” they mean it.

He goes on:

As the Mother Jones story ripples through the rest of the compliant, complicit media, the takeaway won’t be the substance of the story, or lack of it. It will be: Those mean Republicans, blah, blah, blah. In other words, it’s not a story in the old journalistic sense. It’s a meme-reinforcer. And that’s how the Democrat-Media Complex plays the game; even a nothing-burger story like this can be used as a club with which to pound the opposition, with the ultimate goal of delegitimizing them completely.

The only people here exploiting the appetite of a portion of the political press for simplistic “memes” are the Mitch McConnell campaign, who know that easily riled-up dopes like Walsh will freak out in a grand style when presented with any excuse to.

Once the FBI has finished its investigation, McConnell should send David Corn a fruit basket.

By: Alex Pareene, Salon, April 10, 2013

April 13, 2013 Posted by | Politics | , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

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