I was reading comments on another website when I saw an old liberal trope that never ceases to amuse me, the idea that the media is conservative. Now, I have already explained not only that I think media is quite liberal, but I have also explained why it is almost inevitable that it would be so, so obviously I think this claim is hilariously off-base. Still, I have heard it often enough that I feel I should respond to such a claim.

The first argument I have seen is that "all the well known celebrities are conservative". I guess this person has never heard of Dan Rather, Katie Couric, Peter Jennings, Barbara Walters, Hugh Downs, Morley Safer, "Uncle Walt" Cronkite, and about a million others. There are two mistakes in this statement. First, even if "all the well known" pundits were conservative, that says nothing about the media in general as 95% or more is done by faceless names, writing copy in papers and on television. We don't know who writes most of the news we receive, yet they have more control over the media in general that the pundits and newsreaders do. Second, it confuses a few very famous and successful pundits (Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly) witht he media as a whole. Yes, they get ratings the mainstream would envy, but that is mostly because America has been so starved for some conservative opinion that it was inevitable conservatives would flourish. Just because Rush makes a fortune does not mean that 99% of the news media is not liberal.

A second argument comes from those disgruntled that Fox News gets high ratings. Somehow they argue that because Fox has high ratings, all of the media is biased to the right.  It really makes no sense. It is as if saying that there was one criminal in your high school class that your entire class is immoral. That there is one conservative network suggests that the media is biased left, not right.

Which actually brings me to the third argument. It starts off as a variant of the second one. Those who call Fox "far right" tend to posit that the rest of the networks are centrist and only Fox is right. But the third argument goes farther than that. Those who espouse this position are so far left themselves that that claim Walter Cronkite is too far right. They actually claim that CNN and MSNBC are reactionary. And I suppose, from their seat on the very fringe of political discourse, that is true. But, as I have not even met many liberals who will argue that Rather or Cronkite are tools of the right wing, I have to say theirs is a minority position, and not really a good way to evaluate the media's true nature.

Finally, we get the silliest argument of all. "Rich, right wing corporations" own all the networks, so the media must be right wing.

Oh, where to start? First, all corporations are hardly "right wing". Those who run corporations have views running the gamut of political positions. Soros is a rich investor, but I doubt anyone would say he is conservative. Nor does Bill Gates fall on the right end of the spectrum, despite controlling a "rich corporation". There are countless left wing corporate big wigs, as political contributions attest.

Second, even if the corporations which own them were all reactionary bastions run by nineteenth century stereotype capitalists in top hats and spats, all smoking cigars and torturing peons for fun, that says nothing about what the channels broadcast. Unless they postulate that the parent companies directly control the news channel content, then it is quite possible even the channels owned by "rich conservatives" could still be quite left wing.

But I don't really see any need to go on. The only true test of bias is what the stations choose to broadcast and how. The fact that a relatively centrist network like Fox is called "conservative" gives a good measure of the truth. If that is not enough, what about the selective display of only bad news from Iraq? How about the fawning adoration of Obama? Or the failure to even notice his ties to Rezko or Wright until this late in the campaign? Or the fact that civilian casualties were not even mentioned in Bosnia or Kossovo but are the central theme of so many broadcasts? Actually, how many "grim milestone" count downs of death happened during Somalia, Bosnia or Kossovo?

I could go on and on, but I will just refer you to my earlier article on this topic. It makes a better case than I can in the time I have available.

Of course, I don't even think it is necessary to make any more of an argument on this topic. The arguments that try to show the media is conservative are so weak, and the bias so obvious to anyone honestly looking at the news, that I can't believe I even have to argue this point.

Yet it comes up again and again, so I suppose I will be arguing this one again eventually.


UPDATE 04/23/2008

Funny, this argument arose again on Townhall. In response to an article by Brent Bozell, some started to claim that the media really is right leaning. I replied as follows:

andrews writes:	Wednesday, April, 23, 2008 1:12 PM
Come on
So, now that there is Fox and talk radio, the media is no longer biased tot he left? How many of the broadcast networks are even in the center? None. Every broadcast network, and 2 of 3 big cable news networks are solidly left. How about "the paper of record", the NYT? Or most big city papers (with a few exceptions)? I'm sorry, but talk radio and Fox do not outweigh the immense mass of left leaning media outlets. Also, talk radio really doesn't count, as it is an opinion outlet. I don't care if opinion is biased, it should be. What we are complaining about are the supposedly "unbiased' news outlets, which almost entirely slant left. Actually, the fact that Fox, with people like Alan Colmes, Geraldo Rivera and Great van Sustern is considered "far right" shows just how left the media is. Fox would, reasonably, be considered center, maybe center-right, if we were not so used to a media being so far to the left.

Isn't it interesting how this argument keeps coming up again and again? You think the left would realize how little sense their argument makes. It doesn't persuade anyone, and just serves to make the left look even more out of touch than they already do.