What the Fox Said: Debunking the Liberal Media Myth
One great truism is if we repeat a lie enough or if enough people repeat the lie and believe it, then the lie becomes the truth, fiction becomes fact. That's why many people still believe that the corporate-owned media is liberal. We know that Fox News is conservative and that the ratings for that news channel are higher than those for the liberal-leaning MSNBC. Most of us also know that talk radio is dominated by conservatives, but many people believe that the rest of the news media, including CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, and most newspapers, is liberal.
They are, of course, wrong. In big cities where there are two newspapers (and there are probably fewer of those now than there were in the 20th Century), one is often more conservative than the other. When I lived in the Chicago area during the sixties, for instance, the Chicago Tribune was the conservative paper, and the Sun Times was more liberal. And then there are the tabloids, which I suspect more people read than read the New York Times or any other large metropolitan newspaper. As I revealed in my memoir, the National Enquirer targets liberal politicians and protects conservatives. That's why we didn't hear about Barbara Walters' affair with black Republican Senator Ed Brooke until the lady told all in her memoir, and that's why we didn't hear about Dixiecrat turned Republican Senator Strom Thurmond's black daughter until the Senator had died at the ripe old age of one hundred, and then the daughter told her story. And recently, a retired Republican Senator revealed that thirty years ago he fathered a child with the daughter of another Republican Senator. Even Kennedy in-law and moderate Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger was protected by the tabloid when he ran for governor of California in 2003. Several women sold their stories of Arnold's groping and other sexual misbehavior to the Enquirer, but instead of publishing them, the publishers made a deal with Arnold to write (or have ghostwritten) a column for one of their fitness publications. I doubt that such a deal would have been made with a Democrat.
I first questioned the liberal media myth during the 2000 election. When George Bush's drunk driving arrest was revealed in a so-called October surprise, I wondered how a man who was the governor of a large state and the son of a former President and Vice President could hide such an arrest. When a drunken Joan Kennedy fell in the street in Boston years after she divorced Ted, I heard about it in L.A. In fact, any time a Kennedy or Kennedy in-law was arrested for drinking, taking drugs, or raping someone it made the news. Even the murder trial of Ethel's nephew, who has just been released from jail, became a spectacle because he was called a "Kennedy cousin." Yet the governor of Texas, the son of a one-term President and two-term Vice President, and brother of the governor of Florida, could hide his past drunk driving arrest during most of a hotly contested Presidential campaign. When I found out several years after she had become the First Lady that Laura Bush had accidentally killed a young classmate in a car accident when she was a teenager, I almost lost my mind. Why didn't everyone know about that accident? Can you imagine what would have happened if Hillary Clinton, Tipper Gore, Teresa Kerry, or Michelle Obama had accidentally killed a young man in a car accident? I'm still bitter that the Kerry-Edwards campaign didn't use my idea of showing the two drunk drivers, Bush and Cheney, with Laura in a car, under the slogan: "Do you really want these three at the wheel?" We did go over a cliff in 2008, didn't we?
But what really made me question the liberal media myth was what happened on the day of the 2000 election. Some clever conservatives suggested that the liberal media tried to steal the election for Gore because he was given Florida first. But how did briefly having Florida help Gore's cause? The real story, of course, is that when the media called Florida for Bush, they also declared him the winner of the election before changing their minds again. By declaring Bush the winner, the media gave him the moral high ground, so he could pretend that he had actually won the election and that the Florida votes had already been counted. Imagine if the media had said: "Florida and therefore this race is too close to call; there will need to be a recount." While the votes were being counted and recounted, it would become clear that, thanks to western states like California, Gore won the popular vote. Who do you think would have prevailed under those circumstances? Some liberals blamed the five conservative Supreme Court justices for making Bush the winner of an election he lost, but I blamed the conservative media.
Almost exactly thirteen years after the 2000 vote count fiasco, an ABC special on the ten worst political scandals of the 21st Century once again confirmed what I learned at the beginning of this century--the media is conservative. I pointed out in my last post that eight of the ten political scandals listed were sexual in nature, but it's interesting to note that six of the ten featured Democrats, and one of the four Republican scandals (one of the two nonsexual ones) listed the victim, Valerie Plame, instead of the perpetrators, Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, and Dick Cheney, of the scandal. So only three Republicans were listed. The top three scandalous politicians, according to Disney's ABC, were John Edwards, the former Senator and Vice Presidental nominee who talked about the two Americas before the 2008 recession and who told us in 2008 that we couldn't trust the insurance companies, Eliot Spitzer, the so-called sheriff of Wall Street and former governor of New York, and Anthony Weiner, the loudmouth former New York Representative, who fiercely battled the Republicans during the healthcare debates of 2009 and 2010. Hmmm. The latter two tried unsuccessfully to reenter New York City politics a week or two before the special, but Edwards has been quietly going about his business in North Carolina since his 2012 trial. He hasn't even been on television. His former mistress may have, however, inadvertently put him on the corporate media's radar by issuing an apology for her 2012 tell-too-much book; the apology included a statement that she hadn't let "John" read the book. Maybe the corporations and insurance companies thought Baby Mama Hunter was preparing the way for Mr. Two Americas to reenter politics.
As I reviewed all of the Republican scandals that were omitted from that top ten list, not just Foley, Ensign, and Vitter, but Katrina and the Iraq War, I included the most recent scandal--the shutdown of the government by Republicans for no particular reason. Then I thought I knew why ABC chose to present their special at this time. The Republicans are looking bad; their poll numbers are down, so Mickey Mouse has to save the day by making people believe that the Democrats are really the corrupt ones.
As Al Sharpton, one of the few true liberals in the mostly conservative media might say, "Nice try, ABC, but we got you." Wake up, everybody! There is more than one fox in the media.
They are, of course, wrong. In big cities where there are two newspapers (and there are probably fewer of those now than there were in the 20th Century), one is often more conservative than the other. When I lived in the Chicago area during the sixties, for instance, the Chicago Tribune was the conservative paper, and the Sun Times was more liberal. And then there are the tabloids, which I suspect more people read than read the New York Times or any other large metropolitan newspaper. As I revealed in my memoir, the National Enquirer targets liberal politicians and protects conservatives. That's why we didn't hear about Barbara Walters' affair with black Republican Senator Ed Brooke until the lady told all in her memoir, and that's why we didn't hear about Dixiecrat turned Republican Senator Strom Thurmond's black daughter until the Senator had died at the ripe old age of one hundred, and then the daughter told her story. And recently, a retired Republican Senator revealed that thirty years ago he fathered a child with the daughter of another Republican Senator. Even Kennedy in-law and moderate Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger was protected by the tabloid when he ran for governor of California in 2003. Several women sold their stories of Arnold's groping and other sexual misbehavior to the Enquirer, but instead of publishing them, the publishers made a deal with Arnold to write (or have ghostwritten) a column for one of their fitness publications. I doubt that such a deal would have been made with a Democrat.
I first questioned the liberal media myth during the 2000 election. When George Bush's drunk driving arrest was revealed in a so-called October surprise, I wondered how a man who was the governor of a large state and the son of a former President and Vice President could hide such an arrest. When a drunken Joan Kennedy fell in the street in Boston years after she divorced Ted, I heard about it in L.A. In fact, any time a Kennedy or Kennedy in-law was arrested for drinking, taking drugs, or raping someone it made the news. Even the murder trial of Ethel's nephew, who has just been released from jail, became a spectacle because he was called a "Kennedy cousin." Yet the governor of Texas, the son of a one-term President and two-term Vice President, and brother of the governor of Florida, could hide his past drunk driving arrest during most of a hotly contested Presidential campaign. When I found out several years after she had become the First Lady that Laura Bush had accidentally killed a young classmate in a car accident when she was a teenager, I almost lost my mind. Why didn't everyone know about that accident? Can you imagine what would have happened if Hillary Clinton, Tipper Gore, Teresa Kerry, or Michelle Obama had accidentally killed a young man in a car accident? I'm still bitter that the Kerry-Edwards campaign didn't use my idea of showing the two drunk drivers, Bush and Cheney, with Laura in a car, under the slogan: "Do you really want these three at the wheel?" We did go over a cliff in 2008, didn't we?
But what really made me question the liberal media myth was what happened on the day of the 2000 election. Some clever conservatives suggested that the liberal media tried to steal the election for Gore because he was given Florida first. But how did briefly having Florida help Gore's cause? The real story, of course, is that when the media called Florida for Bush, they also declared him the winner of the election before changing their minds again. By declaring Bush the winner, the media gave him the moral high ground, so he could pretend that he had actually won the election and that the Florida votes had already been counted. Imagine if the media had said: "Florida and therefore this race is too close to call; there will need to be a recount." While the votes were being counted and recounted, it would become clear that, thanks to western states like California, Gore won the popular vote. Who do you think would have prevailed under those circumstances? Some liberals blamed the five conservative Supreme Court justices for making Bush the winner of an election he lost, but I blamed the conservative media.
Almost exactly thirteen years after the 2000 vote count fiasco, an ABC special on the ten worst political scandals of the 21st Century once again confirmed what I learned at the beginning of this century--the media is conservative. I pointed out in my last post that eight of the ten political scandals listed were sexual in nature, but it's interesting to note that six of the ten featured Democrats, and one of the four Republican scandals (one of the two nonsexual ones) listed the victim, Valerie Plame, instead of the perpetrators, Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, and Dick Cheney, of the scandal. So only three Republicans were listed. The top three scandalous politicians, according to Disney's ABC, were John Edwards, the former Senator and Vice Presidental nominee who talked about the two Americas before the 2008 recession and who told us in 2008 that we couldn't trust the insurance companies, Eliot Spitzer, the so-called sheriff of Wall Street and former governor of New York, and Anthony Weiner, the loudmouth former New York Representative, who fiercely battled the Republicans during the healthcare debates of 2009 and 2010. Hmmm. The latter two tried unsuccessfully to reenter New York City politics a week or two before the special, but Edwards has been quietly going about his business in North Carolina since his 2012 trial. He hasn't even been on television. His former mistress may have, however, inadvertently put him on the corporate media's radar by issuing an apology for her 2012 tell-too-much book; the apology included a statement that she hadn't let "John" read the book. Maybe the corporations and insurance companies thought Baby Mama Hunter was preparing the way for Mr. Two Americas to reenter politics.
As I reviewed all of the Republican scandals that were omitted from that top ten list, not just Foley, Ensign, and Vitter, but Katrina and the Iraq War, I included the most recent scandal--the shutdown of the government by Republicans for no particular reason. Then I thought I knew why ABC chose to present their special at this time. The Republicans are looking bad; their poll numbers are down, so Mickey Mouse has to save the day by making people believe that the Democrats are really the corrupt ones.
As Al Sharpton, one of the few true liberals in the mostly conservative media might say, "Nice try, ABC, but we got you." Wake up, everybody! There is more than one fox in the media.
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