by Klaus Rohrich
September 20, 2004
I recently heard a radio interview with author David Brock, who penned the book The Republican Noise Machine: Right Wing Media and how it Corrupts Democracy. The gist of what Brock had to say is that the overwhelming majority of media outlets in North america are totally biased toward the Right. While I agree with half of what he said, I take vehement exception to the other half.
Yes, there is media bias. In fact, I can’t see how media could be unbiased, given that all media is ultimately made up of people, all of whom have opinions, be they right or left wing. But to say that the vast majority of the media is biased in favour of the right betrays a certain conceit about one’s own beliefs.
as proof of the "viral nature of the right-wing media" he cited the 2,000 elections, alleging that the media "smeared" al Gore as a liar. Does this mean that al really did invent the internet, as he claimed and that he and Tipper really were the characters that Erich Segal’s Love Story is based upon?
Brock talked at length about Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, The Washington Times, ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, etc. and how they were a grave danger to democracy in that they put a right wing spin on all their reporting.
Really?
But then he went on to say that the rest of the so-called "mainstream media" was totally objective and unbiased!
Could have fooled me. This takes me back to my earlier assertion that to view the world through Brock’s eyes takes no small amount of conceit, as it implies that his opinions, along with those of Dan Rather, the La Times, The New York Times, Peter Jennings, Tom Brockaw, CNN and most major newspapers in North america reflect the true nature of things. It betrays the left’s own view of itself as paragons of virtue, freedom, democracy and all that is good and correct (I will refrain from using the word "right")
Brock’s book, as well as his earlier work Blinded by the Right, are illustrative of the left’s failure to realize that their thinking is being rejected wholesale by more and more people on a daily basis.
The Fox News Network didn’t spring on the scene full grown. They started out as low man on the totem pole and worked their way up to its current position as the most watched news source in the United States, precisely of the fact that people were tired of having the likes of Peter Jennings telling them what they should think. It’s the clearest example of how market forces work that I can think of. People do not want to purchase CBS’s product, so they are going elsewhere in droves.
Brock decries the existence of the internet and how it is being misused by the right to spread lies. and I suppose the left doesn’t use it at all, or maybe the left is incapable of lying. Yeah, that’s it! The left just doesn’t know how to lie. That’s why Dan Rather insists that his newscast about President Bush being aWOL from his post with the National Guard is true, despite the fact that the documents he offered up as evidence are clumsy forgeries. Rather’s resolve is bolstered by CBS News president andrew Heyward, who defends the network’s decision to air the program, despite the doubts raised by CBS News’ own experts as to the authenticity of the documents.
The net result is that CBS News is in free-fall mode, ranking dead last of all the news networks in all of america’s major markets and even coming in behind re-runs of "Friends" and "The Simpsons" in the prestigious New York City market.
Brock, who claims to have been a "right wing" writer for years and years before "coming in from the wrong", is dead wrong in his analysis of the current state of the media. It is the internet that has made it possible for people to see more than just one point of view on the six-o’clock news. (The fact that you are reading this proves my point, as this column wouldn’t see the light of day in a "mainstream" paper) It is talk radio that has questioned the sacred shibboleths of the left and have offered an alternative to Dan Rather and his ilk.
I can see how Brock could view the current alternative media that is springing up like dandelions as a threat to "democracy". If one defines democracy as a state of existence wherein only one (liberal) point of view is up for public consumption, then he is correct in saying that the right is threatening his brand of democracy. But in my own view, it’s been way too long in coming.