How can the press be liberal?

[Malone LaVeigh]

Libs like Chomsky and Vidal are good sources to debunk the myth of liberal media? Please.

Puh-leez. Noam Chomsky is one of the biggest critics of liberalism in the world.

P.S. Noam Chomsky is unreadable, and a bore.

If his books are too hard to get your brain around, there's an excellent documentary available in video, also called Manufacturing Consent.
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I really don't want to get into a fight over Noam Chomsky. I don't always agree with his foreign policy positions. But I think his analysis of the media is spot-on. Another central theme of his analysis is that the media don't really have the power to control what the public thinks, but it has the ability to control what it thinks about. It sets the parameters of the national debate. This is absolutely true.

Look at any debate in any of the major mainstream media over the war in Iraq. The debate is always framed in a way that serves the administration and the forces that want to go to war. The debate isn't over the morality or legality of waging war for oil. It's over side issues such as whether the admin should wage war without permission of Congress. Or UN approval. Or whether the cost will be too high. Tactical debates such as this dominated coverage back during the Vietnam days also. that's why people took to the streets. Their voices were not being reflected in any way by the media.

 

[treeprof]

The same Chomsky who wrote that the Khmer Rouge is an example of good gov't? The one who in various interviews and publications has basically blamed us for 9/11? Who actually said that we'd be likely to attack, or facilitate the overthrow of, the Pakistani gov't if they didn't assist us in starving millions of Afghanis? The one who said that Bin Laden is really motivated by bitter opposition to the corrupt and repressive regimes in the Mideast, including Muslim countries? The one who bends over backwards to try and explain how every oppressive socialist/communist regime the world has ever known isn't REALLY socialism? The ardent anti-capitalist? A critic of classic liberalism, yes (but not my point), but of Liberals (which he is, my point), not so much. Only in instances such as when Clinton got NAFTA passed.

 

[grampster]

How about this? The truth is difficult to sloganize. It needs to be debated, thought about, chewed over and applied, sometimes at a cost that is less than desireable. It takes time to digest. But time today has been reduced to 20 second sound bytes and headlines, or trailers at the bottom of the screen.
The mainstream media job is to pander to Americans, many of whom are either lazy, not interested, too self absorbed, or driven, or whatever tends to cause them to not be too aware of what is going on around their own narrow space. This leads to sound bytes, sloganeering and abrupt headlines. Time is chewed up and everything takes second place to instant gratification. Over time the truth sort of loses out to what sounds good or causes people to become even less aware, or motivates them to "let the other guy do it". Look at all the advertising. How much of it is truth? Mostly none of it. We are being inculcated with the fact that the truth doesn't matter as long as it sells newspapers or tv time. The media tells us that TV, movies, computer games and music that are violent or obscene don't affect anyone; yet millions are charged for advertising space in those venues. Ironic isn't it?
The truth is swallowed up in information overload during which it is easier to say just about anything that will draw attention to a particular ax that needs grinding. It does not need to be true, just work.
Sigh

 

[Malone LaVeigh]

I'm not here to defend all of Chomsky's ideas about foreign policy. But I think his ideas have been grossly misrepresented by those who seem to work better with simplistic slogans than real ideas (see above.) Those who get their information from David Horowitz may recognize some of the language.

Of course, none of the things cited fits anywhere near current mainstream liberalism in this country.

 

[treeprof]

Malone -

those who seem to work better with simplistic slogans than real ideas (see above.)

Is that me you're condescending to, pal? Sorry, I don't respond well to intellectual chest-thumping.

I never said he was mainstream - he's far, far to the left.

And having read both, I do prefer Horowitz.



Edit: I'm done. Getting up in arms w/another gun owner/TFLer/THRer over this issue (and we're on the same track in the SUV thread) is not worth it, and is not reflecting well on me. Apologies to Malone McVeigh for combativeness.

 

[Malone LaVeigh]

Hey, that's not fair! I won't be "out reasonabled" in this thread! Why, I oughtta....

 

[treeprof]

Ha! I have never "outreasonabled" anyone. Hopefully, I'm just getting better at minimizing the amount of time (both mine and others), goodwill and bandwidth that I waste.

 

[UnknownSailor]

IMNSHO, the media is liberal, because the schools they go to are infested with liberals.

 

[ravinraven]

...and we ask them to decide who shall run things.

Grampsters description of the people the media pander to is about as accurate as they can be described without delving into a study of mental processes. The original framers set the system up so that these types of people would not get anywhere near the levers of power, especially those little levers in the voting booth. Now they have taken over to the point that it is their collective "wisdom" that decides the course of events. The only way a candidate has a chance of winning is if he abandons any appeal to human strengths of character and only panders to human character weaknesses. That's the only way the Clinton joke on America team ever got to first base.

If these same characters that grampster so well describes were sitting on a cruise ship and the captain and top few mates suddenly needed to be replaced, would you set up elections among the passengers to see who was going to steer from here on in?

There seems to be some sort of liberal toxemia running around in the "mainstream" media. A friend of mine described academic toxemia which among other things prevents college administrators from demanding that things make sense. Same here. One well remembered event that liberal toxemia caused was poor old Dan rather speaking at a Democrat fund raiser in Texas and then wondering why anyone thought anything about it. "What? Me liberally biases? Nonsense!"

The question is how do we keep constitutional rights intact with liberals everywhere chewing them up?

 

[Steel]

Wealthy men are very rarely liberal. (In general)

who told you that? just another leftist slant...

"...the racist, rich, white conservatives are..."

you know the mantra

I wish I had a recent article that has a breakdown of the US (and states'?) representatives and senators and theri net worths. The majority of the money was in the liberal (Democrat) camp.