Media

Media Is any cliché in American public discourse quite as stale as “liberal media bias”' Probably not, unless it’s “tax-and-spend liberal.” Is there a literate adult living in this country who hasn’t heard or read that dull, deceptive phrase literally hundreds or even thousands of times' Not unless said person resides permanently in a wilderness beyond range of all TV, radio, newspaper delivery, and the U.S. Postal Service. Have any of the American media’s real problems—increasing corporate concentration, diminishing public service, and the narrowing spectrum of political discussion—attracted a fraction of the attention devoted to this tedious grievance' No. For decades, nobody with the slightest interest in politics has been able to avoid the right’s ranting about “liberal bias.” Conservatives complain so habitually and so monotonously about their exclusion that usually nobody notices the relative scarcity of liberal voices. It’s more than a bit paradoxical that so many conservatives appear in so many publications and on so many broadcasts—all insisting that their point of view isn’t heard in the media. To sustain this palpably ridiculous argument, the right-wingers deny reality with great vehemence. They protest too much, and then they protest some more. Consider a typical paragraph from Slander, a book in which liberal, conservative, media, news, republican, fox, about, bush, right, press, national, bias, white, washington, gore, mainstream, house, conservatives, been, abc, 2002, radio, own, now, nbc, coverage, 2000, right-wing, presidential, post, outlets, out, one, office, new, network