Since the beginning of my time in the modern political arena, there's not a political cycle that goes by that I hear a conservative friend of mine say the media, in general, is exaggeratedly slanted to the left. They site the research that shows that Obama had way more positive news stories than McCain in the 2008 Presidential Election, as if Sarah Palin had nothing to do with it. They also site that out of the major news outlets, in television, only one news station has a noticeable bias to the right. Although I do agree that these arguments have some merit, I do not believe the "liberal media" is trying to brainwash America into becoming a far left socialist country.
Why... the first concern for me with this argument is that my conservative friends constantly talk only about the news media on television. They look at how FOX News has to go up against the mean and highly manipulative MSNBC and CNN. Yet, they fail to discuss the popular and numerous conservative radio talk shows that do not get as much scrutiny when they get the information wrong. Here in Milwaukee, there was not a time when listening to Newsradio 620 or WISN 1330 that I heard the conservative talk show host take a news article or report and conservatively spin it to the point where angry liberal callers get cut short and the conservative callers seem like the smartest political analysts since sliced bread was invented. Driving in my car, it was very difficult for me to find one liberal radio talk show host that could spin the issues like the conservative talk show hosts could.
This phony argument goes deeper than just the conservative radio and the liberal television stations. Lets take a look at the NBC, the company that is more widely known as being owned by General Electric. NBC also has the liberally slanted news channel MSNBC. While at this point, these points strikes up to big arguments for this news organization to be slanted to the left. NBC also has the news state in Wisconsin with the call name TMJ4. Wait, isn't TMJ4 connected with WTMJ Newsradio 620... the conservative talk radio. This is a great example where media companies are not a liberal army, but rather another company that is profit motivated that finds the best way to diversify their consumers. The same example can be applied to ABC which is connected to WISN 12 News and WISN 1330 radio in Wisconsin. One could even look at Rupert Murdoch's Empire (Owner of FOX News) where he supports one side of an argument in one country and is against it in another country with a different news name (he owns multiple international news organizations).
So there you have it, my reason why the liberal media argument has little merit.
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ReplyDeleteWISN and WTMJ are not controlled by the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) nor NBC Universal. WISN is owned by Hearst Television, and WTMJ is owned by Jounral Communications.
ReplyDeleteSecond, the charge of liberal bias is usually thrown at mainstream outlets that a large majority of the people consume that claim to be objective and balanced. Talk radio is mostly irrelevant to this discussion since those shows are mostly straightforward about their conservative slant, and they do not reach as wide an audience.