Can you believe that Jonah Goldberg is concerned about the tone? I’d like to tell Jonah Goldberg what I think about the “liberal media.” I think you can see liberal media if you watch Democracy Now with Amy Goodman. You used to see liberal media for an hour on Friday night when Bill Moyers had a show on PBS. I think it’s fair to say that MSNBC has a liberal nighttime lineup. If you want to find any other liberal media on your teevee, you’re going to have to start surfing the local programming channels because Donna Brazille and James Carville don’t count. Or, you can pay some extra money to get the cable company to turn on Current TV, where Keith Olbermann currently toils in anonymity. We have nothing to compare to Fox News.
You can tell me that that’s because no one wants to watch liberal television, and maybe that’s true in relative terms. That doesn’t do much for the argument that the broadcast media has a liberal bias, though, does it? And speaking of broadcast, no one is stupid enough to argue that radio has a liberal bias.
So, that leaves print journalism. And, here, people like Jonah Goldberg can at least make a plausible argument that liberals outnumber conservatives. But it’s worth noting that even ostensibly liberal newspapers like the Washington Post have three times as many conservative columnists as they have liberals. The Wall Street Journal is now owned by Rupert Murdoch. So, we’re left looking for liberal bias at the New York Times, but the Times is much more representative of the mainstream Democratic Party than its left-wing.
I think Republicans are simply wrong about there being a liberal bias in the media. Ninety-eight percent of the news people consume is created by huge corporations that have interests very much in conflict with liberals. If a liberal shrieker can make them some money, they’ll tolerate him or her for a while, but eventually they’ll have a little talk about what it means to work for the Establishment (see Phil Donahue, Ashley Banfield, Keith Olbermann, Cenk Uygur). Glenn Beck can tell you that there are limits on the right, as well.
What I think Goldberg means when he talks about liberal bias in the media (at least, when he’s being sincere) is that most reporters are not conservative in their personal lives. They went to college and learned about evolution and plate tectonics and economics and history, and they tend not to think magically about things like what will reduce unwanted pregnancies or whether or not the Book of Genesis is literally true. They think climate science skeptics are morons because reporters tend to defer to scientists on scientific questions, instead of Exxon’s astroturfed “experts.” If the definition of a liberal is that they’re not an evangelical Christian, then yes, we have a liberal media. But that’s the problem. We used to have conservatives in this country who didn’t believe six impossible things before breakfast. We no longer do.
That would be Amy Goodman. on Democracy Now!
And Bill Moyers on PBS.
thanks. I’m tired today.
I love Bill Moyers. He is my hero in the news business.
But I would make the argument that Amy Goodman should take herself behind the camera on Democracy Now! though. She is tragically boring as a host. Much much worse than even Andrea Mitchel on MSNBC. When either one comes on, I must change the channel or risk falling asleep against my will. I worry about that because I could be out for hours when I’m put into that kind of mid-day sleep. And I’m totally serious about that. They are tragically boring and neither can seem to remember what they’re talking about half of the time.
Get us better hosts.
Also, Democracy Now! doesn’t begin to have its liberal bias UNTIL SHE BRINGS ON GUESTS! Hell, even the questions she asks her guests? They’re not even framed in a liberal way. She’s just a real reporter who asks real questions. If you watch the actual news segment, it’s neither liberal or conservative. It’s just presenting you with information. And that’s why it has such low ratings: it’s boring (not that I think so).
It has such low ratings because it’s hard to find on the cable lineup. Not to mention it’s on at 6pm(or7) here.
I get it on both Link TV and Free Speech TV at different times of day. But it puts me to sleep like a Valium would. Something wrong with that show’s format…
“We used to have conservatives in this country who didn’t believe six impossible things before breakfast. We no longer do”
Sure we do. One is sitting the White House. There’s another running the State Department. Still another is the majority leader in the Senate.
What we used to have and no longer do is liberals. There’s Sanders, maybe Brown, a handful in the House….and that’s it.
I keep hoping this is 1964 and is the highwater mark of their project. But reason and evidence suggest that we are only in the middle of their ascent, with a long way to go until the American voters wake up and show these bums the door…
Then kill yourself please now. You’re not going to live to 100 are you? So just emo yourself off the face of the earth you whiny predictable bitch.
Feh. If Goldberg were to be honest he’d admit that what he means by liberal is that reporters don’t vote for Republicans.
That’s all he means. He’s exactly that shallow. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about a reporter who votes for conservative Democrats or a reporter who always votes the Working Families line in New York – if they aren’t voting Republican they are liberal.
You can’t expect deep analysis from a party propagandist like Goldberg. His definition of “conservative” – much like his definition of “fascism” – contorts in whatever manner it needs to in order to suit his ideology.
Of course, The Wall Street Journal was notoriously right-wing before Murdoch bought it, but other than that it was a good paper. NewsCorp’s really turned it to shit since then.
Prior to inexpensive printing an investment newsletters, the Wall Street Journal used to be the way that the business class talked to each other. If you consider Eisenhower a conservative, in the 1950s it supported views similar to the Eisenhower adminstration’s.
I started reading it in the early 1970s and first noticed a change in tone about the time Paul Gigot got involved in it. It became more of a front for the Republican Party than a conservative (in the business sense) business paper.
When has the charge of “liberal bias” been other than a gambit for moving the corporate media even further to the right?
Check out the credentials of H.V. Kaltenborn, a mainstay of the radio during FDR’s term.
And look at how the so-called liberal media caved to Joe McCarthy until Edward R. Murrow stood up. And even then, Joe McCarthy got equal time to respond and did not finally fail until he attacked the patriotism of the Army.
There is absolutely no truth to the “liberal media” charge. None. At any time. Unless you go back to the partisan media before the Civil War and include the abolitionist and labor newspapers.
Jonah Goldberg would not have had a job had his momma not come close to bringing down Bill Clinton.
What were James J. Kilpatrick, William Safire, George Will, if not conservatives. And they appeared in most papers in the country. Jonah Goldberg is flat out lying just like the title of the book that you use as an image. Not even half-truth. Full out lie.
As for the “conservative country” meme, that’s as much an illusion for conservatives as the “great progressive triumph” of the 1930s is for progressives. It is only since Ronald Reagan that churches have become conservative as conservatives mounted political campaigns even inside “liberal” churches. But that is changing course. In Alabama, Methodists, Episcopalians, and Roman Catholics have joined in the suit against Alabama’s new immigration law. You haven’t seen that sort of response ever, even in the civil rights movement era. Individual preachers yes. But the jurisdictions themselves? Not a chance.
The “liberal media” meme and the “conservative country” meme are right-wing inventions that a lot of folks who didn’t live through those previously glorious eras buy into. Example, when I was a kid in SC in the 1950s, the Methodist church collected donations for UNICEF on Halloween. And it was not the only church that did that. The largest Southern Baptist Church in town also participated in what was a community-wide campaign. Imagine that in South Carolina today.
William Buckley, had he not been beatified, would be hounded out of the conservative blogosphere because he was not conservative enouogh.
“There is absolutely no truth to the “liberal media” charge. None. At any time.”
I agree, but aren’t these public debates of whether media is liberal or conservative beside the point?
I’m coming to the view that the entire debate is contrived by entrenched interests. The debate ought to be about who is factual and who is not. One of my takes is that the US definition of “objectivity” makes this impossible now – see below.
“Reality” has a liberal bias.
When you’re critiquing the rantings of a pathological liar, yes they are beside the point.
That’s my point.
There is something nasty and insidious about these discussions regarding bias and “objectivity” in the media.
First off every human has bias built in. The honest approach is to admit it and for journalists it doesn’t preclude them from attempting to get to the honest facts of whatever they are covering. Having a “slant” in life doesn’t have to mean that you willingly close your mind to new experiences that expand or alter your personal views.
But many people lie to themselves all the time to maintain their own psychological safety. Journalists should be expected to fight that instinct at least.
“Objectivity” in the journalistic meaning has been corrupted. It should mean something about setting personal bias aside and going after and presenting facts.
But in this two party, polarized US it has come to mean to stay in the middle no matter how delusional one side might be about an issue. This false “objectivity” means admitting one’s own personal leaning is a great sin in American journalism. The corporate owners want to play both sides against each other and it wouldn’t do to have an opinion.
Folks like Goldberg need to push back continually. Sometimes objective true is valued in American journalism and that might expose the ruthless destruction of current Republican policy for all to see. Goldberg and his like need to keep pushing the false definition of “objectivity” to give credibility where it could not otherwise exist.
There are news sources in the world that acknowledge their political leaning, yet still strive to get to the facts. I’ve been reading them more and more in the last few years. American journalism sucks and many blogs (excepting this one) aren’t much better because they still take 90% of the day’s narrative and discussion from the corporate media.
Getting your information from the NYT and WaPo opinion pages (and some NYT and WaPo reporters) and from the Hill and Politico gives you bupkus as far as objectivity.
ProPublica does a reasonable job of aggregating news articles. And increasingly Twitter is your friend, although you have to do a lot of winnowing. The Guardian has a good “Data” section.
And it is hard for data to percolate through blogs. Why is it that D-Day just rediscover on August 1 that Evan Bayh, Kent Conrad, Dianne Feinstein, Mark Warner and Joe Lieberman at the end of 2009 threatened not to raise the debt ceiling if they didn’t get a commission to recommend spending and entitlement cuts.
Count that: 1,2,3,4…Democratic Senators holding the country hostage for the Catfood Commission. And yet the story that is being peddled is that “Obama wanted to cut spending and entitlements all along.”
Fortunately, Bayh decided to take his lobbying job while the getting was good and turn his seat over to a Republican. But Conrad, Feinstein, and Warner have been in the thick of this debt ceiling deal. When it looked like there was stalemate and the President was heading toward having to deal with default, McConnell laid the groundwork and Conrad and Warner signed on to the Gang of Six. And Durbin also signed on, likely to keep the leadership and the President aware of what was going on. That was when momentum shifted toward cuts without revenue increases.
So if folks want to hold someone accountable, the most likely way is to force Feinstein out in this election. So where is the person to primary Feinstein? That’s a better question than who will primary Obama.
Lord, progressives are dense. No wonder we’ve been waiting in the wilderness for 43 years while the YAFers that looked so insignificant in the 1960s have been eating our lunch.
And it is hard for data to percolate through blogs. Why is it that D-Day just rediscover on August 1 that Evan Bayh, Kent Conrad, Dianne Feinstein, Mark Warner and Joe Lieberman at the end of 2009 threatened not to raise the debt ceiling if they didn’t get a commission to recommend spending and entitlement cuts.
Do you know who else fits in that range of Democrats?
Max Baucus, Mary Landrieu, at the time Blanche Lincoln
If you mean Barack Obama, why would they have to threaten the debt limit to get the President to do what they wanted to do?
DING! We have a winnah!
Primarying Obama is a useless, futile gesture. And it’s JUST a gesture – all it is is a way to express anger at a central authority figure.
You want real change – you gotta work with the areas where there are problems. The President actually isn’t a problem. If something like the People’s Budget had made it to his desk he would have signed it. I have no idea what is or is not “truly in his heart” but that literally does not matter. He could be a saint. He could be the anti-Christ. If the sucker can’t even get to his desk he can’t sign it.
So you wanna fix the problem? Stop focusing on the top-down authority figure and start focusing on the Legislature. You know – the people who in a democracy actually pass the laws and set most of the policy.
And finding someone moderately or even extremely to the left of Diane Feinstein to take a primary run at her from the left in the upcoming election would be a decent start. Though honestly figuring out how to leverage out irresponsible Teabaggers from marginal districts in the House and replace them with people further to the left would be even better in my eyes.
Is Feinstein up for re-election this time?
Good luck getting rid of her. She’s got a special history in the Bay Area. Everyone looks to her like a mommy. She was there for us during the Moscone/Milk assassinations and she announced it all to us on live TV. I grew up in the Bay Area and it’s burned into my brain better than 9/11. Diane Feinstein is that trustworthy woman who so emotionally reported to us what happened to Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk when former Supervisor Dan White shot them in cold blood at city hall. We will never forget. It was gruesome and horrible and she was the comforting mom-like character that broke the hard news to us.
So you can forget about replacing her under any circumstances. Ain’t gonna happen. People love her from Left, Right and Center. They will never vote her out of office. Period.
No matter that she’s a horrible Senator now, huh?
Doesn’t matter. Half (if not all of) the state was in tears that day and she was the mommy figure that cried along with us while reporting the news. No one had seen such horror at the time and she was our support.
No one will ever vote her out of office as long as she wishes to stay in office. No shitting.
I damn well don’t want to hear any more slams about politics in North Carolina then.
How long ago was it that she was mayor. Diane Feinstein is 78 years old. The obvious primary move is that it is time for her to retire and get new blood in the Senate. (And Democrats need a whole lot of new blood. Just look at the Democrats in the Senate.)
They will never vote her out of office despite the fact that she has stabbed seniors and the poor in the back. And these are the same folks that think Obama should be primaried?
Sheesh. We are in a deeper pit that I thought.
It just ain’t gonna happen. She is assured any political job she wants FOR LIFE.
Californians love her because she was there for them in a time of deep emotional distress. Kinda like Rudi Giuliani was for New Yorkers but she didn’t cash in on it like he did. She is still pure. And caring and motherly.
I don’t know how to stress this enough. But you would have to be a fool to primary-challenge her and any Republican who runs against her in the general knows that they are just paying their dues with the party, knowing there is no way they will win this thing.
And finding someone moderately or even extremely to the left of Diane Feinstein to take a primary run at her from the left in the upcoming election would be a decent start.
Feinstein is a bad example for a million reasons. A serious primary challenger will never be able to raise the money to mount a serious challenge in California. And on top of that, we all know the Democratic establishment, including the President, will help out Feinstein if needed(and as Blanche Lincoln showed, and Ben Nelson too, she could stab the President in the back numerous times, but circle the wagons they will). Not to mention the “establishment” will threaten donors and the like.
If a progressive primary challenger cannot raise the funds to primary Feinstein in California, where the heck will a primary work. Of course the establishment will back the incumbent; that’s what’s called the “advantage of incumbency”.
The establishment cannot threaten small donors.
This is just learned helplessness.
Exactly. This is a HUGE problem at the grassroots level and a big explanation for why our politics are a mess.
People are screaming about primarying the President but are those same people organizing a primary against Feinstein? if not why not? There’s a shot that Feinstein can either be primaried OUT or – almost as good – pulled back to the Left where she used to sit – by a primary challenger. There is no shot that a primary against Obama would do anything but generate a shitstorm of “Liberals in disarray”, push Obama further to the right as he shores up his moderate cred with the “independents”, and possibly throw the election to the Republicans (whoever it is).
Primarying Obama would make people feel good and probably shift Obama and/or the Excutive Office toward the right. Primarying Feinstein might actually shift the Senate slightly to the Left. One of these things is good for liberal politics and one isn’t. And yet I’ve heard not a peep about anyone stepping up to primary Feinstein even as people are trying to recruit Elizabeth Warren or Russ Feingold to run in a primary against Obama.
This is a giant problem. And a good example of just why the liberal wing of the Democratic party is mostly ignored by the machine.
You could raise a billion dollars and buy every minute of ad time in California. You will not defeat Dianne Feinstein. CAN NOT BE DONE. Sorry.
I just watched the first half of that video that I posted above and got so damn emotional and teary-eyed… everyone who was alive in California at the time should know what I’m talking about. (worse than 9/11 memories for me, anyway.)
It doesn’t matter what her politics are. They are going to elect her to any office she wants. They love her even if she doesn’t represent their interests. And yes, everyone knew that she was always a Chamber Of Commerce Republican all along. She only ran as a Democrat because no one dares run as anything but Democrat in San Francisco. There is no support for any Republicans whatsoever there. She just lucked out being there that day of the assassinations. And being President of the Board of Supervisors gave her the right to take the microphone.
And the same people who would vote for her again are savaging Obama and saying that he ought to be primaried. It is about the black guy, isn’t it?
What? I don’t know where you are getting this from. Are you assuming that California Democrats agree with Jane Hamsher or something? Well I can assure you that they don’t. Obama will definitely win California no matter what stupid shit he might do between now and the election. That’s a lock. No doubt in my mind. Probably Nevada, Oregon and Washington (state) as well. No questions asked.
Randy somewhat overstates the power of those now-33 yo assassinations working in DiFi’s favor with the electorate. Lots of young people today who probably are unaware of it, and it’s still a state with more than its share of constant in- and out-migration, a state with a fluctuating but growing population with still not very deep roots for many.
My thoughts about why DiFi always seems in the driver’s seat come re-election time:
No question, Randy, DiFi has repped the moderate and not the liberal wing of the Dem Party for a very long time, certainly since the 1970s and the SF Bd of Supes.
But it’s a bit of a stretch to call her a Repub. A corporation-friendly moderate Dem, yes. But she’s had a good, and liberal, voting record on women’s issues, the environment, and gun control.
Iirc, going way back to 1968, she was a volunteer for the RFK for President campaign in NoCal. Many moderates in the party — most of them — would have held back from Bobby and gone with the pro-Humphrey slate of delegates that year.
Agree with you though on her strong re-elect chances — and her likability/respectability quotient, which is very strong in CA. Though I think libs should at least get a firm, no-going-back promise from her in the campaign, in return for no primary opponent, that this next election will be her last one. Lots of Dems currently getting on in years (as another poster noted) and a few in recent times (Bobby Byrd and one or two Dem senators from Hawaii) have stayed too long.
California is a huge state population-wise, which makes running a campaign there an extremely expensive proposition, and for a variety of reasons Feinstein is unusually strong despite being a bitter disappointment to liberals. Lincoln was a good target. So was Specter.
But this isn’t the sort of thing that’s going to happen overnight anyways, Democratic activists need to start playing a longer game because, as painful as it is to acknowledge, we can’t actually play the shot-term much better than we are now. It took a generation for right-wingers to build movement conservatism into the force it is now, We’re probably a decade away from being able to offer the country a liberal Reagan, and that’s if we start organizing now and being more, rather than less, valuable to the Democratic establishment.
If the Senate’s the problem, and it still is despite the Democratic majority, then you have to deal with the Senate. Conrad’s retiring, Warner’s not up yet, and Lieberman is retiring.
It’s doable because it’s in California and progressives there seem to be hopping mad. The only problem is to find a credible (and young) candidate; those requirements tend to pull against each other.
No way you take out Warner. That man will never lose an election until he retires. He’s too well liked because he turned our economy around as governor after that idiot Jim Gilmore ruined it.
I knew a lot of people who voted McCain-Warner in ’08.
See. There’s the problem in the Senate. Does that mean that he will essentially be unopposed by the GOP because he gives them bipartisan cover?
Oh, they will try to take him out…but they’ll fail. His approval is very high. It’s way higher than McDonnell’s, and McDonnell’s one of the few Republican governor’s who has good approval.
Will they try or half-try?
Too far out to tell. By the time he’s up for reelection, Virginia could be a lean-blue rather than purple.
It’ll probably depend on how well Tim Kaine does.
If you are looking to gain an easy Senate seat for the Dems from the Republicans, go for Nevada’s newly released seat. John Ensign quit to avoid criminal charges and it was appointed to Dean Heller, the biggest do-nothing the House has probably EVER seen.
That seat is up in 2012 and Dean Heller (who is not known state-wide) is going to have to challenge Shelley Berkley (who is very popular as a US Rep from Las Vegas and is known state-wide.)
She needs money. Let’s start raising it.
Also, Heller’s old seat from the House (my district) is now vacant and will continue to be until mid-September. Our Dem candidate is awesome. Her name is Kate Marshall and she could really use dome serious nationwide fundraising to win this special election. She is running against Mark Amadei, a Tea party-affiliated terrorist. She has the advantage, politically (and financially) but the NRCC is dumping money into our district to win this for him.
As long as there are Democrats like Feinstein and Warner in the Senate, it doesn’t matter whether Democrats get a filibuster-proof majority.
Yes, easy Senate pickups would be nice. Even hard ones that we win would be nice.
But it’s incredible that someone who was born after 1978 would be voting for Feinstein because of something she did 33 years ago. And that that would overcome all the bad policy of the past decade? But then politics in California always did seem a little incredible to me? How could Ronald Reagan possibly have been elected governor?
I’m not telling you you’re crazy. I’m just telling you the way it is. Feinstein is a legend and is probably taught to every child (with shocking video) in 5th grade.
They all know her and love her. Just drop it. She will always win whatever political post she runs for. No question about it.
Here is an example of what they mean: http://www.trackforum.com/forums/showthread.php?153657-Brian-Williams-Andrew-Mitchell-aghast
Not saying I agree, just that these are pretty run of the mill Indiana conservative Republican sympathizers.
I am amazed at the poster’s ability to remember verbatim the entire segment while waiting to get his pizza.
Do you not find something strange about this report and outrage?
“The News” has become so corrupt since we stopped expecting broadcasters to actually serve the Public Interest in the late 70’s or early 80’s. Now the Entertainment Divisions of the networks and local channels have taken it over. Now you can’t trust them anymore. Just like the movie “Network” (1976) predicted might happen. And if you’ve never seen that movie, you now have an assignment. It’s the real deal. Must see. Memorize the entire script.
Now they will never betray a current or prospective advertiser. And if your industry pays enough money, they will completely forget about entire concepts like Global Climate Change or corruption in the medical delivery system and pharmaceutical company abuse of consumers.
“News” used to always lose money and that was what every station owner expected. They knew that in order to keep their license to broadcast, they would be expected to do in-depth investigative reporting of local corruption and allow alternate points of view on the air, serving the Public Interest. They also were required to keep the News people far away from the Sales people and not allow advertisers to affect the News. If they failed to do this, they could lose their FREE license to broadcast. Not anymore. Now it’s all corporate and they own the regulators’ asses.
I would love it if some group like “The Nation” would do a premium channel carrying Real Liberal-Biased News “That You Won’t Find Anywhere Else” channel on all satellite and cable networks with no advertising, giving them the freedom to report reality for what it is without the influence of industries like Coal or Oil, etc.
I would happily pay 10 to 20 dollars per month for such a channel. I currently pay about $175 a month to DirecTV and I would expect they should work it in somehow, since there is so little worth watching on their hundreds of useless channels.