By Doc | 5.31.07 | Crossposted @ Smirking Chimp and Daily Kos
This was written in response to a question posted recently at Smirking Chimp - Why blame the Christian Right?
The author claims he seeks rational discourse as to why "liberals" "hate" the "Moral Christian Right". Here's the salient excerpt from that piece"
So many of the Blogs spout their hate for the Moral Right wing Christians. What is it about the Liberal mentality that finds itself so unhappy that they have to stretch the limits to find someone to blame.
So many liberals find religion to be irrelevant, we do not want there to be a God, life should not have rules to live by. Yet in there own narrow view, rules should be in place to make things fair, all men should be equal and laws should be passed to create a society that demands equality.
It is this "spirit of debate" that I ask a counter-question: "Why blame the "liberal media"?
I put the term into quotation marks because, really, there is no such thing. I have, in the past, simply accepted this but when I went looking for examples, I couldn't find much. The main thing that springs to my mind when I hear "liberal media" are concerns about the environment tacked onto the end of "animal programs".
I suppose that any media criticism of Bush that gets onto TV justifies this charge.
But it's simple to dismiss this baseless accusation.
If the media was so liberal, why do they spend so much energy to keep from broadcasting antiwar demonstrations and marches? Why do they purposefully and habitually denigrate and discount the numbers that show?
Would a liberal media bend over backwards for years to hide the easily-identifiable truths and realities about the cannabis plant? Cannabis prohibition only stops the industrial and non-recreational uses of this plant. It doesn't stop "pot smoking" at all. You'd think a liberal media would be all over that.
The fact is the media is wholly controlled by corporate interests, which means GOP and Conservative Christian concerns.
Why the Christians?
Because the GOP systematically sucks up to them as part of their divisive political strategy.
In Religious Right Gets More Than Its 15 Minutes the author presents an assertion that conservative religious sort get far more mentions in the "MSM" than "progressive counterparts".
The report, “Left Behind: The Skewed Representation of Religion in Major News Media”, analyzed the number of times conservative and progressive religious leaders were quoted, mentioned and interviewed in newspaper and television media outlets.
Conservative religious leaders were found to be interviewed, on average, 2.8 times more often than progressives, 3.8 times more often on the television news networks, and 2.7 times as often in the major newspapers.
“The overwhelming presence in the news media of conservative religious voices leads to the false implication that to be religious is to be conservative, and worse, that to be progressive is to lack faith or even to be against faith,” said Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Centre of Reform Judaism. “People of faith have long been, and will continue to be, active leaders on progressive causes for justice. Our faith compels it.”
The report, released by Media Matters for America, a press watchdog group, challenges the presentation of religion in the major media as a politically divisive force.
AL Gore, walking nightmare of the Conservative Right, recently released a book, The Assault on Reason and the Right has laid siege to him and his book.
The smearing was, of course, wholly to be expected:
Because he is standing up, telling the truth and because he simply is a Democrat and Progressive leader, Al Gore will be smeared mercilessly by the right-wing smear machine. He will be ridiculed, made fun of and mocked. They will tease and make fun of him.
They will rush to say that he is bitter about 2000, crazy, insane, pontificating and out of touch.
Of course, their panties were already wadded in knots from their apoplectic outburst about An Inconvenient Truth
Sterling Burnett, senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, called the film "propaganda" and added: "You don't go see Joseph Goebbels' films to see the truth about Nazi Germany. You don't want to go see Al Gore's film to see the truth about global warming."
Man... that's beautiful. These guys make this job a lot easier to do.
So even though I ask the question "Why blame the "Liberal Media", I clearly do not believe there is such a thing but I have long argued there needs to be.
Liberals and progressives do not enjoy any sort of media access remotely similar to the Right. Period.
Air America is one program in radio syndication. It can barely compete with the Blowhards of Ages such a Limbaugh who's been around for 20 years. Amy Goodman's DEMOCRACY NOW! is a TV program but it doesn't get shown on any tv station I have seen outside of Link TV, which I do not get.
DEMOCRACY NOW! would need to be shown 5-7 days a week in prime time on ABC/CBS/NBC/ or some other nationwide powerful media outlet to even begin to have an inkling of a "liberal media".
Long and short: there is no such thing as the liberal media and thus you cannot blame it for ANYTHING.
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