The "Liberal New York Times" - Whatever

There's an interesting Piece by Eric Alterman in The Nation. If you have not read his "What Liberal Media?", this article can be considered Liberal Media Myth-Busting 101. It is known among many people who study such matters, and even acknowledged by some on the Right, that the years of griping about the liberal media has been analogous to "working the refs" in a sporting event. The idea is that if you keep riding the referees, eventually the close calls will start going your way. I don't know if this strategy necessarily works in football or basketball, but it is clearly a winning strategy in the corporate media. If you want to talk about the media that the Right complains about most, you have to start with the New York Times. And Alterman's article points out how the Times has made a conscious editorial shift to the right.

(The latest salvo fired in the war against American democracy was fired by none other than Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. In his July 22 Column, Friedman advocates publishing a quarterly blacklist of "excuse makers" - the people who believe that terrorist attacks might be a reaction to certain acts of foreign policy. Aside from the ubiquitous straw man about precipitation equaling justification, it ignores the fact that polls indicate that this description actually applies to the majority of Americans. And who would have thought that the advocating of intimidation on free speech would be found in the pages of the Newspaper of Record?)

There are other examples of media being intimidated by the Right. MSNBC cancelled Phil Donohue's show, in spite of the fact that it was pulling in the highest ratings at that network. Apparently they were afraid to be labeled anti-war, even though Donohue was the only on-air personality at the network who was opposed to the war. Even before that, Donohue had noted that for every liberal guest he had on his show he was required to bring on two conservatives. But conservative guests frequently appear on cable news shows unchallenged, or opposed by weak or moderate opposition. That any expression of liberal thought at all has become pejorative is very sad, and an awful thing for a free-thinking society.

Now the battle is extending beyond the corporate media. There is an ongoing insurrection of the Right against public broadcasting. Ken Tomlinson, chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, has taken it upon himself to address the issue of liberal bias at PBS and NPR, and to establish more "balanced" programming. And I can't blame him for that, what with PBS having been the home to such liberal stalwarts as Tucker Carlson, Louis Rukeyser, John McLaughlin and William Buckley.

The best advice I can give my American friends is to keep your eyes open and realize what is going on around you. How long will it be before dissent itself becomes illegal? The message you get from the mainstream media is becoming increasingly homogeneous. If you want good information you have to rely on alternative sources in addition to the mainstream, then use your own judgment. Or just keep reading my blog, and let me tell you what to think.