But we thought conservatives couldn't find jobs in the liberal media
July 30, 2009 12:19 pm ET by Eric Boehlert
Newsbusters has practically trademarked this whine over the years: Newsrooms are conservative-free work zones and Republicans are actively excluded. I've never bought that claim because I've never once seen or heard a legitimate tale of a journalist who was fired or couldn't get hired simply because they weren't liberal. (Fact: Editors don't care!)
And I've also suggested that if surveys show that newsrooms lean a little left that's because liberals like being journalists and conservatives like to make a decent living. And that of course, if conservatives coming out of college want to earn a dreadful income with an entry level job in a dying news industry, they're welcomed to do so. It's just that not many seem interested in those job prospects, which means there aren't many conservatives to hire, which then allows Brent Bozell to manufacture the claim that conservatives get excluded.
But let's take a look at Politico reporter Josh Kraushaar, who caught my attention this week because he had a byline on a particularly awful piece about (surprise!) the GOP's mighty resurgence. This is the same Beltway chestnut that's been written over over for the last several years. (Glenn Greenwald walks us through the greatest hits.)
The Politico piece was just Republican spin, pure and simple because (all together now) Politico is really just a GOP bulletin board. But what's interesting is that based on his previous blogging, Josh Kraushaar clearly has a partisan GOP streak. He was a Iraq War cheerleader, quite critical of peace activists, and lambasted liberal professors. He's a big fan of Power Line, InstaPundit, and Little Green Footballs. And during a brief foray into movie reviewing, he once wrote, "Community, family values, religion, strong work ethic, love of America: what more could a red meat conservative ask for in a movie?"
But now he's a news reporter for Politico and this week wrote an article that was nearly indistinguishable from an RNC press release. (Headline: "Backlash: Democratic dangers mount.") Coincidence? Perhaps. But unlike conservative media critics, I'm not in the habit of reading minds or assigning blanket motivations so I'm not going to cast aspirations. What I do think is telling though, is how Kraushaar seems to obliterate the right-wing whine about how conservatives are locked out of newsrooms for purely political reasons. In truth, and based on his previous blogging, Kraushaar couldn't be more far-right if he tried, yet he's been hired as a reporter at an influential political publication.
Which is weird, because I thought conservatives couldn't find jobs in the liberal media.
As only thing liberal about them is they will take any amount of money from anyone who wants them to be bias for there cause.
Currently I think the mainstream media (Network news and traditional newspapers) has gotten more conservative than it used to be 15-20 years ago but the internet and cable provide voices all across the spectrum. Too many voices without enough credibility in my view.
This is obviously a very trye statement. It's no surprise that the liberals on this board decry the conservative bias in the media. BUT... there is eveidence of said bias today, and it is reasonable to assert that it came about in large part from the concerted effort to paint the media as dangerously liberal. This was done primarily by far-righties, but the were successfull enought that the public began to percieve a center-left media as far left and the far right commentators are center-right. Our values didn't shift, but our perception of the varuous messages did.
What I'm saying is that while I agree with your basic premise, the truth of which should be self-evident to any intellectually honest person, I still hold that the accusations of left-wing bias 15-20 years ago were vastly overblown, and pushed primarily by finge elements (mostly Limbaugh) in an effort to enter the mainstream; whilst MMFA's complaints now are based far more on the EVIDENCE that Limbaugh (& co.) have succeeded in their endevour to alter the public's perception and their assumptions about the media. It's hardly profounds, as I am a progressive myself, but I feel that MMFA's position is demonstrably more legit that the Right's was 15-20 years ago.
I honestly don't know where they could possibly be going with this birther nonsense and racist nonsense except over a cliff.
There are real issues to debate instead of the total nonsense.
I will say that when Limbaugh came on board nationally in the late 80's he was offering something that previously I had not heard in the media or if it was there I hadn't been exposed to it. So I believe it was fairly new at that time. Now there are a million copycats and they have become caricatures of what conservatism is supposed to be about. Limbaugh saying recently that Sarah Palin was the future of the Republican Party? I'm not plugged in at all and I knew that was nonsense. Now it's just about saying outrageous things for entertainment.
So from that perspective I think the media was a bit more liberal until about the mid-90's when talk radio and the internet started booming. But I could be wrong.
MMFA does a nice job overall pinning down the idiots. They aren't in the bias business though.
Start with Watergate. It could def seem to be liberal bias, and Nixon called it out such, and arguably rightly so. But what those two did, aside from being good journalism, was done at great personal and PROFESSIONAL risk - and their paper triple vetted EVERYTHING. Seems more like a desire for accuracy than to simply paint a liberal story to me.
Carter OTOH had plenty of problems with the media - malaise, recession, the misery index, and especially IRAN. Now, even as a lib myself, I'll admit that he deserved a lot of that flack. He was a good man, but a lousy president. But still: I remember, even at age 7, him getting POUNDED in the media by 1979-1980, not apologized for, as would be expected with a liberal media.
Reagan generally got good press relations, as far as I can recall. No 'gotcha's' in the first term, a lot of credit for "turning things around" (even though it was debatiable as to whetehr or not he even DID) and he won by a landslide in '84, mainly becuase Mondale said he'd raise taxes. But the fact that Reagan had rasied in 7 of his 8 years in the WH was never mentioned by the media, and remains largely forgotten by history. His biggest critics at the time were the deficit hawks, and THEY were generally conservative! (And let's not forget how little traction Iran-Contra had. Arguably a much bigger scandal than watergate (arms dealing to terrorists as opposed to a simple break-in) but very little came of it - nothing even near an impeachment or a resignation - and his VP (Bush) still got elected in '88 largly on REAGAN'S popularity.
Bush'41? Great press all around for the first Iraq War. If it weren't for the whole "Read My Lips" thing, and the unfortunate timing of the recession he may have won. Not a whole lot of unfair press there. Just the whole 'wimp' thing, but I don't think that really stuck. (Although it may be, as I was more conservtaive myself at the time, that I just never bought into it.) But in any case: Duckakis never stood a chance, and Clinton didn't win on any unreasonabley bad press about Bush - Just that one unfortunate "Read My Lips" tag line.
CLINTON?! OK, we're now getting into the period that you're refering to, but still... his press was AWFUL right from the start. And it only ever got worse. And comapred to Watergate or Iran-Contra, Monica was a complete non-issue. If you're even close to a moderate, you've go to admit that. And that DOMINATED every channel of the media.
(I don't have to get into the Bush/Cheney years anyway, as MMFA has already done that supoerbly!) ;)
So while Rush may have offered something new in the late 1980's, I still don't think it's fair to call it an alternative to the LIBERAL media. More like a hard-right alternative to an objective media. I still say his cries of "bias" are overblown, and can only be believed by those who want to believe in them. And while he's moved farther to the right over the years, he was NEVER a noderate-right voice. And even when they've shown BIAS, they've never managed to show the level of outright INACCURACY that MMFA has exposed.
If it's BIAS to tell a truthful story, but from a liberal perpective, what is it to tell an outright conservative LIE, and do so over and over and over?
I'd like to know what you think the 1970's - 1980's equivalent was to what Fox & AM Radio has done thrugh thge 1990's and 2000's.
News took a decidedly bad turn when it became infotainment instead of news. That was in the early 90's I think and it's only getting worse. I read recently by one opinion writer that the program "60 minutes" may ultimately have been a bad thing for news because it showed station executives that a news program could make money. That shifted the focus from good journalism to making money. And there's so much more "news" programming now that it's hard to compare the era's objectively. I think if something like Iran-Contra came up now it would dominate the news for months just because of the way media has expanded.
Monica was important only to the extent that it showed Clintons poor judgment in that situation. The President of the United States should be held to a higher standard of behavior than Joe Schmo, at least I expect that. And I believe it ultimately cost Gore the 2000 election since he was unable to use Clinton as a campaign tool as close as it was. The press was dogging him about it but he did it to himself. So it did have a butterfly effect. It was a scandal. I don't think that would be any different now if it happened again no matter which party was in office.
Should be: "This is the same Beltway chestnut that's been written over and over for the last several years." ? ('for the last several years' is implied by 'chestnut' but this is a quibble)
"But unlike conservative media critics, I'm not in the habit of reading minds or assigning blanket motivations so I'm not going to cast aspirations."
Should be: "But unlike conservative media critics, I'm not in the habit of reading minds or assigning blanket motivations so I'm not going to cast aspersions." ?
While occasionally starting a sentence with a preposition may be acceptable, this article seems to be abusing the privilege a bit.
I did ten years in publishing, everything from typesetting to editing to writing textbooks, and am available freelance for proofreading.
You missed that one, The_Cat. :)
I was just having a laugh because, for all of my spelling and grammar goofs, I'm kind of a geek about picking them out as well.
I already had a your/you're incident this morning.
On a side note, I think something could be made of the concept of "casting aspirations."
Since then, I've automatically decoded the derisive use of "liberal media" as an expression of one's assumption that his or her beliefs are mainstream; it's the rest of the world that's out of step.
(I, on the other hand, see the media as squarely right . . . see what I mean?)