Trouble Tickets: Narratives: Narratives of Hegemony: "The media are 'liberal'"

Description:	Provides the right-wing with an extremely powerful mechanism for rejection of inconvenient facts or viewpoints.
Purpose:	Enable right-wing ideological dominance by selectively defining which facts and which representations are legitimate and which are the outcomes of "liberal bias."
Purpose:	Intimidate the news media, forcing their reportage rightward.
Example:	"Goldberg Predicts Collapse of Liberal Media"
Example:	So you'd like to ... Learn About Liberal Media Bias, amazon.com reader-submitted guide
Example:	"'Their [the liberal media's] constant attacks on conservative principles reveal just how much they hate the idea of traditional American ideals,' said a [fundraising] letter, dated May 7, bearing the signature of Representative J. C. Watts Jr., Republican of Oklahoma. In the letter, Mr. Watts emphasized the institute's training of 'a new generation of conservative journalists.' 'Only then can you and I be sure to balance the blatant liberal media bias we see so often,' he said, going on to say that the left on college campuses 'dominates journalism schools and the official newspapers on most college campuses' and that leftist professors 'harass young conservatives.'" ("In Virginia, Young Conservatives Learn How to Develop and Use Their Political Voices", New York Times, 6/11/01.)
Example:	FightTheBias.com
Example:	Media Research Center, The Leader in Documenting, Exposing and Neutralizing Liberal Media Bias
Example:	The Media Bias Web Site
Example:	FairPress.org, fighting media bias
Anecdote:	At dinner the night Baghdad fell I overheard a lengthy conversation among people in their 20s. The dominant male was proselytizing, putting forth argument after argument in favor of what he called "conservativism". One of these was that "the media are 85% liberal Democrats." There was no attribution for that patently false number. Yet everyone at his table accepted it without comment.
Type:	Negative
Contradiction:	Real data. In 1998, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting surveyed journalists extensively re their personal views on politics, economic policy, social security, and other bellwether issues. "This survey shows that it is a mistake to accept the conservative claim that journalists are to the left of the public."
History:	This narrative originated on November 13, 1969, in a speech which Vice President Spiro Agnew gave to an audience of Republican officials in Des Moines. It's important to recognize the context. The American people were overwhelmingly opposed to the war in Vietnam, public opinion polls often registering 70% disapproval. In October, an enormous nationwide series of demonstrations called the Moratorium Days brought millions into the streets, including, significantly, very large numbers of antiwar Vietnam veterans, an extremely troubling development for pro-war hawks. Nixon however was determined to continue the war despite public opinion -- and despite having run for office as a "peace candidate." The new administration began an intense ideological counteroffensive intended to split the liberal and radical wings of the antiwar movement while at the same time justifying flaunting the will of the people as expressed in both opinion polls and ballot booths. This offensive turned out to be the incubator for many of the ideological narratives which have since become commonplace within right-wing discourse. Jerry Lembcke notes, "On October 19, Vice President Agnew made his signature statement on the anti-war movement calling the moratorium leaders 'an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.'" On October 22, the right-wing Governor of California, Ronald Reagan, charged that the Moratorium "lent comfort and aid" to the enemy and that "some American will die tonight because of the activity in our streets", thus introducing the rhetoric which equates supporting our troops with supporting government policy. On November 3, Nixon added the trope of the "Silent Majority", an effort to downplay the Moratorium Days and with them the massively antiwar opinion polls. On November 13, two days before the November Moratorium, Agnew used his Des Moines speech to introduce the narrative of "bias" in the mass media. It's noteworthy that during this period Agnew's speech writer was William Kristol; Nixon's, Pat Buchanan.

Comments

This one's especially interesting because you can pinpoint the exact date and political circumstances in which it was invented. Lembke does something similar in The Spitting Image; Franklin in his books on Vietnam and M.I.A.s. As we build these entries we should try to track these dates down, if that seems possible. (Like we have time for this kind of ambition...)

Posted by: Mark Phillips | January 25, 2006 03:28 PM

Narratives of Hegemony

"The media are 'liberal'"

Posted by Mark Phillips on January 25, 2006 02:26 PM

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