Quibble: By your argument, the corporate media would stop doing this if the market were to show them they could make more money doing something else. Yet MSNBC cancelled their top-rated show, Donohue's talk show, which happened to also be their most liberal. It would seem that some organizations are willing to at least sometimes forgo money for ideology.

Another quibble: The corporate media are more subdivided than you make it look. There are the commercial media that depend on advertisers and are quite vulnerable to momentary political panics. Conversely there are the elite subscription-based media such as insider newsletters that must pander a bit to readers' biases but are mostly paid to tell it like it is. Similarly, there is a difference between the outlook of the San Francisco Chronicle and the Tulsa World, just because their target audiences have different biases.

Final quibble: media is plural.

The corporate media are more subdivided than you make it look. There are the commercial media that depend on advertisers and are quite vulnerable to momentary political panics.

hedgehog, i think Jon and the media matters dude are talking about the much-loathed MSM.

Similarly, there is a difference between the outlook of the San Francisco Chronicle and the Tulsa World, just because their target audiences have different biases.
however, the chronicle or the world can help shape and shift the biases because of their nature as windows to the world. one of the people who got this sadly, was Scaife. look where the republicans stand now

Thanks for this column, Jonathan.

But Hedgehog is right -- media bias isn't just a matter of economics. The press isn't in business to report on the system -- it's a part of the system. Its job is to sell the system.

The press spent eight years trying to stimatize Bill Clinton and make him ineffective as president. (And they didn't do this by analying the fact that he was governing basically as a Rockefeller Republican.) Now we constantly read speculation in the media about how GWB can regain popularity. They tried to portray Clinton as unpopular and beyond the pale; they try to persuade people that Bush is competent and on the mend.

As Hedgehog says, this is ideology. This is hiding the real power centers in the county (war contracters and oil interests) and distracting the electorate with symbolic candidates and issues. (A la Strauss, the people aren't to be trusted -- or informed -- on real issues.)

The New York Times shot at the Clintons does indeed warn us that nothing has changed, that the media is not inept, or mistaken, or even dishonest -- the media is the propaganda arm of corporate powers.

Blogs give a refeshing sense of power, of getting real information and making a difference. But blogs reach, what? fifteen percent of US citizens? The rest of the population is kept uninformed, misinformed, distracted. They're taught to ignore anyone who knows what they're talking about (politically-correct academics, the liberal press).

Can we break out of this intrenched system? At least, we need to stop considering it an abberation and deal with it as the totalitarian control it is.

If there were a Democratic-version of Fox News which got better ratings than Fox News, than that would be the new example for other cable news networks to follow.

Conversely there are the elite subscription-based media such as insider newsletters...

The 'media' is a means of mass communication; insider newsletters don't belong.

...MSNBC cancelled their top-rated show, Donohue's talk show, which happened to also be their most liberal.

Top-rated could also be least-profitable, if the advertisers don't want it.

Chomsky, as everyone here knows, has been writing about press bias for years. What's been different in the past few years is that even center-left Democrats are noticing the same pattern. Or the same underlying pattern, because Chomsky and Bob Somerby focus on different aspects. Chomsky mostly writes about the double standards in atrocity coverage, and the center-left bloggers complain about the double standards in the coverage of Democrats vs. Republicans.

What I'm wondering is if the latter problem just sprung up during the Clinton years, or was it there all along? Chomsky would say that Democrats and Republicans are both the business party, with Democrats being a bit more progressive, but not always by very much. The press has always covered up or whitewashed or downplayed American atrocities (Chomsky's complaint). Have they only recently (Clinton and later) started getting even more biased, to the point where even someone like Clinton is too leftwing for them?

My own feeling is that the bias against Democrats goes back further, at least back to the Reagan years, when the press bent over backwards for Ronnie the way they have been doing for Bush.

I disagree. It's not so much hoping they wake up, as making lying more expensive. You make it expensive enough to lie that it hurts margins, it will stop.

The easiest solution is to hit corporate media where it hurts- in the pocketbook, and there are many obvious ways to do this. It's not so much waiting for change that Media Matters does as document the case for public action against the media purse strings.

You want to shut up Rush Limbaugh? Organize a national boycott of Meineke Muffler. Or even better, franchise a competing low cost car repair shop to eat into their margins.

Jon,

Re: "the only part I disagree with is the very end."

I'm surprised to hear that. Does that mean that you agree with the (astonishing) characterization of Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Dean, and even Murtha as "prominent progressive leaders"? I'm glad I wasn't drinking anything that would have been hard to clean off of the screen when I read that phrase being applied to that group of (at best) centrists.

I have a conservative friend who's always hated the word "progressive," which he derides as "just 'liberal' with a cherry on top." I've always disagreed with him on this, of course, since I am a progressive and so I know the word has a genuine meaning. But since 2004 I've noticed a concerted effort on the part of mainstream Democrats and the liberal blogs to co-opt the word "progressive"...and now I think my friend has it exactly right. They're just trying to avoid the "liberal" moniker which has been so thoroughly tarnished by conservatives. But in doing so, they're draining the word of all meaning.

This isn't just a quibble about language, BTW; it's a dangerous form of self-delusion. People are using the word "progressive" to convince themselves that their votes for conservatives like Kerry and Clinton were not only justified on practical grounds, but were in fact somehow furthering progressive objectives...and if they're successful in that self-delusion, they'll only do it again, with the same disasterous results they've had so far.

I agree with Jamison Foser and I agree with you in the fact that it will not change and it (the media) is not meant to give an accurate picture of current events or policies that really effect people. I should say the vast majority of people, it works very well if you are rich in reflecting your world and values.

John Caruso:

Does that mean that you agree with the (astonishing) characterization of Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Dean, and even Murtha as "prominent progressive leaders"?

No, no. Sorry, I should have been clearer there. My point is that the media is so bad now that even center-right people like Kerry, Clinton, etc. are dumped on. They always dumped on anything authentically progressive. It's just funny to see the Democrats realizing that the media will treat them like crap now matter how many times they agree with Sean Hannity that Michael Moore is fat.

What's interesting is whether any of the Kerrys and Clintons will start identifying with people to their left, and see that as their path to power, rather than continuing to shift rightwards. Making that more plausible is our job.

Scott:

it works very well if you are rich in reflecting your world and values.

Right. If you're an investment banker wondering about how to decorate your second home in upstate New York so your friends will be wowed, the New York Times real estate section gives you exactly the information you want and need.

Jonathon, I agree with every thing you say here however I do not agree with this statement by Jamison Foser:

"The defining issue of our time is the media."

I really think this is not true at all because it gives the news media way too much credit for how much influence it has on people. If everyone was an idiot and could not think then maybe I would agree with it but I don't think everyone is an idiot I think everyone is a product of their culture and their own life experience.

If a progressive reading a newspaper during the Clinton years was suddenly persuaded by the inane reporting and talking heads to become a conservative then maybe you could say the media is the defining issue of the times however I seriously doubt that anything of the sort happens.

Ask yourself this, is the news media fooling you? Obviously it is not fooling you. As Barnum Bailey said (I think it was he, could be wrong) you can fool some of the people some of the time and all the people some of the time but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

Of course the exception to this may be the famous or infamous undecided voters who for some reason cannot decide if they are for Adolph Hitler or if they are for the Pope but I have never been able to understand these people anyway or if there is anything in particular to be understood about these people.

I guess my point is that people usually believe what they want to believe and if they read or hear something to the contrary they just discard it as irrelevant or wrong headed. The people that put Bush in office for a second term I think would have done so no matter what the news reported or how they reported it.

I could be completely wrong about all of this since I have been completely wrong about a lot of things in the course of my life but this is just how it strikes me at the moment.

Thanks for the great post.

rob:

I agree with every thing you say here however I do not agree with this statement by Jamison Foser:

"The defining issue of our time is the media."

I really think this is not true at all because it gives the news media way too much credit for how much influence it has on people. If everyone was an idiot and could not think then maybe I would agree with it but I don't think everyone is an idiot I think everyone is a product of their culture and their own life experience.

Yeah...I thought that was off too, but for different reasons than you. My perspective is, the corporate media is merely an outgrowth of the larger system. Changing it will have to be bound up with larger societal change.

But I do agree with Foser that the media is extremely important. It was less important in the past, but I think it now has a *gigantic* impact on people's worldviews, in ways both blatant and subtle.

I'd say its most important impact on most people is simply to dull and distract them and make them think buying things is the be all and end all of human existence. But its most important impact overall is the way it forms consensus among the people running things. The NY Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, etc. are a way for the U.S. elite to figure out what all their peers think is important. And they get such a skewed picture of the world they end up making horrible decisions, even for their own interests. See: Iraq. The U.S. elite would actually be better served with a significantly different system, which is why there's some support among the smarter elites for changing it.

The solution is to set up a publicly controlled media system that is in competition with the current system. I am talking about setting up a system that is public as public libraries are with total open review of the operations. Just as independent book stores have a role, they don't replace the public service of libraries. SO too, we can't sit back and think that "independent media" is going to serve the needs of the general public. It has to be a system set to serve all. Here is the idea that I have been trying to explain: http://www.fairmedia.org

Jonathon,

Thanks for the thoughtful reply and that sounds right to me. Certainly there must be more to life than the anticipation of the next purchase of the latest and greatest toys if that be cars, boats or flat screen television. Iraq is certainly a good example of how the elite egg each other on with unrealistic world views. The news media certainly is important and I did not mean to say it was not but rather meant to put its importance in some kind of perspective. And I certainly agree whole heartedly that the dismal reporting that goes on hurts not only liberals but conservatives as well and everyone in-between. I also would like to see a significant change if for no other reason that it gets tiresome to have to view reporting with the skepticism that is required to view it though sometimes it is quite fun to dissect say a David Brooks column.

Frontline did a program called "Fear in the Newsroom" some number of years ago which was quite a good expose on what gets reported and the how and the whys. It was very disturbing to say the least. I have no idea how you could change it though breaking up the monopolies such as Disney Land who own a good number of television stations might be a good start. But of course that gets us back to the media being a product of the larger system just as you say.

Tom Murphy,

I added your website to my bookmarks so I can check out what you have to say. That is an interesting idea about a public news media but the logistics could be problematical. If it were say funded by the government through tax dollars it would quickly fall into the same trap the News Hour has which is they had their funding drastically reduced by the government and at the same time seem to be beholding to the government and the quality of their coverage has gone way downhill which is just my opinion of course and when they brought David Brooks on as a regular I think that said a lot about them.

I was watching it one Friday night when David Brooks said all Californians were a bunch of kooks. And that about says it all for David Brooks whom I suspect is getting paid by the Whitehouse to slant his columns in their favor.

I think one of the better news sources is the Knight Ridder website, they consistently write some pretty good articles and were much better with their coverage during the build up to war than say the New York Times or the WaPo or the Post-hole as I like to call them. Still even the WaPo and the Times write some pretty good articles occasionally but not continuously. Both of those papers were pretty awful during the build up to the war in Iraq.

Recently I read an article in the San Francisco Chronicle that had a pretty damning quote from Collin Powell where Powell stated very matter of fact that it was Bush's decision to go to war and no one else's. I checked the Post-hole and they had a short blurb and part of what Powell said but they left the quote I mentioned out. I checked the Times and zip, not a peep about Powell at all.

Large papers like the Times have resources that private citizens don't have yet public libraries are and can be a fantastic source of high quality information. A few years ago I took a course in library technology and I can tell you they have a wealth of information available to the public. Many have online sources to government data on demographics and the like as well as access to major papers like the times and online data bases of news articles that go back for many years and all you need is a library card which are either free or only cost a couple bucks. Yet even well educated people are not even aware of the advantages libraries afford the public or the advantages to their online data bases.

Right now the sad fact is that the responsibility of digging for the facts is really up to private citizens but it takes knowledge of what is available and time, unfortunately more time than many want to invest. However libraries also have access to data bases that are quite expensive to use but the reference librarians will use them for anyone who asks and some will do it per request via email or telephone and these reference librarians are well trained in doing research and know where and how to look.

SK,

Those are some interesting links to Chomsky's writings. I think it was Chomsky who said all governments are the vehicles of violence and that diplomacy is something always done with the implicit threat of violence behind it. A lot of people don't like Chomsky because he says what he thinks without deference to what is currently in vogue at the time but he is being honest about what he sees. He enraged a lot of liberals when he defended a fellow who wrote a book that postulated that the Jewish holocaust did not occur. But what people did not understand was that Chomsky was defending the author's right to freedom of speech not the subject matter of the book which of course was utter rubbish. And Chomsky is correct because if you want freedom of speech you have to take the good with the bad

I think one of the posters here caught onto at least one way the MSM can be forced back towards the place they are supposed to hold in our society.

It's not so much hoping they wake up, as making lying more expensive. You make it expensive enough to lie that it hurts margins, it will stop. --patience

One of the ways to do that is to wage guerrilla warfare on those who support the MSM, and those that are their mouthpieces. Think about it - it takes YEARS to properly train a so-called newswhore like Brooks, cultivate their supposed credentials, and put them in a position where they'll spew whatever tripe you want them to.

Of course, all the newswhores, and their supporters have PLENTY of skeletons in their closets. So let's all be kind and help them "clean out their closets." When it gets too expensive for them to continue living in the way they have done for years, either they will change and survive - or quit living, at least in their capacity as enablers of this screwed up system.
As for those who say, "Who will publish/broadcast/list this type of tawdry information," I have only to answer, "Their fellow newswhores, of course." Nothing brings "news" ratings up like being able to sandbag on your oh-so-evil-and-wrong colleagues/competitors in the media world. The difference is, when you end up soiling ALL the media outlets, only the undisputed truth will be able to stand as "news." Truth may not make good entertainment, but when all the public has to consume is the intellectual equivalent of sugar-sand, and they're already suffering from indigestion of the soul, truth WILL bring in the ratings - and if the right people are in the right places INSIDE the MSM, truth will be able to make the media whores BIG profit. Once addicted to that kind of "drug," the corporations will do what they do with any other pathway to $ that they get addicted to - suck on it 'till they're almost dead.

So if you have to destroy a few lemon orchards to make lemonade, I say, "Where's the hatchets?" After all, the reich-wing and the economic ultra-rich have been crapping in the orchards of knowledge and truth for so long, all the fruit trees smell like shit anyway. So let's clear the "orchards" in the media, and then plant new. And if that means reprinting and broadcasting things like damaging personal information, and annihilating the personal and professional careers of multiple folks in the MSM, I say, OFW.

When it gets too expensive, Jonathon, it WILL stop. Expensive does not ALWAYS refer to $ - just as in another post I mentioned "murder" doesn't always have to happen in the physical realm (as it's usually more effective if it does not). Sometimes, "blood" pays the price much better, and is easier to raise to a level where those who control the media are no longer willing to pay the price it takes to push out their bile and drivel.

The problem on our side, for so long now, has been that almost no one has been willing to draw blood - and not apologize for justice done. We need more of this type of media gunslinger. Get inside, get what you can, change what you can - get enough info to bury the rest alive. Leave no enemies behind alive.

Then it will stop. It's not the path that those of us in the reality-based universe would have likely chosen to take - but as I see it, that is the path those in charge have insisted that we all take. If that must be so, then as one of their own puppets said, "Bring it on."

And may all the gods (or God) in all the universes help those who stand in our way.

Since it really is about economics, I wonder if a different economic model would help?

Currently, as you say, the product is the audience and the customers are corporate advertizers. What if the customer, and the only customer, were the audience? You'd think the results would be the same but consider the difference between the content of HBO verses advertizement-driven television. Even when HBO takes a stab at journalism (e.g. America Undercover) it covers ground you NEVER see on ad-driven media. I have no idea why this difference happens, but it is big and obvious. So maybe it's time to try a news company with only one customer: the audience.

The rise of satellite radio may be the dawn of a response to this need.

Take a look at the new Afterword in James Fallows' "Breaking the News. How Media Undermine American Democracy."
p.288: "Theoretically, it is possible that this bracing market pressure will bring us some improved version of the news...
But the real-world evidence about corporate journalism points the other way."

I'm one of the first people to caution against the msm's corporate loyalties. A publically traded corporation, such as the msm outlets, are not only driven to make as much money as possible, they are arguably LEGALLY OBLIGATED to do so! As far as I can tell, there is no evidence that this will change in the forseeable future. Therefore, there are only two things that can be done about it right now:

1)There has to be political pressure on the FCC to enforce traditional checks and balances on market share thereby making media less prone to monopoly.

2)The msm has to be shown that the profit motive lies in appealing to progressive voters. The way this happens is by changing the political dialogue in this country through the electoral process. When a solid majority votes Democrat in the Fall, the msm will follow the money like good little puppies and start reporting fairly on progressives and progressive issues.

http://www.thehindsightfactor.com

There is a confluence of interests between a news business that benefits from privatization of the public sphere and a ruling party that unambiguously stands for private interests over public service.

This will go on unless and until the electorate takes media regulation seriously. Please read and support The Media Ownership Reform Act of 2005 (HR 3302)....

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h109-3302