Myth of the Liberal Media

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Sure, you’ve heard of the story behind the story, but what about the powerful narratives that run so deep beneath mainstream journalism you don’t realize you’re hearing them? Like the idea that all American wars are just. Or that every kid in the land has the same chance to succeed. For independent-minded journalists seeking to convey something closer to reality than this, the first step is to master what many conservative communicators already seem to know: A story belongs to the one who tells it best. —The Editors

Republicans of all stripes have done quite well for themselves during the past five decades fulminating about the “liberal media”—the progressive thought police who spin, supplant, and sometimes suppress the news we all consume. But while some conservatives actually believe their own grumbles, the smart ones don’t. They know mau-mauing the other side is just a good way to get their own ideas across—or perhaps prevent the other side from getting a fair hearing for theirs. On occasion, honest conservatives admit this. Rich Bond, then chair of the Republican Party, explained during the 1992 election, “There is some strategy to [bashing the ‘liberal’ media]. . . . If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is ‘work the refs.’ Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack on the next one.”

Bond is hardly alone. Even William Kristol, without a doubt the most influential neoconservative publicist in America today, has come clean on the issue. “I admit it,” he told a reporter. “The liberal media were never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures.”

Nevertheless, in a 2001 pitch to potential subscribers to The Weekly Standard, his Rupert Murdoch–funded conservative magazine, Kristol complained, “The trouble with politics and political coverage today is that there’s too much liberal bias. . . . There’s too much tilt toward the left-wing agenda. Too much apology for liberal policy failures. Too much pandering to liberal candidates and causes.”

In recent years, the right has cranked up its “liberal media” propaganda machine. Books by both Ann Coulter and Bernard Goldberg have topped the bestseller lists, stringing together a series of charges so extreme that, well, it’s amazing neither one thought to accuse “liberals” of using the blood of conservatives’ children for extra flavor in their soy-milk decaf lattes.

Given the success of Fox News, The Wall Street Journal editorial pages, The Washington Times, the New York Post, The American Spectator, The Weekly Standard, The New York Sun, National Review, Commentary, Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, and so on, no sensible person can dispute the existence of a “conservative media.” The reader might be surprised to learn that neither do I quarrel with the notion of a “liberal media.” It is tiny and profoundly underfunded compared with its conservative counterpart, but it does exist. As a columnist for The Nation and an independent Weblogger for MSNBC.com, I work in the middle of it, and so do many of my friends. And guess what? It’s filled with right-wingers.

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