June 16, 2003

"Is anyone fooled by claims that the media aren't liberal?"

From the editorial "Big Dumb Lie" about Eric Alterman's latest opus:

...But because Mr. Alterman and friends can't conceive of a media they would ever consider too liberal, they lament any rightward drift at all, and declare it dangerous and unwarranted. Moreover, they are highly selective in their gaze. Mr. Alterman looks to the handful of conservative media outlets and ignores the horde of liberal ones. He fulminates about the influence of the "wild men" at The Wall Street Journal editorial page, for instance, but barely mentions New York Times editorialists. Indeed, at times it seems Mr. Alterman has never even heard that the Times exists, let alone that it is both extremely liberal and more influential than any other news organ.

Mr. Alterman rails against the conservative perfidy of Fox News, yet sees little to no evidence that ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN or MSNBC might be liberal. Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, Harper's, NPR, etc. don't warrant much attention or worry. But he insists that the (vastly tinier) Weekly Standard has dangerous influence.

The Bradley, Olin and Scaife foundations are said to be wreaking havoc on the gullible masses. But the (hugely richer and highly liberal) Ford, Rockefeller and Pew foundations don't merit any mention at all. The American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation are claimed to pull the country to the right, but Harvard, Berkeley, etc. seem to have no gravitational mass at all in his eyes. It's as if Mr. Alterman scans the whole political landscape through the lenses of some novelty glasses which can only pick up conservatives...

Posted to Politics at June 16, 2003 11:45 AM

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