Most of the information here comes from an article from M, a weekly magazine accompanying the NRC Handelsblad, a high-quality right wing Dutch newspaper.
It appears that for twenty years the media have gone from slightly left-wing, to mainly right-wing. This has happened because of several Republican institutions wanting to bring "fairness" (read: right-wingers) into the media, and due to actions to give Republicans more voice in the media.
That this has succeeded is most obvious in the success of the 'Swiftboat veterans' campaign, which was a blatant (and untrue) smear campaign aimed against John Kerry. This cost Kerry a lot of votes, while it was nothing more than a right-wing lying commercial.
Another example is that Republicans claimed that for 25 years the publishing houses published only left-wing books, and no right-wing books. This has obviously and definitely changed.
Talkradio is also a phenomenon that shows the right wing "domination". Talk radio has extremely few left-wing participants and a large amount of right-win hosts. Talkradio is about sensation, about creating an entertaining show, and it isn't journalism: it's biased "news" and "discussions". The hosts talk about their (conservative) vision of the world, and they allow the callers to serve as cannon fodder.
According to one host, Bill Handle, the show becomes conservative because of the people: "left-wingers listen to NPR, conservatives listen to the action of talk radio."
During the Nixon years the republicans wanted to create news stations that would show the truth as they saw it, and they gained the support of richh men like Joseph Coors and Richard Scaife. With them conservative thinktanks were created. Like the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise INstitute and the Hoover Institution.
But they also found their way into the mainstream media, the 24-hour cable channels needed 'talking heads', and the conservative 'experts' were always ready to give their opinions. Conservative insitution like 'Accuracy in Media' tried to force those opinions on the air if it wouldn't happen normally.
Another insitution is the Federalist-Society ( www.fed-soc.org ), which claims to study law and public policy, but is actually an organisation trying to prevent 'activism by left-wing judges' and supports the appointing of conservative judges. Almost all of the judicial appointings by Bush came from this circle.
This is what David Brock calls 'the Republican Noise Machine'. Brock's the one to know, because he worked for the media trying to proliferate the conservative message for several years. Brock turned away from these media and started a foundation to combat the conservative domination in the media, 'Media Matters For America' ( www.media-matters.org )
And then there's Rupert Murdoch, the founder of conservative media Fox News. Fox promised that they would restore fairness and objectivity in the media. Fox was shown as the objective standard, the news station without bias. But, obviously, this isn't the case.
'Outfoxed', a movie created by Robert Greenwalds, an ex-employee of Fox, shows how Fox works. According to an ex-newsreader for Fox they weren't supposed to show the news, but a point of view. In a memo of the 9th of may 2003 the directors gave the order to let the news show the appointment of ultra-conservative judges. 'Candidates who are according to both sides competent judges are blocked by the Democrats because of 'possible' viewpoints on abortion'.
Another memo said, about the 9-11 commission 'Let's not turn this into Watergate'.
And on the 6th of april the directors said 'John Kerry's speech at Georgetown University about the economy will probably be about Iraq as well. Let's see whether he has anything new to say in the first ten minutes and then switch to more important news. We don't have to show the entire speech.'
By watching for hours on end Outfoxed was able to show the methods of Fox. Host Bill O'Reilly denied having said 'Shut up' to a guest who countered him before, but the film shows nine other recent pieces of film where Billl does exactly that.
Another method is to show a conservative opinion with a news article by saying 'Some people think that...', the movie shows 25 examples of this.
A typical Fox-conversation is hosted by a conservative host with a strong right-wing guest and a weak guest from the centre. The guest is then forced into the left-wing corner where he doesn't belong.
An alternative is a show like 'Hannity and Colmes', where an all-American conservative is assisted by a poorly-cut Democrat looking as if he comes from the buying-department. That's why Murdoch can claim in front of a congressional commission that they provide diversity within their shows.
A media study-group which doesn't just watch Fox (FAIR: Fairness and Accuray In Reporting) watched 'Special Report with Brit Hume' on Fox for 19 weeks. 65(71%) out of 92 guests were conservative, the others Republicans Democrats and non-affiliated. At CNN's 'Wolf Blitzer reports' there were 57% Republicans and 43% Democrats.
O'Reilly is what Fox claims to be. In the prelude to the war in Iraq he said "Trust 'The O'Reilly Factor' for the truth about the upcoming war in Iraq, we don't have any ideological prejudices'.
But he also said 'We consider anyone who doesn't agree with the government's plans to be an enemy of the state'
Eric Alterman, author of the book 'What Liberal Media', writes about these things: "Fox scares, and when soemthing really dangerous happens, they freak out, just like the Bush administration wants."
Even the Fox's competition, CNN and MSNBC, get scared. Fox is constantly gaining viewers, while the other two lose.
Looking back at the early phase of the Iraq war, CNN's reporter Christiane Amanpour claims: 'My station was intimidated by the government and Fox News. The consequence was fear and self-censorship.'
Fairness and Accuracy in the Media has shown that 33% of the Fox viewers believes that Weapons of Mass Destruction have been found, while 11 percent of public radio and television viewers and listeners thought so.
67% of the Fox audience thought that Iraq and Al-Qaeda were cooperating for 9/11 while 16 percent of public media audience thinks so.
Jim Fallows is the editor of the Atlantic Monthly and a reporter with years of experience. According to him the bias of the media has changed because it's being run with an eye for the market, they need to make as much money as possible, and they then fail to report accurately.
Mass-information has, according to him, become much less serious. Lots of hurricanes and O.J. Simpsons, and added to that the conservative agit-prop media which took over when the mainstream-media started to take their job less seriously.
According to Fallows there never was a left-wing bias, perhaps a lot of journalists were somewhat left of centre on certain issues, but there was no deliberate liberal bias.
It appears that for twenty years the media have gone from slightly left-wing, to mainly right-wing. This has happened because of several Republican institutions wanting to bring "fairness" (read: right-wingers) into the media, and due to actions to give Republicans more voice in the media.
That this has succeeded is most obvious in the success of the 'Swiftboat veterans' campaign, which was a blatant (and untrue) smear campaign aimed against John Kerry. This cost Kerry a lot of votes, while it was nothing more than a right-wing lying commercial.
Another example is that Republicans claimed that for 25 years the publishing houses published only left-wing books, and no right-wing books. This has obviously and definitely changed.
Talkradio is also a phenomenon that shows the right wing "domination". Talk radio has extremely few left-wing participants and a large amount of right-win hosts. Talkradio is about sensation, about creating an entertaining show, and it isn't journalism: it's biased "news" and "discussions". The hosts talk about their (conservative) vision of the world, and they allow the callers to serve as cannon fodder.
According to one host, Bill Handle, the show becomes conservative because of the people: "left-wingers listen to NPR, conservatives listen to the action of talk radio."
During the Nixon years the republicans wanted to create news stations that would show the truth as they saw it, and they gained the support of richh men like Joseph Coors and Richard Scaife. With them conservative thinktanks were created. Like the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise INstitute and the Hoover Institution.
But they also found their way into the mainstream media, the 24-hour cable channels needed 'talking heads', and the conservative 'experts' were always ready to give their opinions. Conservative insitution like 'Accuracy in Media' tried to force those opinions on the air if it wouldn't happen normally.
Another insitution is the Federalist-Society ( www.fed-soc.org ), which claims to study law and public policy, but is actually an organisation trying to prevent 'activism by left-wing judges' and supports the appointing of conservative judges. Almost all of the judicial appointings by Bush came from this circle.
This is what David Brock calls 'the Republican Noise Machine'. Brock's the one to know, because he worked for the media trying to proliferate the conservative message for several years. Brock turned away from these media and started a foundation to combat the conservative domination in the media, 'Media Matters For America' ( www.media-matters.org )
And then there's Rupert Murdoch, the founder of conservative media Fox News. Fox promised that they would restore fairness and objectivity in the media. Fox was shown as the objective standard, the news station without bias. But, obviously, this isn't the case.
'Outfoxed', a movie created by Robert Greenwalds, an ex-employee of Fox, shows how Fox works. According to an ex-newsreader for Fox they weren't supposed to show the news, but a point of view. In a memo of the 9th of may 2003 the directors gave the order to let the news show the appointment of ultra-conservative judges. 'Candidates who are according to both sides competent judges are blocked by the Democrats because of 'possible' viewpoints on abortion'.
Another memo said, about the 9-11 commission 'Let's not turn this into Watergate'.
And on the 6th of april the directors said 'John Kerry's speech at Georgetown University about the economy will probably be about Iraq as well. Let's see whether he has anything new to say in the first ten minutes and then switch to more important news. We don't have to show the entire speech.'
By watching for hours on end Outfoxed was able to show the methods of Fox. Host Bill O'Reilly denied having said 'Shut up' to a guest who countered him before, but the film shows nine other recent pieces of film where Billl does exactly that.
Another method is to show a conservative opinion with a news article by saying 'Some people think that...', the movie shows 25 examples of this.
A typical Fox-conversation is hosted by a conservative host with a strong right-wing guest and a weak guest from the centre. The guest is then forced into the left-wing corner where he doesn't belong.
An alternative is a show like 'Hannity and Colmes', where an all-American conservative is assisted by a poorly-cut Democrat looking as if he comes from the buying-department. That's why Murdoch can claim in front of a congressional commission that they provide diversity within their shows.
A media study-group which doesn't just watch Fox (FAIR: Fairness and Accuray In Reporting) watched 'Special Report with Brit Hume' on Fox for 19 weeks. 65(71%) out of 92 guests were conservative, the others Republicans Democrats and non-affiliated. At CNN's 'Wolf Blitzer reports' there were 57% Republicans and 43% Democrats.
O'Reilly is what Fox claims to be. In the prelude to the war in Iraq he said "Trust 'The O'Reilly Factor' for the truth about the upcoming war in Iraq, we don't have any ideological prejudices'.
But he also said 'We consider anyone who doesn't agree with the government's plans to be an enemy of the state'
Eric Alterman, author of the book 'What Liberal Media', writes about these things: "Fox scares, and when soemthing really dangerous happens, they freak out, just like the Bush administration wants."
Even the Fox's competition, CNN and MSNBC, get scared. Fox is constantly gaining viewers, while the other two lose.
Looking back at the early phase of the Iraq war, CNN's reporter Christiane Amanpour claims: 'My station was intimidated by the government and Fox News. The consequence was fear and self-censorship.'
Fairness and Accuracy in the Media has shown that 33% of the Fox viewers believes that Weapons of Mass Destruction have been found, while 11 percent of public radio and television viewers and listeners thought so.
67% of the Fox audience thought that Iraq and Al-Qaeda were cooperating for 9/11 while 16 percent of public media audience thinks so.
Jim Fallows is the editor of the Atlantic Monthly and a reporter with years of experience. According to him the bias of the media has changed because it's being run with an eye for the market, they need to make as much money as possible, and they then fail to report accurately.
Mass-information has, according to him, become much less serious. Lots of hurricanes and O.J. Simpsons, and added to that the conservative agit-prop media which took over when the mainstream-media started to take their job less seriously.
According to Fallows there never was a left-wing bias, perhaps a lot of journalists were somewhat left of centre on certain issues, but there was no deliberate liberal bias.
