posted
The premise, for those unwilling to watch Salon commercials and/or read 4 pages, lies essentially in this quote:
quote:Once upon a time, right-wing strategists, operatives, and financiers believed that they could never win political hegemony in the United States unless they won domination of the country's political discourse. Toward this end, a deliberate, well-financed, and expressly acknowledged communications and deregulatory plan was pursued by the right wing for more than thirty years -- in close coordination with Republican Party leaders -- to subvert and subsume journalism and reshape the national consciousness through the media, with the intention of skewing American politics sharply to the right.
The facts are probably correct, but the alarmist tone ignores some broader facts: political schemers on all sides have recognized the power of the media for decades if not centuries. And Republicans did not invent the Internet, either (chuckle: Gore's misquote was mentioned as an example). On and on it repeats itself, eventually reaching absurdity -- "The right-wing drive for media power must also be understood as an overturning of the First Amendment" -- until you remember you're reading an opinion piece just as biased as the sources it denigrates, no matter the "reformed" pedigree of its author.
On days when I am frustratable, the audacity of the right-wing mistruths that often get published (whatever that means, these days) frustrates me terribly, but so does the idiocy coming out of many Leftist ideologues. Luckily I don't have very many of those days any more, preferring merely to count down the days until I'm Imperator.
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Other articles on the left side of the website are good examples of the bias Brock is describing in the Salon article, which is an excerpt from his new book. The piece discussing Fox's coverage of Michael Moore is the only one I've read so far. Good stuff. I may just be a Media Matters contributor soon.
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posted
And Rich, when Brock defines the right's media control as an overturning of the first ammendment, he justifies that definition in terms of their extensive control of the public airwaves. He sees the bias as a mitigating factor--and their ultimate goal--but his contention that the free market will naturally siphon out misinformation in a world of Free Speech and that conservative media control is a real threat to that state is based more upon overwhelmingly Republican ownership of major media (Viacom, GE, NewsCorp, AOL Time Warner) and events such as the June 2nd FCC ruling--approved along purely partisan lines--to give the green light to further media cosolidation.
Thankfully the Senate blocked the ruling on September 16th by 55-40 votes. I don't believe it's hit the House floor yet, but apparently even if the block passes the House the President has promised to veto it.
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