Right Wing Reaction in Print
Ask any knuckle-dragging Bush supporter if he thinks all the major daily newspapers in the nation are owned by and written for liberals, and you’ll get that ain’t-it-obvious stare of disbelief at your question.Of course it is true that the most respected, internationally as well as nationally, newspapers are The New York Times and the Washington Post, and that their editorial slant is to the left. They also pay a corps of largely liberal columnists who are at the top of the game in political, social, and economic commentary for the op-ed page. Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert, Frank Rich and many others from the Times (Anthony Lewis: you are missed very much). E. J. Dionne, Richard Cohen, Michael Kinsley, and others of the Post. Of course, they also keep on the payroll the premiere guardians of right wing opinion: Bill Safire and Thomas Friedman of the Times, and George F. Will and Charles Krauthammer of the Post.
But there are a great many big city and small town newspapers that people read instead of The New York Times and the Washington Post. And these are certainly not pandering to a liberal agenda. Many newspapers are owned by large publishing groups, which often give the editors of each of the newspapers autonomy to publish opinion that is that of the editors, so long as they cultivate a readership and sell newspapers. Editors thus may publish their own opinion, but strive for a balance by publishing letters of the publication&rsdquo;s readers as well as of columnists taking an opposing view.
But certain publishing groups give no such editorial autonomy. They not only own the business, they also own their opinion. The editors are nothing more than the paid servants of the owning publishing groups, and the editors only function is to make sure that opinion of the owner is expressed in the best English. It’s no coincidence that it is typically the right wing publishing groups which are the ones who employ such editors who make an express promise to serve the right wing agenda in both news and opinion, or at least to look the other way in order to take a high-paying position just to fix up the English of neoconservative spew.
Should they acquire a newspaper whose previous ownership catered to a decidely liberal readership, the newspaper will immediately acquire a radical in-your-face, divisive right wing slant. Of course, one might argue that such an editorial swing is hardly something a true right winger would do: clearly canceled subscriptions by the boatloads are bad for business, and there will be a swing from profit to loss. But right wingers who own media enterprises are both principled (meaning loyal to beliefs) as well as philosophical. They figure that liberals canceling their subscriptions is a pendulum swinging the other way to right wingers starting subscriptions after years of not wanting “all the news that’s fit to print,” but rather all the news that fits preconceived notions.
The Wall Street Journal
What is it right wingers say? That liberals and lefties are communists and socialists, which is much like saying “pedophiles and Satan worshippers,” from the right wing point of view.>From the simplistic, black-and-white right wing perspective, the good is filled with Christians and capitalists (they no longer have to be strictly white-skinned either).
I am sure they will tell you that the 20th century Jesus would have been an investment banker rather than a carpenter. Not that carpenters do not know the value of a dollar and why it belongs with the person who worked hard for it rather than the lazy, bastard welfare cheat who gets the government to take that dollar away from the carpenter. Certainly any decent carpenter, the right wing will tell you, knows the truth of all that.
On the other hand, the bad is a motley gang of secular humanists who deplore war and hope for a one world government where civil rights are guaranteed for all the people of the planet. It’s a great deal easier for the Christian capitalist to have the upper hand in a business that pays people below-poverty-line wages as they work in unsafe, unhealthy workplaces in a nation whose corrupt leaders can be bought off, than to have the upper hand in an enterprise where a one-world government has too much oversight of elected officials to allow them to cheat on living wages and unsafe workplaces. And so it is thus easy for the right wing (and Christian) people to identify the bad.
The Wall Street Journal talks about such issues, of course, but strictly from the view that anything else but capitalism is an unspeakable evil. Government itself is seen as a “necessary evil,” of all things; to suggest there are limits to the possession, use and disposal of private property is sacrilege. When faced with the challenge that they should worship God and not mammon, they say why can they not worship both God and mammon? Prioritizing time is not difficult, and efficiency of time is a highly prized value among these right wingers.
Try to look for balance though in the editorial of the Journal. If they employ or solicit the opinions of true liberals and the political left, make sure someone is standing next to you to catch you when you faint.
The New York Post
The NY Post is certainly not the class of right wing thinking—assuming one allows the word “class” to be used in connection with right wing thinking. This epitome of the tabloid, gutter press is mentioned in passing because the Post is a property of the Rupert Murdoch News Corp. media holding company. Murdoch made his name and his money on yellow journalism, and so it is only fitting to name something upon which he makes his money. Of course, Murdoch also owns the Fox News Channel mentioned above, a crown jewel in his media empire. Murdoch also attempts to influence opinion globally, with his Sky News channel outreach across the planet.Murdoch is a right winger with a vengeance. He believes in naked, down-in-the-mud-and-dirty capitalism, and insists that business be a major part of the daily news agenda. He does not, and can not, micromanage the news operations. After all, part of the capitalist system is that you hire the competent managers to do that, and that Murdoch takes responsibility for how the managers sell the product. So Murdoch finds the best henchmen to deliver his agenda, and they do it with the ferocity that he expects of them.
When looking at the Murdoch media product, whether it is the Post, Fox, Sky, or whatever, do not expect to read or view stories in which people are looking to find someone to help them deal with an injustice perpetrated against them by a business or a government that Murdoch supports. Expect to find a great deal of flag waving and stories about how this business is contributing a few of its tax-deductible dollars to a charity like the Bush-Loving Quadruplegics of America.
Where Are The Defenders of Truth?
There is a good reason that there is a difference between a news operation that adheres to journalistic standards and one that panders to a right wing agenda.Right wing media whines and hollers that the truth is not being reported, and then after the tantrum, proceeds to tell its viewers exactly what the truth is. As it sees it, naturally.
On the other hand, media operations that adhere to journalistic standards have as their only truth the need to report what others claim to be the truth, and to get as many sides to a view as possible on the written page or in a broadcast hour.
Right wingers matter of factly will tell you that there is a false distinction between having the news page separated from the opinion page. They will claim that reporters cannot but help to inject their bias and their political agenda into their reporting, so why make the conscious effort to keep news and opinion separate? Thus with right wing content, you are told right away that no attempt is made to stop editorializing the news, and it is up to you, the viewer or reader, to parse what is fact from a very colored way of seeing things.
And because right wing media is contemptuously and brazenly open about the fact—the one indisputable fact of right wing media—that fact and opinion are melted together into a messy, undiscernable gemisch, the viewer and reader are left wondering how they can get facts at all if much of them are left out as part of the editorializing process of writing news copy, and those things that remain in the copy, are distorted or otherwise represent distortions.
Is it not better to read news and get facts from someone who at least makes a best effort to keep opinion and bias out of news copy, than to read it from someone who all but admits proudly that he is nothing more than a propagandist?
Mavi Gözler occasionally posts opinion pieces at his web page, http://hume.realisticpolitics.com.