Bias is a relative term and paranoid perceptions of bias are part of maintaining self esteem for those in morally untenable positions. The perception that the media is biased against your point of view is far easier to maintain than the possibility that your point of view is wrong and humans, like water or sheep, usually take the easy path and the low road.
From my point of view and from that of an increasing number of people who take the trouble to read many sources of information, the American media is increasingly influenced by the propaganda of big business and the interests of a power hungry leadership. Without listing the countless examples I see every day I can only refer you to my previous posts, but a look at who owns what should at least provide a clue as to who says what and why.
So when I read about Mark Halperin, ABC Political Director and Bill O’Reilly slinging the bull in that customary Fox News faux Socratic method, trying to convince the moronic masses of fatuous Fox listeners that the “media” are biased toward Liberal viewpoints, I have a hard time controlling my fury. Of course Halperin is trying to sell a book: trying one more time to cash in on the worn and threadbare myth of Liberal Media Bias in order to promote the bias of the Disney Empire. Of course O’Reilly makes a living maintaining a straight (under the pancake makeup) face while using the media to tell you the media is biased and to promote the biases of Rupert Murdock. Neither of these hominids has any more interest in illuminating current events than Hanna Barbera had in teaching paleontology by creating the Flintstones. It’s all about money and power and getting it by flattering the fools and bigots.
What is happening, says Halperin to O’Reilly; both spokesmen for corporations owned and controlled by ultra-conservative interests seeking power and money, is that the Liberal Media are trying to keep Republicans from voting by revealing the corruptions and perversions and transgressions against American values of the Republican Party. When Republicans say Liberal, they expect the Pavlovian response that has been trained into the American consciousness through decades of repetitive misuse. They don’t expect you to see ‘Liberal’ as representing opposition to abuse of power and advocacy for liberty. When they say Bias, they expect to be able to dismiss valid criticism by virtue of the fact that it is criticism. In fact, delivering an unbiased view of the news is an act that well fits their customized definition. A lack of bias must then be seen as bias, since clear reporting of theft, bribery, influence peddling, incompetence, election tampering, sexual harassment and even pederasty are not beneficial to the interests of the powerful who consider it their right to indulge in such things.
What Halperin and O’Reilly are selling here is not only a book, but an idea. That idea is that people who see abuse of power and the abusers of power as dangerous to liberty are biased and therefore wrong; that people who oppose injustice are Liberal and so are wrong.
What difference does it make if it’s morning in
1 comment:
I think you are biased and your bias has a bias by the by.
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