Understanding The Media Narrative (1 Viewer)

[The Other Liberal]

When it comes to politics and social struggles for change message matters. So does the power to send those messages and define debate. I've never believed in the notion of liberal media bias. And I have posted elsewhere about efforts to vilify the political left as an all-powerful force in American life and politics. We need to recognize and understand a media narrative with political implications. Corporate controlled print, broadcast, cable, and internet push that narrative that reinforces the power of monied elites who are mainly straight, white, cisgendered men. It goes like this:

1. Questioning or challenging corporate capitalism and inequality isn't practical or desirable.

2. The visibility and outward acceptance of blacks, women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and queer people mean there are no concrete or material barriers to these people's freedom or equality so activist and political efforts are unnecessary. They are also divisive.

3. News, information, and commentary focused on economic or social injustice goes against the conservative moderate mainstream.

The false narrative keeps us from discussing, debating, and finding democratic political solutions to serious problems that run to the heart of a free and livable society for all persons. The corporate media narrative politically benefits Conservative Republicans and Centrist Democrats who don't want to do anything about economic or social inequalities. In fact, the same people who own the media also contribute money to right leaning and centrist politicians.

 

[J-DONK]

When it comes to politics and social struggles for change message matters. So does the power to send those messages and define debate. I've never believed in the notion of liberal media bias. And I have posted elsewhere about efforts to vilify the political left as an all-powerful force in American life and politics. We need to recognize and understand a media narrative with political implications. Corporate controlled print, broadcast, cable, and internet push that narrative that reinforces the power of monied elites who are mainly straight, white, cisgendered men. It goes like this:

1. Questioning or challenging corporate capitalism and inequality isn't practical or desirable.

2. The visibility and outward acceptance of blacks, women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and queer people mean there are no concrete or material barriers to these people's freedom or equality so activist and political efforts are unnecessary. They are also divisive.

3. News, information, and commentary focused on economic or social injustice goes against the conservative moderate mainstream.

The false narrative keeps us from discussing, debating, and finding democratic political solutions to serious problems that run to the heart of a free and livable society for all persons. The corporate media narrative politically benefits Conservative Republicans and Centrist Democrats who don't want to do anything about economic or social inequalities. In fact, the same people who own the media also contribute money to right leaning and centrist politicians.

This is pretty much my stance. There is no left-wing media bias. There is a very obvious pro-corporate media bias. You had "super woke" MSNBC pundits groaning, and moaning as pro-labor Sanders took primaries. Why does MSNBC hate progressives, and their polices if they are "super left"? Maybe because their not, and championing transgender bathrooms is as meaningless as migrant caravans to the average American.

 

[SamAndreas]

We've got a situation here that even the boards AI like software has taken note of.

That there's a similar competing thread started a half hour after this one which in my mind is an exact opposite in it's narrative from this threads narrative. That the media is too far left-wing in it's bias.

I'm of mind that the media is neither, that ii's focused on their bottom line almost exclusively, and this alternate factor creates the result that they're willing to dredge up any muck from the bottom, and throw it at us:

 

[MT15]

Media is driven by ratings, nothing more nor less. Like Sam said, they have a bias toward whatever gets them the most views. This is not to say that cable news stations have not carved out a portion of the audience that they will cater their coverage toward, none more so than Fox, where you will see no dissenting views.

CNN and MSNBC do tend to show more sides of issues. It ticks off people who want them to be the same as Fox, but for democrats.

I don’t watch much CNN, but what I remember was that their idea of balance was to have Trump people on with democrats and there was a lot of talking over people and yelling.

I have seen more nuanced discussions on MSNBC, with their hosts running a pretty broad gamut of political perspectives. It’s still not as good as reading the older reliable news sources, like AP or Reuters, but a bit better than CNN and a whole lot better than Fox. OAN and NewsMax are just straight up propaganda. They would feel at home in North Korea.