Popular myths live long after
they are disproved. One of the most significant political myths is about the “liberal
media”, the supposed tilt of American public media to the left. This claim by
Republicans is nearly as old as I am. It was false when it began, and it still
is, although less so.
When I was growing up, the
great majority of newspapers endorsed Republican candidates. The magazine “Editor
and Publisher” surveyed
presidential endorsements of newspapers since 1940. The first time a
Democrat won more endorsements was Lyndon Johnson in 1964 against Barry
Goldwater. The next time was Bill Clinton in 1992. John Kerry barely edged out
George W. Bush in 2004 and Obama won in 2008, although many fewer
papers endorse candidates these days. In 2012
more papers endorsed Romney, but those which endorsed Obama had a higher
circulation.
Over the long term,
Republican presidential candidates won
nearly three-quarters of newspaper endorsements from the 1930s through the
1980s. In other elections at the state and federal level, a similar pattern
holds: from an overwhelming majority of endorsements from the 1940s through the
1960s, newspapers shifted to a more even split in the 1970s and 1980s, to a
slight national majority for Democrats since the 1990s, with significant
regional differences. In the 2014
governor’s race in Illinois, 12 of the 14 largest newspapers in the state
endorsed the Republican Rauner.
Nevertheless, Republicans
asserted that the media leaned against them. In 2009 Sarah Palin, who as candidate
for Vice President admitted to doing virtually no reading, nevertheless argued
that all the mainstream media were unfair to conservatives, making the term “lamestream media”
popular. At the same time, researchers at Media Matters for America studied
media politics at a different level. They surveyed every daily newspaper in the
country in 2007 to see which
syndicated op-ed columnists they published. The winner? George Will,
syndicated in more papers with a higher total circulation than anyone else. No
matter how one measured it, conservative columnists had an advantage over
liberals. 60% of daily newspapers printed more conservative columnists than
liberals, with only 20% of newspapers in the other direction. Newspapers with
more conservative columnists reached more readers nationally. Only in the
Middle Atlantic region of New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey were liberal
op-ed voices more prominent.
Why does the false
characterization of the media have such strength against the facts? Conservatives
overwhelmingly do
not trust the media. Conservative Americans, unlike everyone else, trust
only the few news sources which match
their political views. Those very conservative sources, like the programs
of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, repeat this claim about the
liberal media all the time.
When the media leaned
strongly Republican, Republicans had a much more favorable view. In 1956, a study
found that 78% of Republicans thought that newspapers were fair. The shift
towards more equality, their loss of dominance, was perceived by conservatives
as an unfair trend, much as the still incomplete shift towards more racial and
gender equality has led to conservative complaints about reverse
discrimination.
I have one more explanation.
Conservatives have declared their distrust of factual information. When decades
or even centuries of scientific work clash with traditional beliefs, the
science is declared bad. Conservatives have attacked and tried to eliminate the
government institutions dedicated to informing and educating the public, like
the National Endowments for the Humanities and the Arts, and public television
and radio.
Higher education has been
under attack by conservatives for decades. In 2012, Rick
Santorum criticized the idea of sending more students to college as an
effort to “indoctrinate” them and wanted states “to get out of education”. Scan
the country now for Republican efforts to do that. Scott
Walker proposed to change the mission statement of the University of
Wisconsin from the effort to “search for truth” and “improve the human
condition” to “meet the state’s workforce needs.” Then he demanded a cut
of $300 million from the University’s budget over the next two years. Doug
Ducey, Governor of Arizona, proposed eliminating all state support for the
two largest community college systems. Here in Illinois, one of the first
institutions to be threatened with closure due to Governor Bruce Rauner’s
budget cuts is the Illinois State Museum, a center for public education and
scientific research.
By cutting funding of public
schools and higher education, Republicans show their allegiance to the interests
of the wealthiest Americans. A remarkable survey
of rich Chicagoans (average wealth $14 million) shows that only one-third
agree that “The federal government should spend whatever is necessary to ensure
that all children have really good public schools they can go,” against 87% of
the general public. Only 28% of them agree that “The federal government should
make sure that everyone who wants to go to college can do so,” against 78% of
the rest of us.
The children of the wealthy
will go wherever they like, and the poor will scramble to get ahead. To get
average Americans to support that system, Republicans must shield them from the
real news, must keep them away from science and the scientific method of
thinking about the world, must make the financial hurdles to education high.
Telling everyone not to listen to the most informative media is one part of
that plan.
Steve Hochstadt
Jacksonville IL
Published by the Jacksonville
Journal-Courier, July 14, 2015
No comments:
Post a Comment