Leftwingers Taking Back the Media?
Speaking of Ron's take on the sixth or seventh column of right-wing news media, here's an interesting take from Soundbitten. The Artist Formerly Known As St. Huck continues to come up with solutions for MSNBC that are more promising and creative than what the network itself is managing. Last month he drew a simple solution that I'm amazed America's News Channel hasn't come up with on its own:
Become as aggressively liberal as Fox News is conservative. Give Michael Moore his own show. Start developing The Streisand Factor. Conservatives always complain about the left-wing bias of television news, but the truth is no network or channel actually tries to market its left-wing bias (in part, of course, because such biases don't exist as much as conservatives claim they do). By hiring Phil Donahue, MSNBC took steps in this direction, but the channel is still fairly covert about its sentiments. Everyone's always talking about how the Left is adrift, and the Left lacks leaders, and the Left has lost its way—but imagine how an aggressively liberal cable network could exploit that leadership vacuum by promoting its own TV personalities, ideological causes, etc. MSNBC is already capitalizing on the imminent war against Iraq with a nightly show devoted to it, but why not go the next step and turn the show into ground central for the anti-war movement? Politics aside, it's just good business—it would give MSNBC a mission, a crusade, a purpose—and that's much more interesting to watch than centrist news or centrist news analysis.
That suggestion was thrown in with a bunch of others that are pretty funny. In today's update Beato, who is nothing if not Machiavellian, shows how the exact opposite approach could also work:
Go Fox News one better, and become the Conservative News Network that's boldly proclaims itself as "Biased, but right." Hire Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and other conservative pundits who proudly identify themselves as such and battle Fox News head on. While MSNBC's main problem may simply be that not that many people want to watch news analysis during prime-time, it's quite clear that at least 2 million of them want to watch Fox News. Produce an even more conservative version of what it already delivers, and you could steal half its audience.
Again, this one is accompanied by another comical but not unpersuasive pitch, and both are well worth the read.
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post comments
The problem with the left-wing (so called “liberal”) media is they don’t want to admit their slant. They want to pretend they are the mainstream and gently push their agenda. When someone in the right-wing press (there are only two or three outlets) covers news or stories that don’t help the Democrats, the mainstream media can ignore them and slowly become irrelevant or reluctantly conver them and give Al Gore some heartburn.
If some of the leftists want to show their true colors and openly embrace their views, they will attract the 30% of Americans that forms their base (this is just an estimate – approximately 30% left, 30% right, and 40% center/swing 🙂
You have it half right, Sagar. The twist is that the mainstream media can’t just ignore what’s coming out of Fox news and the Washington Times. Media critics, coming out of the long tradition of the conservative persecution complex, berate the mainstream media until they cover the story, which has subsequently been hyped up in the conservative echo-chamber. The liberals don’t have that sort of network of mainstream, yet partisan outlets. It’s a lot bigger jump from the New Republic to CNN then it is from Fox News.
Al Gore is right on this one.
Guess Ashcroft has got to MSNBC if they are really letting Phil Donahue go. There goes free
speech and democracy. When I tune on tonight and
Phil isn’t there, then it’s goodbye NBC from now
on.