That Conservative Media

The point has probably been made elsewhere, although it's the sort of perspective reminder of which one tends to lose sight over time and in the heat of discussion, but the argument over whether the mainstream media is biased might really be over the degree of leftishness that represents the objective center. The East Coast is discouragingly west if one is adrift in the Atlantic Ocean, after all.

Taking a look at Project Censored's top 10 "censored media stories of 2003–2004" (or the full list of the top 25) illustrates what people probably mean when they say that the "corporate media" tilts right, if anything:

#1: Wealth Inequality in 21st Century Threatens Economy and Democracy
#2: Ashcroft vs. the Human Rights Law that Hold Corporations Accountable
#3: Bush Administration Censors Science
#4: High Levels of Uranium Found in Troops and Civilians
#5: The Wholesale Giveaway of Our Natural Resources
#6: The Sale of Electoral Politics
#7: Conservative Organization Drives Judicial Appointments
#8: Cheney's Energy Task Force and The Energy Policy
#9: Widow Brings RICO Case Against U.S. government for 9/11
#10: New Nuke Plants: Taxpayers Support, Industry Profits

Curious as to what methodology — from a university-affiliated "media research group" — yielded a media bias list without a single conservative issue of complaint, I took a look at Project Censored's drippingly and unapologetically progressive Web site:

Between 700 and 1000 stories are submitted to Project Censored each year from journalists, scholars, librarians, and concerned citizens around the world. With the help of more than 200 Sonoma State University faculty, students, and community members, Project Censored reviews the story submissions for coverage, content, reliability of sources and national significance. The university community selects 25 stories to submit to the Project Censored panel of judges who then rank them in order of importance. Current or previous national judges include: Noam Chomsky, Susan Faludi, George Gerbner, Sut Jhally, Frances Moore Lappe, Norman Solomon, Michael Parenti, Herbert I. Schiller, Barbara Seaman, Erna Smith, Mike Wallace and Howard Zinn.

Recognize any names? Surprised that "wealth inequality" is the #1 "censored" story? (This is not a quantitative analysis; other conditions apply.) Who considers the media to be censorious of liberal causes? Well, group leader Professor Peter Phillips, for one. Of last year's reports of mass graves in Iraq and of prosecution of Serbian military leaders, Dr. Phillips writes:

These stories show how corporate media likes to give the impression that the US government is working diligently to root out evil doers around the world and to build democracy and freedom. This theme is part of a core ideological message in support of our recent wars on Panama, Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Governmental spin transmitted by a willing US media establishes simplistic mythologies of good vs. evil often leaving out historical context, special transnational corporate interests, and prior strategic relationships with the dreaded evil ones.

The hypocrisy of US policy and corporate media complicity is evident in the coverage of Donald Rumsfeld's stop over in Mazar-e Sharif Afghanistan December 4 to meet with regional warlord and mass killer General Abdul Rashid Dostum and his rival General Ustad Atta Mohammed. Rumsfeld was there to finalize a deal with the warlords to begin the decommissioning of their military forces in exchange for millions of dollars in international aid and increased power in the central Afghan government.

Upon reading the example of a Good v. Evil Mythology spoiler, perhaps you rubbed your eyes and looked again. You see, the U.S. isn't working to remove the power of evil doers and establish democracy and freedom. How could it be, when it's leveraged a warlord to remove a theocratic regime and then — talk about war being a last option — began efforts to buy-down the warlord's military forces? The simplistic right-wing mainstream media apparently chooses to hide the reality that the only options in dealing with unsavory geopolitical conditions are war and culpable complicity.

Here's more explanation, from Prof. Phillips, of how and why "the U.S. news is so biased against democratic liberation struggles all over the world":

The U.S. media ignores big questions like: Who loses in the process of economic growth and wealth accumulation? What about the one billion people in the world who are surplus labor and un-needed in the international market place? How are they to survive? What about the global issues of environmental sustainability and the using up of our unrenewable natural resources.

These are the questions of a socio-environmental apocalypse. Free market capitalism is creating an evil empire of corruption and waste that generates wretchedness for billions of people. All the indicators are that wealth and resources do not trickle down but rather become increasingly concentrated in the hands of the elites in the nation states of the First World and their senior and junior partners around the globe.

Now, I'm not a fan of all that Western culture exports with its dollars, but as I suggest to my fellow Christians, the responsibility for bringing our message across thresholds opened through economic means lies with us. So, too, could progressives see the removal of fascists, theocrats, and dictators as an opportunity. I guess the politically driven ideologues of the secular Left prefer other methods of... ahem... persuasion.

Frankly, I can't help but think that Doc Phillips is heading toward that conundrum whereby "democracy" involves the people's receiving a government and society that they wouldn't choose above the individualist "ideological messages" of the West. One might also find reason for scrutiny in the bifurcation evident in the statement that "[s]everal times over the past 100 years working people have joined with progressives." Who, in that partnership, did the heavy lifting, do you suppose?

From my perspective, working people are increasingly on to the progressives' game, and the further Left the "academics, progressives and leftists" manage to pull the mainstream media, the more discredited becomes the whole modernist bunch.