How the Press Betrays People, Betrays America
By Mike Hersh
We know all corporations own and operate all corporate media outlets.
That's true by definition. Still some people try to deny that these corporations which favor right wing candidates and policies over liberals in everything else lean liberal when it comes to their media operations. Some claim they must lean liberal to maximize profits, but that makes no sense.
On air profits don't come directly from ratings. They come from advertising. All the corporate advertisers whose money underwrites the corporate media have the exact same anti-liberal bias. Even print media profits rely more heavily on ads than on circulation. With few exceptions, only niche publications like Mother Jones, the Progressive, and the Nation dare to tell the ugly truth about failed right wing policies and scandalous right wing policy-makers.
Arguably even-handed reporting would actually increase media net profits. Fully reporting Republican as well as Democratic scandals would double the pool of attention-grabbing stories. So why won't the "liberal" media report the Republican's failures and flaws as much as Democrat's?
Consider the relative importance of NBC and GE. GE owns NBC, not the other way around. What's best for GE matters more to NBC than NBC's own bottom line. Can you imagine any NBC employee trying to report on something like the way US taxpayers will have to pay 100s of $millions if not $billions for a clean up if one of GE's nuclear reactors melts down? If so, you have quite an imagination! The same applies for the rest of the corporate media. That's why they under-report and even help Republicans cover up some potentially explosive stories. Here are a few of the many examples:
Several people who knew him at the time say W. Bush paid for an illegal abortion in Texas during the 1970s. Files obtained via the Freedom of Information Act and credible sources say Bush abused illegal drugs so much that the National Guard designated him a threat to security and grounded him. The same sources show Bush "went AWOL" - was not serving in the National Guard - for several months.
These stories received far less media coverage than Bill Clinton's often misquoted letter about how some of his friends "loath the military." Far less coverage than Bill Clinton's truncated statement about how he "didn't inhale" pot. And what about Monica Lewinsky! There's no comparison between mass media attention given anti-Clinton stories vs. the little play for anti-Bush stories.
Why would a "liberal media" cover for Bush yet hammer Clinton on similar issues? Look at the bottom line. Big business prefers conservative or right wing Republicans like the Bushes over moderate Democrats like Clinton and Gore. Big businesses run the corporate media. The media bashed the moderates and covered up for the Republicans. Is it that simple? Of course!
Now consider that W. Bush took money from the agent of the bin Laden family. Maybe this wasn't a hot story before 9/11, but why not mention it since? By contrast, the mass media reported Al Gore's family ties to Occidental Oil during the 2000 campaign. True, Al Gore Sr. worked for that corporation, but why didn't the media tell us Bush I pardoned Occidental CEO Armand Hammer or that Occidental let Bush I and II - not Al Gore - use their corporate jets to campaign. Why wouldn't a "liberal" media report Bush's family connections as well as Gore's? Clearly they backed the Bushes.
No one denies that W. Bush traded Harken stocks when he was an insider just before the stock tanked and even after warnings from the corporate counsel NOT to do so. Bush was on a corporate board which discussed bad times ahead for Harken. Bush also violated reporting laws which require insiders to notify the SEC in a timely manner. W. Bush claimed under oath he complied with the requirements, but he never did. Bush's father was President at the time, and his SEC appointees helped cover this up.
Now consider the obvious tie-in with the Martha Stewart insider trading story if not the Enron stories. Why not mention that W. Bush skated on similar charges when reporting on Martha's case? Why not mention Bush calls former Enron CEO Ken Lay "Kenny Boy" and that Lay and Enron helped fund both Bushes all the way to the White House? You KNOW that these stories would attract attention, sell papers, generate ratings, pump ad revenue, and make money for the media corporations, but liberals in power would cost the big businesses that control the media much more in terms of power and money.
Then there are these scandals: Bush's 2000 campaign violated several election laws in Florida but still lost that state to Al Gore, forcing Antonin Scalia to issue an unconstitutional order to halt the legally mandated fair, full-state hand-count of votes conducted by sworn judges.
Then Scalia and four other Justices issued an unsupportable order demanding the count finish in a few hours - the Bush v. Gore decision which hand-picked Bush as President.
We saw more "earth-shaking" stories about Al Gore wearing "earth tones" and "hiring a woman to tell him how to be a man" than anything on the Bush crimes and scandals listed above. With the possible exception of Bush lying about his driving while intoxicated arrest, not one negative story about Bush received even a tiny fraction of the mass media attention given Al Gore's "lying" about "inventing" the Internet, "discovering" Love Canal, "inspiring" Love Story, and visiting a disaster site with James Lee Witt - remember him?
Remember those "important" issues which dominated print and air coverage? All of them started as RNC "attack faxes" which the mass media dutifully reported as news - although none of them were really significant and almost all of them were grossly exaggerated if not completely distorted. The RNC knew that Bush couldn't beat Gore on the issues or on experience or qualifications. The top Republicans decided to brand Al Gore as a "liar" and the corporate media - knowing all of this - decided to help the Republicans destroy Gore.
An even-handed media might spice up scandals against all candidates. A liberal media would shade scandal reporting against Republicans. That's not what we see, however. Anyone who claims the media leans left must explain why the so-called liberal media would cooperate with the Bush campaign against Gore, help the RNC manufacture "scandals" about Clinton, but underplay or cover up explosive stories about Republicans which would sell papers and juice ratings.
Why give these scandals short-shrift - give up on all that cash - unless supporting and protecting Bush is more important to the media moguls than their bottom line? Because helping right wing candidates is good for the real bottom line - profits for the huge corporations which run the mass media. This is obvious when you consider that profits for the entire conglomerate - and their mega corporate advertisers - are far more important than revenues for the relatively small media subsidiaries.
Many poor Americans support Republicans and some rich ones don't. People vote and join parties for all sorts of reasons. The case for "the liberal media" requires more than the example of George Soros - a solitary billionaire who puts global concerns over adding to his $billions - and wealthy Democratic Senators like Jay Rockefeller and Ted Kennedy. Given that some wealthy people support moderates and even liberals doesn't make the point that the mass media support liberal or even moderate politics. Entire industries do not support candidates or policies which would hurt their economic interests.
Huge multinational corporations and business organizations hire lobbyists to push for policies Bush / Cheney already support. Why would such corporations pay $millions to push for policies then oppose their political allies in elections? Corporate media support for Reagan, Bush, Dole and Bush over Carter, Dukakis, Clinton and Gore makes the compelling case the media support the right against the middle or the left. Why would corporations like GE behave differently just because NBC, CNBC, and MSNBC belong to their empire? They wouldn't and they don't.
We know the big corporations which dominate the media support deregulating, corporate tax slashing, pro-business and anti-worker candidates and policies. Why wouldn't they? The only question is this:
Why do victims of right wing candidates and policies - men and women who work hard for a living - support the right wing? In large part because they trust the media to tell the truth. They don't understand just how profoundly the press betrays the people.
By Mike Hersh (c) 2004 ( MikeHersh@MikeHersh.com ) Mike Hersh is a writer, lawyer and activist living in the Washington, DC area. He graduated from Cornell University and the Washington College of Law, founded two small businesses, and then became a full-time writer and activist. He is the webmaster of MikeHersh.com and several political online communities. Originally published by OpEdNews.com
