Many of the top conservative officials and pundits claim there is a liberal bias in today’s media. Almost 70% of the public believes that the media is one sided and politically bias. Different groups of people blame different reasons why they are considered biased but the most prevalent reason is that the media has a liberal bias. But is this true? Why would the media be liberal or considered liberal? Do the conservatives have some truth or do they even know what a liberal is? The answers to these questions may seem obvious depending on your point of view but lets see if they are correct.

            The first thing is to identify who is calling the media liberal. Most of the time it’s the conservative movement that is claiming there is one. They have pundits like Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Bill O’Reilly, Matt Drudge, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, David Brooks, Hugh Hewitt, and other well-known media people telling everyone about the liberal media. Many of them claim this liberal media protects the so-called liberal establishment and blame it for the negative coverage against Republicans. Rupert Murdoch, a wealthy conservative, created FOX News Channel to supposedly make a more “fair and balanced” news network and has many of the conservative pundits working for it. FOX also gives time to people like Ann Coulter, who’s views are not close to the public’s opinions. Also FOX wants to counter her views to make a “Fair and Balanced” network, they usually have what critics call “Fox News Liberals” to do it. These supposedly liberal pundits are not accepted well by liberal audiences. Not only do the conservative pundits claim such but media watchdogs like Media Research Center do too.

            Media Research Center points out examples of supposed liberal bias in the mainstream media. An example of their work is one back in 2003. The mainstream news ignored a large protest against abortion but instead the mainstream news aired a sensational story about an abortion doctor being murdered in front of his family by an anti-choice radical. Then they interviewed someone that understands and has sympathy for the murderer to help complete the story so the viewers of the story could understand a little better. This is an example of supposed liberal biased. MRC complains about the coverage on the anti-war protest compared to the anti-abortion protest even though there was a war about to be started. This too is an example of supposed liberal bias. As with all of their examples about liberal biased stories or the liberal slanted agenda setting. They never explain how the stories are liberal or supports liberal causes. They use the term liberal very negatively and it is always opposed to their form of conservatism. There seems to be the only one easy connection to make between all their cases of bias and that is the supposed biased is not on their side of the argument. Does it mean everything not conservative is liberal?

            What is liberal? Is it everything that the Republican Party is not? Well nobody seems to describe how this liberal media actually is liberal. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines liberal as a : one who is open-minded or not strict in the observance of orthodox, traditional, or established forms or ways b capitalized : a member or supporter of a liberal political party c : an advocate or adherent of liberalism especially in individual rights. If the conservatives are worried about open-minded bias in the media then would that mean they would want a media who adhere to strict traditional ways or in other words, status-quo? Conservatives have a history of fear of new progressive ideas that would change the current status, especially when it comes to social acceptance and leveling economic difference between the poor and the rich. In the past they were against the American Revolution (Loyalists), living with Native Americans (leading to their genocide), freeing the slaves, workers rights, checks on big business, environmental protections, women rights, civil rights, and many other things we now take for granted. Conservatives for the most part now accept many of those things but today are anti-homosexuals, anti-poor, anti-government programs that help the disadvantage, and deregulation of business so they can increase pollution output and not give benefits or meet safety standards for workers. Different politicians promote different aspects of that list and/or reject some of them but the self-proclaimed conservatives basically follow that list. Liberals champion the rights of individuals and recognize the collective good for society. Liberals support equal rights for the gays but limit people’s right to throw trash in the ocean. They also don’t have as much confidence in the market to fix all of societies problems.

            NBC, ABC, CBS, and CNN are part of the supposed liberal bias media. All of them denounce any bias. FOX News doesn’t mind having media people like Bill O’Reilly calling the others liberal. But the self-proclaimed liberal media outlets like The Nation and Air America are very critical of mainstream news of being weak hitting news and catering of corporate interests. NBC, ABC, CBS, and CNN are all owned by large corporations and as economist Milton Friedman said, “The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.” Sometimes while making more money they help society but sometimes it doesn’t. NBC is owned by General Electric, which is known for supporting conservative policies like deregulation and anti-environmentalism. ABC is owned by Disney, which is willing to call the gay hating Pat Robertson a family show host. CBS is owned by Viacom, which is used to promote their other products among Viacom’s large media control. Is that liberal? Many self-proclaimed liberals don’t believe it. Actually, the self-proclaimed liberals are the most likely to receive their news from alternative sources along with mainstream news.

            Conservatives still claim bias in the media even though it seems it’s more in their favor than liberals. Possible reason behind this is to increase dominance in the mainstream news. There used to be larger amount of news outlets 20 years ago but many deregulation policies went into effect and this allowed media conglomeration. With a few corporate leaders controlling the media this would lead to less choice on the part of the consumer. Corporations don’t have to and will not pass on information they can’t sell well with advertisers or could possible hurt the status quo, which has benefited them. Sometimes a liberal view or slant could be presented on the mainstream news when it could sell to their consumers. FOX News uses more colorful words in their reporting showing strong bias in favor of conservatives even thought their slogan is “Fair and Balance.” Even liberals don’t like the Fox News Liberals, a term made by liberals to describe “liberals” who agree way to often with conservatives, easily lose to conservatives in a debate, and willing to quickly attack liberals. Having the media more conservative changes the overall culture in America, criticizing the non-traditional progressive ideas has become mainstream or even worse, ignoring the ideas all together.

            A sign of increased criticism of alternative ideas, especially liberal ones, is amount of conservative commentary shows on the 24-hour news networks. After Fox News had their successful O’Reilly Factor and Hannity and Colmes, MSNBC made their own Scarborough Country and The Situation with Tucker Carlson shows. Even the CNN chairman in 2001 was quoted as saying “Give us some guidance on how to attract conservatives,” when he was meeting with the top Republican politicians and he wanted to “change the culture at CNN.” They fear being called liberal so they become more conservative.

Also, they are a corporation and want to make money and with FOX News getting high ratings for entertaining the conservatives, which allows FOX to charge higher for ads, CNN would try the same. Not all of the programming of these companies is conservative in nature though. Viacom not only sells to conservatives, they try to sell to liberals too. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is considered a liberal program but watered down compared to The Nation, which isn’t owned by a large corporation. An example of corporate restraining power on a liberalistic program is Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher. When he said something radically politically incorrect according to mainstream views, his show was cancelled. News programs are supposed to inform the public about the current events in the world, instead it seems more and more they are having a narrower view on the world, which in turn is affecting the publics view on the world.

            The media corporations seem to like status quo and have many examples of suppressing alternative views from coming out and possibly change public opinion, which could destroy status quo. NBC, ABC, and CBS tend not go in-depth in the effects of political decisions over long periods of time unless it almost impossible to ignore. Reporting the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement were not going to sell very well to consumers compared to the in-depth story on President Bill Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky. Another example of questioning the idea of the liberal media is the Iraq War. A liberal media that is supposedly anti-everything-conservative did not expose the faulty intelligence, which was behind the reasoning to go to war given by the government, and allowed themselves be used by the government to smear their political enemies like Richard Clarke and Joe Wilson. Would a truly liberal media do that?

            In my opinion no, it would not do that. The news media was thought of the government watchdog but now seems to work with the government and don’t hold them accountable. Mainstream news seems to carry a relatively narrow amount of views and is getting harder to introduce alternative ideas. Alternative views are becoming easier to dismiss because they come from “wackos”, for example Michael Moore and Al Franken who don’t conform to mainstream views. Even though journalists tend to be liberal, as with other knowledgeable people like teachers, librarians, amongst others; they do not control the agenda setting in the media corporations. It’s the business people who decide what will sell well with the people and gain well with advertisers. Mass Media is our way to see the world and in the American people can see it through the eyes of six major corporations with strong similarities between them, which own around 90% of all mass media. There is less competition between them which means there would be fewer views represented. Many of these media conglomerations came about because of conservative policies of deregulation and saying the media has a liberal bias is pushing out opposing views to conservatism. It’s the conservative plan to dictate where the political discourse goes and argue it on their terms.