The legend of the "liberal press"

Gene Lyons looks at the way in which the Republican noise machine brings pressure to bear on the press:  Cookie-cutter press criticism Daily Dunklin Democrat 08/10/05.

If there's anything you'll never read in this column, it's a categorical defense of the news media. One way or another, my last three books have been about the terrible harm done to individuals and the country by slipshod and dishonest reporting. Among those criticized most vigorously have been some of the major so-called "liberal" news organizations--broadcast and print.

Here's how I put it in a 2003 Harper's review of Eric Alterman's fine book, "What Liberal Media?: The Truth About Bias and the News": "'bias,' left or right, isn't an adequate word for what's taken place over the last decade or thereabouts. Claiming the moral authority of a code of professional ethics it idealizes in the abstract, but repudiates in practice, today's Washington press corps has grown as decadent and self-protective as any politician or interest group whose behavior it purports to monitor."

He then recounts a recent experience of his in being bombarded by e-mails in response to a column of his using the same litany of villains in the alleged Liberal Press! Liberal Press! Liberal Press!, namely "ABC ... CBS, CNN, NBC, CNN, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post."

His concluding thoughts (my emphasis):

Meanwhile, if the news organizations on MRC's laundry list owe fealty to the Democratic Party, they've an odd way of showing it. All of the above pushed the phony Whitewater scandal for years. They played Clinton's sexual sins bigger than the invasion of Normandy. Their coverage of the 2000 election clearly favored Bush, and their failure to effectively expose the "Swift Boat" dirty tricksters probably decided the 2004 election. Their collective performance during the run-up to the Iraq war was a national disgrace.

Otherwise, yeah, they're more "liberal" than Rush Limbaugh.

But then that's how the fundamentalist mind works in religion and politics: you're either with them 100 percent, or you're the enemy. In that regard, no self-respecting press organization can be anything but "liberal" in the sense of sharing a post-enlightenment worldview that distinguishes between fact and belief.

And facts, see, are the enemy of dogma.

Although there are certainly lessons the Democrats can and should learn from the success of the Republican Mighty Wurlitzer, I don't think the Dems can duplicate it exactly.  One big problem is that the Reps can count on a large part of their base having the kind of authoritiarian mentality that makes them eager to get marching orders on what they should think, say and believe.  I'm not sure that the Dems can ever achieve the same level of "message discipline."