Fair and Balanced? Two long-time press critics discuss mainstream media

[Mixxster]

http://www.splcenter.org/intelligenceproject/ip-index.html

<snip>

RENDALL: Like Norman said, there is a market for bigotry. In the New York City area, Bob Grant had the biggest local talk radio show in the history of the country during the 1990s, a million listeners a week, and the politicians lined up to get on. Here's a guy who refers to black people as “savages” and “beasts,” who once called on the New York Police Department to take machine guns to a gay pride parade and, quote, “mow them down.” Yet Gov. Pataki, New Jersey Gov. Christie Todd Whitman, Alfonse D'Amato , and Rudolph Guiliani lined up to get on his show. This shows how we have a culture that tolerates these politicians tolerating racism. And it shows how Grant was striking a note with a lot of his listeners.

<snip>

RENDALL: Coverage of the war with Iraq shows another kind of bias. Look at all the opinion-shapers on national television in the run-up to the war, and there were only two people with even tenuous connections to the anti-war movement. Now there is one: Bill Moyers, on public television. Phil Donahue recently lost his show at MSNBC, and it wasn't because he wasn't getting the ratings, as NBC said. A secret NBC memo that was leaked regarding Donahue's show said that they were really afraid that Donahue was an awkward, difficult face in times of war. They were afraid that the Donahue show would be seen as a gathering place for the antiwar movement while their rivals were waving the flag. So NBC knows the game is rigged. It isn't really about fair and balanced journalism. It's about getting behind the government effort in Iraq.

<snip>

Instead, you've had CNN sponsoring Buchanan, Disney sponsoring Bob Grant , and now, MSNBC sponsoring Michael Savage. Remember, MSNBC is not an avowedly right-wing news channel, but they have just given a show to Savage, who is on record calling child victims of gunfire in the inner city “ghetto slime,” referring to non-white countries as “Turd World” nations, calling homosexuality perversion, asserting that Latinos breed like rabbits, and referring to Jerry Springer as “hook-nosed.” He got his national show within days of when they fired Donahue. This indicates that hatred of “Turd World” immigrants is a viewpoint that MSNBC is more comfortable with than criticism of the war. This is a microcosm of the larger problems in the American media.

<snip>

RENDALL: Think about it. Barbara Ehrenreich , Cornel West , Norman Solomon - these are the voices that represent progressive movements in the way that Buchanan and Limbaugh and Hannity represent the conservative movement. But they're totally missing from television. Why doesn't Michael Moore have a national show? Instead, what we get on these television talk shows is a debate between bona fide movement conservatives and the center.

<snip>

RENDALL: You find the same thing across the board. With African Americans, you get Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Armstrong Williams, Larry Elder and Ken Hamblin. The most prominent media pundits who are gay include Camille Paglia, Norah Vincent and Andrew Sullivan. It is hard to find progressive blacks or gays or lesbians in any position of punditry in our national mainstream media. I would say that this even extends to Jews, another generally very progressive voting constituency. We see a plethora of Jewish neo-conservatives and conservatives, but it's getting harder and harder to find a progressive or even liberal Jewish voice in our national media.