More Liberal Media Nonsense

The venerable Double G weighs in on the MSNBC decision to remove Olbermann and Matthews.

This has been going on for years. As I wrote in response to the uproar generated at places like The New Republic over the fact that MSNBC has now given an actual liberal, Rachel Maddow, her own show and is thereby jeopardizing non-partisan, objective, high-minded journalism:

Over the past seven years, the following people have hosted prime-time cable news shows: Joe Scarborough (MSNBC), Michael Savage (MSNBC), Glenn Beck (CNN), Tucker Carlson (MSNBC), Nancy Grace (CNN), Bill O'Reilly (Fox) and Sean Hannity (Fox). None of that seemed to bother the likes of [TNR's Sacha] Zimmerman. None of that was depicted as the downfall of objective journalism or the destruction of civil, elevated, high-minded discourse.

Several of those hosts had and continue to have atrocious ratings (Carlson, Beck, Scarborough), yet were kept for years.

Beyond that, network and cable shows routinely convene panels filled with right-wing views and devoid of anything remotely approaching liberalism, and that creates no controversy. Just this past weekend, I subjected myself while traveling to ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, and the panel discussing Sarah Palin was composed of right-wing ideologue George Will, establishment-spokesperson Cokie Roberts, and reporter Sam Donaldson. That is typical for television panels: right-wing partisans such as Will are "balanced" not by any liberals but by allegedly "neutral journalists" such as Roberts or Donaldson. That's because the Right has created a reality where anyone who isn't explicitly Rush Limbaugh is deemed to be a "liberal" (hence, Donaldson likely qualifies) and no actual liberal ever needs to be included. That's how we have a "liberal media" where the principal rule is that actual liberals are systematically excluded, and it's why the ascent of Olbermann (who is, in fact, far more of a Bush critic than a doctrinaire liberal) has created such turmoil -- because it violates that central rule prohibiting liberals from appearing in the Liberal Media.

As he points out, the problem is endemic: under the Bush/Fox News regime, anybody who dares to question our great and glorious Permanent Republican Majority is a horrible liberal. Nobody in the media wants to be hit with this tag, because the media has been controlled by the far right for almost two decades now. They assaulted Clinton to the point where he was impeached on a pointless charge, and Bush was hailed as a brilliant President after breaking the law on a number of occasions. We're told by this same "liberal media" that opposing Bush in any way is "bad for the country" and "divisive".

Now we're seeing the same standard applied to McSame. Months of complaints that "the liberal media is in the tank for Obama" (which is patently untrue) has led to this.

Keep in mind that the Right rules our media and most likely always will.