gracchusdixit

After a humiliating primary election loss to Donald Trump in his home state of Florida, where he lost every county but one, Senator Marco Rubio not only “suspended” his campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination but tried to explain away his defeat by blaming it on somebody else—a dodge that countless unsuccessful politicians have deployed from time immemorial.   In this instance, the
“somebody” Rubio chose to blame was the scapegoat that he and his Republican colleagues have favored for decades—the so-called “mainstream media.”  To quote Senator Rubio directly:

The media’s pumping him as some sort of unstoppable force… Unfortunately, he’s being pumped up, because many in the media with a bias know that he’ll be easy to beat in a general election.

Republicans have been whining about the “liberal bias” of the “mainstream media” for so long that Rubio’s sniveling would be unremarkable except for the fact that his complaint in this particular case is more contorted and paranoid than anything we’ve heard before.

Rubio claims, in essence, that the “mainstream media,” rather than trying to undermine a Republican frontrunner in the good, old-fashioned liberal way, are now deliberately supporting one—with the devious purpose of precipitating a general Republican defeat in November.  For this fantastical idea to be true, a conspiracy of cosmic proportions and gargantuan guile would be required.

There are two problems with this airy-fairy tale:

To begin with, the news media, however liberal they may or may not be, are quite  simply incapable of hatching such a clever and convoluted plot.  They aren’t that smart, and they certainly aren’t that organized.

More consequentially, even if the news media were capable of such a plot, they would have no interest in pursuing it, because their purported “liberal bias” is merely another in a long list of paranoid Republican distractions and delusions.

The most fervent and feverish right-wingers in the Republican Party can’t quite get their heads around the possibility that responsible people, even “liberal” people, are capable of distinguishing between personal opinions and professional obligations; may be willing to assess evidence objectively; and might, just might, feel obligated to present such evidence without prejudice or parti pris.  Their difficulty in accepting such possibilities reflects the pathetic depth of their partisan delusions.

It is, nevertheless, quite likely that journalists, as a group, are more liberal than not—“likely,” rather than “certain,” because, after decades of study, there is no certain evidence on the matter.

There is, however, a bucketload of evidence indicating that most better-educated people hold “liberal” political and social views.  Indeed, the more educated people are, the more “liberal” they are likely to be.  In this regard, journalists are probably no different from anybody else.

The political views of journalists, in any event, are of little consequence.  What truly matters are the views of their bosses.  They are the people who set the tone, write the checks, and have the power to hire and fire.

Those who own or run our country’s largest media corporations—the broadcast television networks, the cable companies, local television and radio stations, the newspapers—are much slipperier customers than the journalists they employ.   To the extent such people have any actual “political” views, their views are overwhelmingly conservative, but those views are a distant second to their monetary interests.

The national television business is now dominated by five corporations.  Together, these behemoths control 90 percent of everything we see on television.  The people who run or own these companies, with few exceptions, donate far more to Republican than to Democratic political candidates.  These people are perfectly willing to pay lip-service to the liberal causes that have special resonance in Hollywood—gay rights, transgender rights, abortion rights, and the rest—but their ultimate priorities are their own bottom lines and bank accounts.

Fewer than a dozen national corporations now own most of the supposedly “local” television and radio stations in the country.   With few exceptions, the people who run these companies are right-wing—many of them, aggressively so—and they donate far more to Republican than to Democratic political candidates.

The sad shambles of what is left of the newspaper business is now dominated by five national corporations, which own more than half the major newspapers in the country and account for nearly half the daily circulation.  The executives and owners of these corporations are almost without exception case diehard Republicans, a reality that is reflected not only in their political contributions but also in the editorial pages of their newspapers.

Marco Rubio’s complaint about “media bias” can thus be dispensed with as the fantasy that it truly is.  If the media have any bias, it certainly isn’t “liberal.”  Indeed, it has nothing whatever to do with politics.

If there was ever any doubt on that score, it was laid to rest a couple of weeks ago by a man named Les Moonves, the Chairman of CBS.

Let me say that I once worked for CBS, and my view of Les Moonves is, to put it mildly, jaundiced.  In an industry richly populated by overpaid and overrated egotists, he squats at the top of the dungheap.  That said, in an address to a media and technology conference in San Francisco, Moonves inadvertently let the cat out of the bag.  Speaking of Donald Trump’s candidacy, he blurted:

It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS… The money’s rolling in, and this is fun… I’ve never seen anything like this, and this is going to be a very good year for us.  Sorry.  It’s a terrible thing to say, but bring it on, Donald.  Keep going.

There, in a boast of chilling candor, you have all you need to know about the bias of the media: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”  The real “media bias” in our country has less nothing to do with patriotism or even politics.  It has everything to do with money—which, for the Republicans who run out largest media companies, amounts to the same thing.