When conservatives of the 1970s and ‘80s claimed that the media were biased against them, they weren’t entirely wrong, but they misunderstood the origin of that bias, and Fox News was the eventual result.
That was more or less the argument on Friday from Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall, who acknowledged that during the period in question, mainstream media types typically shared certain “cosmopolitan assumptions” which “generally align[ed] more with liberalism than conservatism” and which “shape[d] coverage in significant ways.” In other words, there was liberal bias, but it was inadvertent.
According to Marshall, though, since right-wingers like to see themselves as victims, they took news coverage that favored liberals as a deliberate attack on them and their values. “Many conservatives,” wrote Marshall, “genuinely believed that most people in media were and are little different from Democratic political operatives writing propaganda. So when they went to create ‘their’ media, that's basically what they created, a propaganda network.”
From Marshall’s post (emphasis added):
Sarah Palin and her daughter Bristol have now spoken out about their notorious boozy family brawl, recasting Bristol's attack on the event's host as a morality tale about violence against women and media bias...[Sarah] Palin is the ultimate avatar of base Republican culture since she views herself as an eternal victim, with all the grievance and resentment that entails…
But this is actually a common tendency on the right with issues of gender, race and much else…
Conservatives routinely accuse liberals of jumping to accusations of racism or sexism with no cause or when other explanations are equally plausible. And sometimes they're right. But it has always been the case that the self same people are the first to scream sexism or racism in cases where it is demonstrably false…
In very broad terms, the origin of Fox News is analogous. Conservatives in the '70s and '80s looked at the mainstream media and saw it as liberal and against them. That was largely bogus but not entirely. The mid-late 20th century elite 'media' did generally buy into a series of cosmopolitan assumptions about public and private life. That worldview generally aligns more with liberalism than conservatism, but the two are by no means identical. And this did shape coverage in significant ways. But many conservatives genuinely believed that most people in media were and are little different from Democratic political operatives writing propaganda. So when they went to create "their" media, that's basically what they created, a propaganda network. The reality is as much a matter of genuine misperception as bad faith, though it's both and together they make for a toxic brew. But again, if you see these issues as just a cudgel that people hit each other with, it's easy to say things that are basically nonsense. Because who cares? None of it means anything anyway.
