Reply #12: Because that's the way they've always done it... [View All]

[JHB]

From nearly 20 years ago...

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Extra! July/August 1990

TV's Imposters
Television's Political Spectrum

By Jeff Cohen


The power to define the political spectrum is an awesome one -- determining who gets to speak and who gets censored, which positions gain currency and which go unheard. On television, this power is largely in conservative hands. Accordingly, those who hold daily or weekly positions as political analysts on television run from right to center; the most prominent talking heads are all white males. The public is not even hearing policy recommendations from a significant segment of the body politic.

The American left is virtually unspoken for by America's talking headmen. While leading right-wing and centrist pundits could be picked out of a lineup by any politically inclined citizen who owns a TV set, the same cannot be said about leading progressive advocates -- many of whom are women and people of color.
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Those who hold down television's left wing don't deny that TV's spectrum has a conservative slant. On a Crossfire episode (1/23/90), "left" host Michael Kinsley conceded: "I may be a liberal but there is no way...that I'm as far left as Pat Buchanan is right. There's no way Mark Shields is as left as you are right. There's no way Al Hunt is as far left as Bob Novak is right. These shows are biased from the conservative way."

Conservative activists would feel voiceless if the right was represented on TV talk shows by moderate Republicans sympathetic to the likes of Lowell Weicker or Robert Packwood. Which is why progressive activists -- whether from peace, ecology, women's rights, labor, civil rights, gay rights or other movements -- feel unrepresented on TV by folks like Kinsley, Shields and Hunt.

It highlights another difference between TV's right and TV's left: The Patrick Buchanans and Robert Novaks are on the air trying to win viewers to the conservative movement. Does anyone believe that Al Hunt of the Wall Street Journal is trying to win recruits for the left? Or that Mark Shields is? Biographical material provided by Shields' office emphatically denies any identification with the left: "Mark Shields is free of any political tilt."
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The Red Scare of the 1950s gave birth to a fast-rising right-wing movement, the John Birch Society. Its rise was aborted when the society's leader, Robert Welch, made a statement that was deemed so outrageous by the media establishment as to place the Birchers beyond the pale of respectable discourse: Welch called President Dwight Eisenhower a "Communist dupe."

In December 1987 Howard Phillips, the head of the Conservative Caucus, made a statement that topped Welch's for absurdity: Ronald Reagan had become a "useful idiot for Kremlin propaganda." But instead of ridiculing or repudiating him, the media rewarded Phillips with regular access to America's biggest news outlets, including the opinion page of the New York Times (12/11/87).
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Full article at
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1566

Check out the FAIR archives for more items on this and related subjects since the mid-80's (good source for pre-Web coverage).
http://www.fair.org/