The dead monster under their bed

The "liberal media" thing was always bullshit, and now everyone knows it

© 2015 Emolchan1, used under a Creative Commons license

Maybe you saw this:

‘Washington Post’ editorials omit a key disclosure: Bezos’ financial ties

A year ago, in explaining why he had blocked the publication of an endorsement of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, Washington Post owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos conceded that “When it comes to the appearance of conflict, I am not an ideal owner of The Post.”

On at least three occasions in the past two weeks, an official Post editorial has taken on matters in which Bezos has a financial or corporate interest without noting his stake. In each case, the Post’s official editorial line landed in sync with its owner’s financial interests.

That you, dear reader, are certainly not (as no sentient being could be) surprised to hear this tells a lot by itself. But it also reminds me how threadbare the old rightwing swear-phrase “liberal media” has become.

Remember when it was popular — indeed ubiquitous? Seems to have gone out of fashion, hasn’t it?

CNN has noticed that ”the trope of ‘liberal media’ is finally dead,” as Allison Morrow observed in September:

President Donald Trump’s MAGA coalition are done crying about perceived bias. Even “fake news” has lost its bite. In his second term, Trump is taking his complaints straight to the source, siccing lawyers and regulators on outlets he sees as a threat (the New York Times, NPR), or allowing his billionaire supporters to wrest control of those he thinks he can jostle into compliance (CBS, Nexstar).

Even Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, while trotting out the tattered term itself the way a venerable manufacturer might stick a long-forgotten brand mascot in the corner of its ads, gloats that “Politico co-founder [Jim VandeHei] says liberal media have reached a low point: ‘Never been weaker in my lifetime.’”

Politico, now owned by the rightwing Axel Springer, is more like what actually rules media.

The ancient wheeze still has a few other adherents. You’ll see it used at outlets that don’t even pretend to be anything other than rightwing glurge-spouts, such as Newsmax, which will tell you how “Eric Trump rips liberal media’s freak-out over WH ballroom.” But thanks to Trump’s purge of Prestige Press outlets from government news briefings, and their replacement by ideologically friendly outlets like, well, Newsmax, the idea that the papers and networks conservatives liked to portray as liberal are the “establishment” has become even harder to believe.

The whole Goldurn Liberal Media (or GLM) routine goes back many decades — back to the New Deal, really, as the University of Alabama’s A.J. Bauer has found in his studies (and his upcoming book promises to be invaluable on the topic). The idea behind it is that if people learn about conservative actions and policies and it makes them dislike those actions and policies — as with, e.g., conservative opposition to the civil rights movement — it cannot be organic or even the result of countervailing winning arguments, but rather must be because some editorial star chamber filled their papers and newscasts with dishonest lefty propaganda.

I remember the GLM trope recurring throughout my younger years but only started to give it something like critical attention during the Bush Administration (though the Clinton Administration — especially Hillary’s invocation of a “vast right-wing conspiracy,” much-mocked at the time but in hindsight right on the money — gave me a broad hint).

Back then GLM was still a reliable if risible rightwing reflex, and it was parroted so often by conservative media types that it did a number on soft-headed Prestige Press types, who felt they had to give it respect or at least the journalistic equivalent of a pity fuck. When Jonah Goldberg complained after Jerry Falwell’s ravings about Tinky-Wink in 2007 that “the liberal media loves — loves! — casting evangelicals as sexually hung up prudes,” I’m sure even some sensible reporters were abashed because, after all, evangelicals were obvious clowns with no impact on national politics and it seemed unfair to pick on them. Of course, now that evangelicals’ viciously reactionary, indeed fascist, politics are a major force in Republican politics, the forgotten jibes of some coastal news editors hardly seem like the problem there.

Some of you may recall Ole Perfesser Instapundit used to have an “OH, THAT LIBERAL MEDIA” tag, displayed frequently when someone was mean to, for instance, the Young Conservatives of Texas. Google it now: He doesn’t use it much anymore.

In the Obama era, the GLM industry couldn’t miss — if the Prestige Press covered the success of his campaigns and his governance, it was proof that they were in the tank; if the Prestige Press criticized him, they could join the pile-on and tell you “see, eventheliberal [your media outlet here] agrees!”

In the Trump era it all came a-cropper, and today it’s just comical. What major media outlet could conceivably be said to carry the bag for anything even vaguely leftist? CBS News? (Or for that matter any of their non-Bari-Weiss led competitors?) Or the New York Times, whose strained editorial locutions normalizing Trump, whether noticed by the New York Times Pitchbot or Yours Truly, are legendary? Or, ha ha ha ha, the Washington Post?

Deep in wingnut media boiler rooms you will you find some faithful hearts still tasked with GLM boogeyman surveillance. For example, a site that back in the old days was called “TimesWatch” (meaning NYT, and featuring stories like “Times Promotes Laughable Lefty Authors”) now redirects to a “New York Times” section of the Media Research Center website, where they tell undoubtedly perplexed readers that the Times is soft on things they are absolutely not soft on — like “Pro-Hamas Protesters,” for example, though in fact the paper not only is very obviously pro-Israel but also has been remarkably blind to that nation’s war crimes against the Palestinians, as Palestinian advocates and anyone who pays attention will know.

Yet the GLM industry, though much reduced, grinds on, not because it’s convincing anybody but because, for one thing, it’s all they know how to do and, for another, donors who pumped them full of cash for decades because they supplied useful propaganda for the cause now keep funding them almost sentimentally, as a tonic for the troops and as a rewarding sinecure for services rendered.

Or maybe I’m wrong about that — maybe their role is to keep the equity warm, so to speak, for when and if the whole MAGA con game collapses and the Prestige Press feels emboldened to stop pulling its punches, at which time conservatives will switch back to their traditional persecution mania.