Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Media bias: Where's Romney? Where's Ryan?

Have you noticed how Romney and Ryan fallen off the face of the earth recently? Where have they gone? If media coverage is to be trusted, they have virtually disappeared from public life; which is to say, why are they not being covered? They were candidates in this election, last time I checked. Perhaps the media don't consider them news worthy? Or perhaps as the major branch of the White House Press Office, they don't wish to offer exposure to the 'other side'?

Fox covered the RNC and gave predictable exposure to the event, highlighting not only Romney and Ryan, but all sorts of other figures. Remember how the mainstream media neglected to cover these Republican minority speakers, blacks, Latinos, women and others who don't fit the typical leftist stereotypes of political "conservatives"? Stereotypes indeed. Kinda reminds me of how NPR used to choose individuals with the most pronounced Southern hillbilly accents to interview as representatives of politically conservative views; just like they promote individuals with BBC English accents to underscore the urbane sophistication of their pet left-wing views.

Which reminds me: did any of you hear that hour-long feature on NPR that was aired on the evening of September 16th on the subject "Does NPR have a liberal bias?" I listened to it driving home from a recent out-of-state trip, and it was the most entertaining hour of the drive. The show featured prominently the analysis of This American Life show host, Ira Glass, who agonized over the question ad infinitum, unable to draw the simple conclusion that is beyond obvious to any Joe Sixpack.

One of the most amusing descriptions I have seen of the left-wing media is that which ex-Marxist philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre offers in his book, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? when he called the New York Times “that parish magazine of affluent and self-congratulatory liberal enlightenment." Most philosophers know, at least, that there is no point of view from nowhere. Everyone has pre-theoretical commitments, and everyone has a perspective. And when representatives of NPR themselves admit that the vast majority, if not all, of their employees are political liberals, it should come as no surprise that they are as trendy-lefty as they are blind-sighted to their own bias. Go figure.

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