According to this article by Peter Nowak, mainstream media outlets do not treat video games the same as they do television and film.
I can believe it, although I think it is changing now. I remember when Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 broke all kinds of sales records in its debut, one could see the press realizing this was a serious medium.
The bad thing is that the sorts of games that set these records are generally not the sort that show the medium at its artistic best. But it is a start.
I see that Sean Hannity had a special show last night documenting the alleged “history of the liberal media”. This is a key element in the Republican story of recent history. In fact, I think it is something of a deus ex machina in that story.
Television news–excluding Fox News, obviously–is dominated by liberals. I’m willing to admit that, actually. But note that I say “dominated by”, not “biased in favor of”. This may seem somewhat strange, but I think that while most individual journalists lean towards liberalism, particularly social liberalism, they try to keep their biases in check. (I suspect that that’s the first thing they teach you in journalism school.)
It is my belief that, rather than creating a liberal bias in the media, this concentration of liberalism has the effect of making a conservatives a type of entity which the media covers with uncomprehending interest. If “familiarity breeds contempt”, as the old line goes, then unfamiliarity has bred a kind of fascination.
The press in general tends to display their liberalism not, as you might expect, by always deriding or marginalizing conservatives, but by treating them as if they are some exotic type of creature they have never seen before. They react, not with outrage, but with surprise and curiosity when they hear a conservative spout some standard talking point.
For example, last year then-Senate Candidate Rand Paul said that he liked the 1964 Civil Rights Act insofar as it desegregated public places, but was uncomfortable with it desegregating private ones. This is a fairly typical libertarian position, but the press reacted like they’d never heard it. They did not smear Paul as a racist, however, despite what some people might say.
They reacted with a general lack of understanding and a realization that this was controversial. They knew this wasn’t what they all believed about the Civil Rights Act, and so they were just sort of puzzled.
This process repeats itself on issue after issue. Liberal journalists simply do not know that much about Conservatives, and so always cover them with a curiosity and, oftentimes, interest. In fact, while their coverage is not always glowing, I believe it may provide the Conservatives with an advantage in terms of getting their issues covered.
Incidentally, Eric Alterman wrote a very interesting book called What Liberal Media? that examined some of these issues. The book has a lot of flaws, particularly in just how broadly Alterman is willing to define “bias”, and obviously he’s a liberal himself; but it’s still one of the better books I’ve read on the topic.
It occurred to me that the discrepancy in the reactions to Hayward’s yacht race and Obama’s golfing may not be due to media bias or anything like that. It may just boil down to good old-fashioned charisma.
Obama has tons of charisma, Hayward… not so much. And when you’re charismatic, you can get away with things like that.
The AP: “New orders for most durable goods rise“.
The Wall Street Journal: “Durable-Goods Orders Tumble“.
This video has been getting a lot of attention today. Since I’ve been discussing the reasons for the Tea Party a lot lately, I thought I’d address it.
Much is made of the fact that the Tea Party members shown here are apparently unaware of the fact that their taxes are at present slightly lower.
Well, the obvious response must first point out that if anybody at this event did give a reasonable discourse on, for example, Ricardian Equivalence, it wouldn’t make this video, because of its makers’ stated agenda. Secondly, it must be pointed out he interviewed so few people that it’s hard to call it a significant sample. Lastly, most people become flustered when asked to speak on camera, and tend to babble a little. So, the bias of the piece makes it rather difficult to have any faith that we are getting a real representation of the Tea Party.
That isn’t to say that the video is worthless–the search for completely unbiased reporting is in any case, I think, quixotic. The bits that document the rehearsed performances and speeches are pretty effective in showing them to be rather silly. (As are similar things at Left-wing rallies, I’ll bet.) I found Lord Monckton’s little rallying cry about Fox News anchors to be fairly Orwellian.
Overall, I’d say it’s a useful piece of footage to some extent, but by no means should people go judging the Tea Party by it.
But, of course, that’s not the headline. You have to read almost the whole article to find out how many of the enemy were killed.
This, in my opinion, is putting the most negative spin possible on the situation.
Over at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Journalism, Alicia Colon wonders if George W. Bush is the most reviled President ever. She says she hasn’t done enough research yet. I can help her there.
No, he isn’t. Neither is Lincoln, as she speculates. It’s Richard M. Nixon.
Why, you ask? Because he’s almost the picture in the dictionary next to anti-charisma.
As I have said, almost everyone seems to think the media is against them. However, as far as news media and Journalism is concerned, this charge has been obsolete since, at the latest, 2004. The internet has enabled people to easily access propaganda for any viewpoint they want. This is one argument many people made a few years ago, when there were rumors of a revival of the so-called “Fairness doctrine”. You don’t need any one News source to be unbiased when you have thousands of News sources that cater to various ideological, religious, or whatever persuasions.
Now, this is true for News sources and journalism. But the argument I would expect (especially from Conservatives.) is that this is only the tip of the iceberg. The argument is this: It’s more than just journalism that is biased, it is all forms of entertainment. For example, witness the Conservative anger at the film “Avatar”. That entire site exists because conservatives believe that Hollywood is biased heavily against them, with the vast majority of films containing messages and morals that are contrary to their worldview, and, more importantly, brainwash audiences in the same way.
All of this sounds extremely reasonable, (I have not researched it, but I personally suspect that, broadly speaking, movies have a bias that is generally liberal.) I can put my own political commentary on the internet with ease, but I am not, as of this writing, capable of producing a special-effects laden adventure film to advance my views. And really, which would you rather see?
So, if we extend the definition of media to include fiction movies, novels, non-political, non-news television shows, music, stage performances and video games, we may be getting somewhere. After all, if all this is biased against you, what chance do you really have?
Except the internet defeats even that. Think about Big Hollywood again: if you don’t like what you see in any of these entertainment forms, you go there and get to read people who agree, and see what they recommend as good entertainment for the conservative mind.
Furthermore, I question the idea that people can be brainwashed by simply placing messages like this in entertainment media; I think audiences are not given enough credit by those believe that the mere presence of such biases can persuade them to change political views.
To be continued…
