MSM bias: "Everybody knows ..."

As I have pointed out innumerable times (for example HERE), the media reacts badly when it's errors are exposed. A story that is wrong or misleading is a defective product, no different from a defective car or any other consumer item. In fact, a defective press report can be quite a bit more harmful than a defective car - since "lemons" typically affect few people while erroneous press reports have been known to cause wars and kill large numbers of people. We have to go no further back than the "Koran in the toilet story" (HERE, HERE, HERE) that led to global rioting and the death of a reported 17 people.

Reminiscent of the worst of American businessmen of 40 years ago, media executives react with denial or silence, waiting for the outrage to subside so that they can continue doing what they have been doing and the public be damned.

So what causes the media industry to continue to produce massively defective products, seemingly undeterred by exposure of their defects? An instructive article (see headline link) provides one explanation: "The Conventional Wisdom" among among the mostly Liberal inhabitants of the media cocoon.

Thus, whatever liberals generally believe at any given time can be understood to function as conventional wisdom within the media. "Everybody knows" that Bush is stupid, that Cheney is a fascist warmonger, and that the GOP is under the control of neocons, Halliburton and "Christianists." Most of all, "everybody knows" that the war in Iraq is another Vietnam -- a "quagmire" in need of "an exit strategy."

It's Heaven's Gate, you see? Cult members knew that there was a spaceship behind that comet, because one could not believe otherwise and remain a member. To the extent that they actually studied the facts about the Hale-Bopp comet (and they were fairly obsessed with it), they did so only with the purpose of finding "evidence" to confirm the unquestionable belief. And this backward way of thinking is deeply related to group psychology.

[snip]

If AP's editors have been hoodwinked for months by reporters passing along insurgent propaganda from "Police Captain" Jamil Hussein, what does this tell us about those editors, and what does it tell us about the institutional agenda of the Associated Press? If the AP is not a reliable news organization, but is instead just another MSM outfit devoted to disseminating liberal talking-points ...

Well, "everybody knows" that can't be the case, right? And this is how transparently partisan Democrats in the media like Couric and Rather can claim that there is no bias in their reporting: They operate within organizations that exclude and marginalize conservatives, while promoting and celebrating liberals. Belief is good, disbelief is bad.

In such an organization, the conventional wisdom of liberalism is not bias, it is merely what "everybody knows."

To extend the auto industry vs. the media industry analogy one step further, think of the Internet as the Japanese auto industry 50 years ago. At first, people laughed. But some bought because it was different and cheap. Then the word spread that Japanese cars were not only cheaper, they were better! And Detroit was in a life and death struggle. It took a while, but the American auto industry is now on it's last legs.

The past is prologue.

At this point, the media executives are still in a state of denial. Seeing the competition, they have begun publishing their product on-line. But it's still the same defective product - demonstrably so. And many in the media orbit are so committed to their ideological preferences that the business results don't seem to faze them. The share prices of the major media companies have tanked. NY Times stock is off 50% since 2002. The Washington Post Company is down 30% since 2005. How long will the shareholders of these companies endure having their wealth squandered by the wealthy, and very Liberal, dilettantes running their companies for their personal enjoyment?

In a future post we will look a the ways that hereditary management is insulated from corporate democracy and what can be done about it.