Media Influence Demoralizes Culture

In response to a letter from a friend who critiques Michael Medved's evaluation of media bias. Michael's column is linked in the title of this post.

The basic assertion is that Michael is wrong and that news purveyors are only giving news consumers what they want.

I disagree...

We all understand that news agencies and corporations need to make money and are in competition for viewer/readership.

If you want to say that consumers drive news I have no problem with that as long as you can define news effectively for me and as long as you consider the various factors that affect their choices.

If you define news the way I would, you would have to give it the value of neutrality. News, like ‘data’, is anemic. It only derives value based on context. It is animated and made dynamic by the purveyor’s rhetoric and the consumer’s pre-existing disposition.

The persuasion of rhetoric can be so subtle in news it seems even you have fallen prey. A glowing adjective to describe the ‘committed’ relationship of a gay couple here (though contrary to statistical analysis), a repugnant adjective describing the ‘debacle’ of a war there; this dogma dropped often enough in the casual parlance of newspeak is enough to convince those out of touch with decorum that they have accepted these as truths, or at least ought to.

It is in this way that Old Media, which includes Hollywood and its influence, defines culture. It is through consistent redefinition of liberal culture that the consumer, without alternatives, acquiesces, his old morals replaced is obliged to accept the new.

Like it or not, the bias exists and exists for ‘progressive’ thought and against conservative thought.

Consumers drive the news only with respect to acceptability (see previously - ‘pre-existing disposition’), and cultural acceptability is driven by media if you partake and lack principled perspective, and personal morality and historical context if you do not.

The introduction of greater and greater levels of negativity and pessimism (not to mention perversity, licentiousness and a prevalent disrespect for refinement) degrades democratic society through news outlets and television programming in general.

It should be apparent that it is the views of the ‘newsmen’ that drive cultural positions to the extent that the culture is unprepared or unwilling to recognize or reason an alternative.

I can state a myriad of examples where this is the case, but the most obvious is the Iraq war. According to the media, consistently and verifiably pacifist, this war is a failed policy. But would the public view it as such if the reporting were not so defeatist, or perhaps were even sometimes optimistic?

Briefly, I think you underestimate its influence. If ‘news’ were to reject the current trend of vulgarity and champion the ideas that make society more principled, refined and virtuous, the consumer would accept them wholeheartedly.