The Mainstream Media's Political Labeling

I have for some years now been writing about the mainstream media's biases, and the ways in which its business, professional and ideological imperatives determine its particular approach to "informing the public." For the purposes of this post two aspects of that are of importance. One is their taking an exceedingly limited view of what counts as a legitimate source of information or opinion, identifying as such the holders of high office, or simply great wealth, and the elite and "Establishment" in general, as they contemptuously ignore everyone else--like social activists, independent experts and whistleblowers. The other aspect is how this deference to the Establishment leads to their usually "one siding" their coverage of the issues, while on those occasions when there is a conflict among those they see as legitimate what is at issue is usually a matter of minor disagreements among those who are elite and Establishment--as seen in the disagreement between those who simply don't intend to do anything really serious about the reality of climate change and so gull the public with greenwashing, talk of carbon footprint, etc., and those who want to make it an outright thoughtcrime to point out the existence of climate change--to which said media respond with the ignorant or cynical presentation of the particular form of "false balance" that is their "both sidesism."

As said favoritism toward "Establishment" sources of information, and elite opinion, suggests, the mainstream media, which is in its intellectual premises not at all liberal in any meaningful sense but rather deeply conservative in the manner describable as centrism, shows great interest in what the right thinks, says and does, and affords it an abundant platform, while doing the opposite with the left. Consider, for example, how after the shock of the 2016 presidential election a New York Times which had never been lacking in right-wing writers, declared that they needed to get more of them in the name of more fully representing the spectrum of opinion and providing a better understanding of what is going on in the country in its pages, and snarled at its disapproving readers that they were being "intolerant," in the way exemplified by their justification of their hiring notorious right-wing troll Bret Stephens, and defending his beginning his tenure at the Times with a piece of climate denialism passing off his accustomed political hackwork as thoughtful "skepticism." By contrast, even with the media panicking over socialist, "Communist," even "Marxist" sympathies (they say) spreading like wildfire among the country's population one does not see the Times, in the name of the principle they cited when excusing their hire of Stephens, going out to enlist even a single genuine left-wing columnist, do we? Especially when we think of "left" as not meaning the likes of Abundance peddler Ezra Klein but rather people who use terms like "surplus labor value?"

Quite naturally the media's double standard in regard to right and left extends to their use of political labels in relation to political figures, parties, tendencies, objects, and of course, ideas. Labeling, pursued rigorously, entails at least the possibility of examination, scrutiny, classification, alienation in the Shklovsky-Brecht sense of making us really see what is in front of us, and enable us to think critically about it, rather than taking it for granted and passively acquiescing in it. All activities of the mind to which the centrist is ill-disposed as such because of their (characteristically conservative) suspicion of critical thought in the social sphere and encouragement of "the masses" in it, it is consistent with this that they show great circumspection about so much as simply identifying the right as the right. Moreover, when they do countenance labeling they consistently label very gently. Thus will they never say "reactionary," or "fascist," however accurate a descriptor those terms may be, never going further than "arch-conservative," with even that a rarity, "conservative" more common as they call many a conservative a "liberal" (as indeed they tend to do when they refer to centrists like themselves). Moreover, they are prepared to take issue with anyone who would characterize those personages in any other way. Should someone merely call a "conservative" who does not desire to be labeled a "conservative" that the media (however much that desire smacks of tactical posturing) are apt to regard the denial sympathetically, and start splitting hairs about the meaning of the term as they set the bar for what would count someone as being a "conservative" very, very high indeed. ("Yes, they never met an upper-class tax cut they didn't like, yes they want to privatize Social Security, yes they cheerlead for every war, but twenty years ago they voted against an anti-gay measure. Feel stupid calling them conservative now, don't cha?")

In the process the media does a great deal to make the ideas of the right a taken for granted part of the mainstream discourse, and indeed the conventional wisdom of that discourse if not axiomatic for the right-thinking, be the issue the hazily libertarian economic ideas that led John Kenneth Galbraith to coin the term "conventional wisdom" in the first place (e.g. business is a maker, government a taker); the view that income and wealth are the measure of wisdom, virtue, accomplishment, worthiness, and people of a higher social class accordingly "better" and "more important" than those from a lower one ; those not so favored have no one and nothing to blame but themselves for their lowliness; those in charge are "smarter" than everyone else (unless they didn't do what the oligarchs want, in which case the correct response is contempt or worse); and the unquestionability of respect for, and obscenity of disrespect for, their valorization of those things they refer to as "faith," "family" and "patriotism"; etc..

By contrast the same media are rather less squeamish about pinning labels on the left and what it presents to the public, with the opposite effect, prompting scrutiny and alienation and criticism and non-acquiescence, all as, indeed, they accommodate those who resort to pejorativeness, wariness, tactical hyperbole against the left. Thus as those of the mainstream media reflexively attack anyone who lays a charge of fascism against anyone on the right, and even require one to think carefully before they use so comparatively mild a term as "conservative," they accord a free pass to the right's sloppiest, most exaggerated, most scare-mongering use of terms for their enemies such as "socialist," "Marxist" or "Communist," never calling them out for the tactic. (Just as in the view of conservatives like themselves "ideology" is a sin exclusive to the left, so is the use of "political language," the center not calling out the right for its choice political language.) The double standard is the more provocative, and consequential, because however inconvenient some on the right many find it to be labeled right-wingers for their purposes, in a political milieu where the left has so much been treated as outside the bounds of legitimacy, its speech outside the bounds of that political speech which is protected, are much more easily put on the defensive by it, and their denials rather less likely to be respected. ("Are you now or have you ever been . . .") In the process just as the media does a great deal to make the ideas of the right conventional wisdom, indeed normal, they make the ideas of the left, about economic life, about human equality and the rights of the many to control over their own lives, about skepticism toward faith, family and patriotism, etc., seem strange and threatening and out of bounds, thoroughly "de-normalizing" them.

The double standard is built into their centrist brand of conservatism which, behind the bad faith deployment of the horseshoe theory, fundamentally sees the right as legitimate, so much so that it will almost never declare even extreme rightists beyond the pale (falling all over itself to interview, profile, platform them instead, even putting in a good word for the Andrew Tates now and then) as it turns a hard face to even the mildly leftish, because its whole way of thinking is fundamentally illegitimate according to their conceptions. Accordingly no one who would call out the double standard is likely to be allowed anywhere near their platforms, while even if they did allow them they would be befuddled at the challenge--precisely because the distinction between an almost entirely legitimate right and an inherently illegitimate left is so foundational to what passes for thought with them that, the more in as we are a long way from the days when the center displayed the intellectualism of an Arthur Schlesinger or Daniel Bell, they would simply lack the words in which to explain their view, let alone present anything that could be called reasoning in its defense.