The (Insert Word Here) Media

I wonder what the first word that comes to mind for most people when they read "The (insert) Media." I would not be surprised if the adjective of choice for many is the word liberal. We have heard the expression, over and over again, "The Liberal Media."

This phrase was first used by the Nixon Administration but honed to perfection by Ronald Reagan. Like most expressions, if used long enough, with great persistence, and some nice anecdotes, people begin to believe it is true.

There are newspapers that tend to swing to the left; but most of them have conservative columnists in them. There are newspapers that swing to the right, but many of them have more liberal columnists in them. There are also news organizations that deliberately come, repeatedly, from one direction.

The newspaper which was begun by the Unification Church, aka, "The Moonies," The Washington Times, is consistently biased to the right. Anyone who believes that Fox News is fair and balanced is eligible for a bridge deal in Brooklyn.

But the phrase, "The Liberal Media," still seems to reign as the king of media phrases.

One must be cautious on how one uses the word 'liberal' in these instances.

When one media organization chose to honor those who had been killed in Iraq by reading their names on the air, this was seen as a liberal venture. Acknowledging and honoring the memory of people who have died in a war is not liberal or conservative, it's human. If being human is 'liberal,' wow.

Conversely, when reports came out on policy changes in the Justice Department that made it have very different policies from the past, this was seen as 'liberal' when all they did was report the differences. What one does with facts can move in any direction, but facts are facts. Considering, however, that we enjoy living more in an anecdotal culture than a factual culture, this is not a surprise.

People who read Time or Newsweek and see them as part of the liberal media, frankly, don't know what they are talking about. Someday read The Nation or Mother Jones or The Utne Reader and you'll read real liberal media and you will realize that Time and Newsweek are not that.

The word I would really insert, however, is the word lazy.

The lead in to the war demonstrated complete laziness and capitulation by the Democrats who went along with everything and the media which never really did getting around to asking difficult questions.

The lead up to Katrina was another prime example. The President was on vacation and it was obvious that the Mayor of New Orleans was clueless and the Governors of Louisiana and Mississippi were clueless. A catastrophe was looming and the media didn't really seem to have much impetus to cry out. In fairness, they did become very effective on the ground in New Orleans and it was their reporting of the horrors within the city that finally prompted action.

The media, in my mind, does have a responsibility. They are the questioners of power. The very reason that the Founding Fathers of this nation demanded freedom of the press was that they knew that leaders who had no accountability would become tyrants and/or incompetent fools. When the media is too lazy to do their job, we are all the poorer for it.

I don't believe that it's true because, frankly, much of the media is more lazy than it is liberal or conservative.