Is the mass media moving to the right?

[buritobr]

I don´t know what is happening in other countries.

In Brazil (my country), the owners of the big media conglomerates had always been right-wing, but even though, there was a diversity of opinions in the 1990s. Newspapers and magazines owned by right-wing businessmen had right-wing and left-wing columninsts. Since the mid 2000s, the average opinion of newspapers, magazines, TV and websites of newspapers and magazines has been moving further to the right. "Diversity" nowadays means center-right and far-right columnists.

What I know about media from the other countries, the same is happening. El País (Spain) and Le Monde (France) were considered center-left newspapers in the past. Now we can describe them as just centrist. I heard that Spiegel (Germany) was a center-left magazine in the past. Nowadays, we can describe it as a center-right magazine.
In the last British election, all of the newspapers except The Guardian backed the Tories.

I was not born when the Vietnam War took place, but I learned that American media made a very critical coverage of the war. During the invasion of Iraq, it looked like that American journalists were soldiers.

[Ebsy]

No, they just all love to hate the Clintons.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Yup.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

In the UK, the media has always been London-focused and with the decline in regional, local and trade rags, this myopia has only got more pronounced. The media's tendency to promote talent from narrow pools (Oxbridge, a smattering of Russels, the elite public schools) also limits political diversity among the media's upper echelons. A lot of journalists simply don't understand the reality of being working-class, and the whole class is reduced to a few inane stereotypes.

Oh yes, and behind the scenes cost-cutting reduces journalism into true abuses of power, and replaces it with low-hanging fruit exposés into benefit fraud and PC gown mad silliness. Not to mention that ownership interests are increasingly openly trumping editorial staff (e.g. The corruption of The Times, New Labour's power grab in The New Statesman, the pernicous influence of new magnates like Lebedev and Dirty Des in their papers 2015 endorsements). The Albertan PC's also got in the act last election, showing their is a limit to press influence lol.

[dead0man]

If there is a thirst for left leaning media you don't have to look very hard to find it.  "traditional" media is dying anyway.

[DC Al Fine]

I think Crabcake hit the nail on the head. The media isn't strictly right wing. Rather, it reflects the biases of a relatively elite set of people. Socons are weeping their lack of influence just as much as leftists. In Canada, I don't find the media is overtly biased. In fact most journalists make a great effort to be neutral on partisan issues.

The problem is more with what the media views as newsworthy, where the stories all reflect the same Laurentian worldview (freeish markets, welfare state, socially liberal). I enjoy listening to The Current and it produces excellent journalism, but you'd never see them doing a story on refugee fraud, or questioning the capitalist basis of the pension system.

[ingemann]

I think Crabcake hit the nail on the head. The media isn't strictly right wing. Rather, it reflects the biases of a relatively elite set of people. Socons are weeping their lack of influence just as much as leftists. In Canada, I don't find the media is overtly biased. In fact most journalists make a great effort to be neutral on partisan issues.

The problem is more with what the media views as newsworthy, where the stories all reflect the same Laurentian worldview (freeish markets, welfare state, socially liberal). I enjoy listening to The Current and it produces excellent journalism, but you'd never see them doing a story on refugee fraud, or questioning the capitalist basis of the pension system.

Yup, the media tend have a rather pro-big business pro-social progressive views. This do put them in opposition to both social conservative and "lefties".

[publicunofficial]

Liberals are increasingly getting their news from "alternative" media. Websites, social media, specified blogs, ect. When the only people left watching cable news and buying newspapers are old white people, the media will change to reflect their views.

[angus]

I don´t know what is happening in other countries...

Interesting.  The mainstream media here consists of daily broadsheets, three oldschool television networks, and some newer all-news networks.  Certainly they're more liberal than they were when I was a child, but it's also true that they're more sensationalistic and more focused on two or three stories at one time.  I'm not sure that it's a move to the right, but more a move to the center, as they perceive the center.  Since the center has moved to the right, they do as well.  A liberal media is just that, liberal, i.e., free to move.  Since the informed population has moved away from blue-collar workers and toward a just-enough informed population to perform service-sector jobs, then it stands to reason that it might have moved to match them.  You'll remember that in the US, the jobs moved from chiefly repetitive, mind-numbing agro to repetetive mind-numbing manufacturing about 80 years ago, then from repetitive, mind-numbing manufacturing to repetitive, mind-numbing service about 25 years ago.  Now, we're in a new transition, just as in all other sectors when jobs became obsolete due to either outsourcing or automation, there's a shift in demographics.  I can't imagine what repetitive, mind-numbing jobs will appear next, unless those repetitive, mind-numbing jobs occur in information output.  That may very well be the case.  In that case, there may be a major trend away from the liberalism that characterized newsreporting toward a service-sector reporting which favors marketing of big stories.  Some evidence of that has been on display for at least 15 years.  I don't think of it so much as a move to the right as a move toward sensationalism.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Liberals are increasingly getting their news from "alternative" media. Websites, social media, specified blogs, ect. When the only people left watching cable news and buying newspapers are old white people, the media will change to reflect their views.

Right-wingers also can use the Internet. I know, it's gross.

[publicunofficial]

Liberals are increasingly getting their news from "alternative" media. Websites, social media, specified blogs, ect. When the only people left watching cable news and buying newspapers are old white people, the media will change to reflect their views.

Right-wingers also can use the Internet. I know, it's gross.

True, but in far less numbers than liberals.

[James Monroe]

Liberals are increasingly getting their news from "alternative" media. Websites, social media, specified blogs, ect. When the only people left watching cable news and buying newspapers are old white people, the media will change to reflect their views.

Right-wingers also can use the Internet. I know, it's gross.

True, but in far less numbers than liberals.

Not if you go on many news websites.

[publicunofficial]

Liberals are increasingly getting their news from "alternative" media. Websites, social media, specified blogs, ect. When the only people left watching cable news and buying newspapers are old white people, the media will change to reflect their views.

Right-wingers also can use the Internet. I know, it's gross.

True, but in far less numbers than liberals.

Not if you go on many news websites.

I've noticed conservatives comments are mostly on pages like Yahoo and MSN (Which are read by olds who don't know how to change their homepage in Internet Explorer) or the websites of cable news sites like CNN.com and Fox News.com (Which are read by olds who still watch cable news).

[DC Al Fine]

Liberals are increasingly getting their news from "alternative" media. Websites, social media, specified blogs, ect. When the only people left watching cable news and buying newspapers are old white people, the media will change to reflect their views.

Right-wingers also can use the Internet. I know, it's gross.

True, but in far less numbers than liberals.

Not if you go on many news websites.

This might be more regional than anything else. Commenters lean left in Canada except about immigration.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Liberals are increasingly getting their news from "alternative" media. Websites, social media, specified blogs, ect. When the only people left watching cable news and buying newspapers are old white people, the media will change to reflect their views.

Right-wingers also can use the Internet. I know, it's gross.

True, but in far less numbers than liberals.

Not if you go on many news websites.

This might be more regional than anything else. Commenters lean left in Canada except about immigration.

Perhaps commentators naturally gravitate against whoever is in power?

[DC Al Fine]

Liberals are increasingly getting their news from "alternative" media. Websites, social media, specified blogs, ect. When the only people left watching cable news and buying newspapers are old white people, the media will change to reflect their views.

Right-wingers also can use the Internet. I know, it's gross.

True, but in far less numbers than liberals.

Not if you go on many news websites.

This might be more regional than anything else. Commenters lean left in Canada except about immigration.

Perhaps commentators naturally gravitate against whoever is in power?

That's at least part of it. Canada & the USA are having elections in the next 18 month. It will be interesting to check out any changes if a party gets booted.

[courts]

I was not born when the Vietnam War took place, but I learned that American media made a very critical coverage of the war. During the invasion of Iraq, it looked like that American journalists were soldiers.

actually thats a huge myth, newspapers were very much for the vietnam war and anti protests. thats part of the reason why walter cronkite turning against the war was a big deal. the shift to being more critical occurred around the 1970s in general when it was pretty obviously a 'lost cause'

http://thevietnamwar.info/media-role-vietnam-war/


as to bias right now no not really. at least no on hot button social issues which is what really comes to mind when you say liberal/conservative to a lot of people. its not like the new york times or washington post is lambasting gay marriage

[RFayette]

Liberals are increasingly getting their news from "alternative" media. Websites, social media, specified blogs, ect. When the only people left watching cable news and buying newspapers are old white people, the media will change to reflect their views.

Right-wingers also can use the Internet. I know, it's gross.

True, but in far less numbers than liberals.

Not if you go on many news websites.

I've noticed conservatives comments are mostly on pages like Yahoo and MSN (Which are read by olds who don't know how to change their homepage in Internet Explorer) or the websites of cable news sites like CNN.com and Fox News.com (Which are read by olds who still watch cable news).

Plenty of Yahoo comments are liberal if the story is about unions, RTW, or income inequality.  It only really trends hard-core right-wing (and sometimes quite nasty) if it's about racial issues, rioting, or gays.  There are tons of libertarians on the Internet, however, and not just on random news articles.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

The media has been pretty right-wing for a while, but some have clearly been moving to the right, such as the LA Times.

[Phony Moderate]

Basically all mainstream media has a pro-establishment bias by its very nature.

[TJ in Oregon]

Not really, everyone else is just moving to the left.

[Mister Mets]

I think the American media has a center-left bias. So it's usually against the Republicans, but it will also be critical of less competent/ more extreme Democrats.

It may differ in other nations.

The majority of people in the American media industry would back Hillary Clinton over a Scott Walker or Marco Rubio, but HRC has a few problems with them. Some of it is a result of how she treats the media, but a major part of it is the difficulty of bullsh**tting in the modern era where it's so easy to factcheck and note contradictions.

[justfollowingtheelections]

The media (newspapers, tv networks etc.) have always been right wing because their owners are right wingers.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

I do think there are several key differences between the British and American media however, mainly partially because the "castes" that regiment our societies are different (America is more divided by racial separation; while lacking the paralytic and locked-in class structure of the UK) and also because (to my eyes) the U.S. has kept its state papers. There are only two true big national papers in the US: the USAToday (which partly owes its sucess by a symbiotically keeping local rags afloat) and the WSJ, which although NY focused (obviously) does not pretend to be anything else. The NYE and WaPo, probably the most nationally relevant regionals, do have that big city myopia, but, eh, it's on their damn names.

Although most of the other regional papers have lost influence, I believe they are still widely read. Aside from the Scotland rags, pretty much anything of remote interst to the British public is published in London. (Wales has a paper, but it's pretty dire).

Same with TV. Although British TV is undoubtedly more left-leaning and liberal than our papers (C4 is downright a anti-authoritarian) local coverage is basically treated as lip service.

[RRProgressive]

The media has always been on the right.