Why do conervatives think American media is liberal, and the rest of the West thinks we are very conservative?

Question

I saw an interview with Ann Coulter on a British TV show recently, and she was all but laughed out of the room for suggesting American media is liberal. This is the thought in England, one of the more conservative nations in Europe. So why do conservatives buy into the whole "liberal media" ?

Answer 1

Because American liberals are to the right of most of the world. The US is a conservative country -- our "liberals" are just the least conservative of the bunch.

There can be an argument made that within the scope of US politics, some US media is indeed liberal. But on a world stage, it's almost all right-wing.

Answer 2

American news media without a doubt does not have a liberal bias. The reason conservatives think it does is because they see the editorial page in the big newspapers - NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times, etc... and because the editorials are usually liberal they assume that they don't have the integrity to report news in an unbiased way. This was then projected onto TV news like CNN without a shred of evidence to support the claim. The reality is - TV news has an obvious pro-American bias, while print news usually is fairly unbiased. I don't consider any media outlet to be purposely biased other than Fox News.

The real problem is that the news usually refutes what conservatives are saying, and this upsets them.

Answer 3

People are told over and over again that the media is liberal .
Forget the fact that police shootings ,murdered suspects ,beatings of retired school teachers ,happen all the time . t
The media sanctions and approves of this behavior by the police .
It also does not support any candidate that does not meet the profile of what media in general supports .
How can you be soft on crime .Its a no brainier unless you look at the people affected by morals laws that have a million Americans behind bars .
This is an intolerant society that accepts kick down the door of a 92 year old woman's door is acceptable and then killing her for shooting at plain closed officers .
A cop killer shot 68 times with over 100 rounds fired .
This gets media attention but in a positive light .
I watched the news where several cops had been sending porno e-mails to hundreds of officers. These police officials had rank and the investigation took nearly 10 years . this is all that was reported along with they could receive a permanent mark on there record . The investigation took Long enough for all of them to reach pension age and for three new laws that lowered the penalties officers face on charges like this . The media did not carry this information it was uncovered by a police watch organization . How can anyone say that the media is liberal when the police state is taking over America and more and more people must push to get an investigation opened into unarmed killings and hundreds of beatings each year of innocent people that the police are cleared of routinely .
Human rights organizations point out the problems In America all the time and nothing is hardly reported about it in the mainstream media .
It is not until someone brings a video forward and then it is edited and the story is told how a black man was arrested and charged with assaulting police officers when in fact the police had assaulted the man . With out video of the entire scene the man would be jailed and the police free to beat innocent people at a whim .
The media here is as conservative as it gets bordering on support of tyranny and human rights violations by the thousands .
Forget politicians and religious leaders who have scammed the public for millions of dollars . If you are on tv pushing GOD then at the hotel you are pushing a needle in your arm and having sex with prostitutes .
These scandals only come out when ordinary people bring this to the attention of media and courts .
What ever happened to investigative journalism .
What happened with the billion dollars left over from 9-11 or the hundreds of millions donated to rebuild New O'rleans .
When will the media report these scandals and we do not have to wait for the book which will only sell half a million copies .
Our media is conservative and nothing I hear to the contrary can make me believe otherwise .
I am not part of the sheeple who are lead around by the media and politicians and preachers to accept doom and gloom .
Life is what you make it and it is getting harder for ordinary people to make it .Glad I am white in my 40's and have some education .

Answer 4

Very simple - when the facts don't support your arguments, you have to attack the messenger who delivers the facts.

Conservative policies generally favor exploitation of the have-nots by the haves, whether in intent or as by-product. There's no way this can stand in a generally democratic society unless you can muddy the waters and obfuscate what goes on. One way is to brand the media as liberal to make people doubt honest reporting, and to try and cow the media into not doing their jobs in a straightforward manner.

It also makes the case for the extreme being presented as "fair", and being given more weight than it merits.

Answer 5

Its all relative. If you are a conservative, the media looks liberal. If you are a liberal, the media looks conservative. But the median ideology in the US is more conservative then the rest of the western world. So if the media represents the middle of the US political spectrum, it is more conservative then the rest of the worlds political spectrum.

Answer 6

America is one of the more moderate countries. When they say the media is liberal, it is barely liberal compared to other countries. Europeans are extremely liberal even for American Democrats. Americans tend to stay close to the center of the political line.

Answer 7

Well America is more liberal than it was 50 years ago but it isn't anywhere near as liberal as Western and Northern Europe.

Answer 8

I see it as a campaign tactic. It's easier for conservatives to try to discredit the source than to deal with all the bad news that comes from it, with the added bonus of making a party seem like the oppressed underdog (no small feat at a time when they controlled all three branches of government). I think Stephen Colbert best summed up the frustration about "liberal" media saying "The truth has a well known liberal bias."

Answer 9

it's not that the media is so liberal as they are scocially progressive. as is most of europe. so, when they see america they se that we are more morally traditional (as a whole) and they dont' realize there is a push from most of the media to change and become more secular humaistic.

if you want one perspective on this, read bill oreilly's new book, culture warrior. i'm not a big fan of his, but i liek to read both sides of an issue, an he makes a good argument. you have to wade through his self-righteousness though. but it's an interesting perspective. he also talks about some books on the other side that i'm trying to get from the library now.

but as to your question this is what i see as the issue.
good luck, and check it all out for yourself.

Answer 10

Its part of the big lie to condition people into accepting Bushs version of "truth and facts"
If you control the media you control the people, since they cant completely control the media, they have conditioned people to believe that the media liberal and therefore not to be trusted.

Anyone with at least three brain cells knows our media is not liberally biased. It is painfully obvious when you look at any number of foreign media outlets that are media is woefully inadequate.