: It’s good to be liked…Beatles, Stones, Guardian…
Of the various British invasions, I think I prefer the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to the Guardian–the liberal British daily. Michael Wolff discusses the paper’s plans to publish an American edition, the first issue slated for sometime this winter to begin covering the presidential primary. I found this interesting:
It struck me first that–even given the Guardian’s campus chic-ness–the U.S. has never been less receptive to the European point of view than it is now. By any measure, to be successful in the U.S. news business is to be staunch, patriotic, defensive. It’s Fox or bust. And it struck me even more forcefully that beyond the difficulties of liberalness, the prospects for literate media–the Guardian being a writer’s paper–were, as everybody knew, nil.
The American media landscape is large enough to contain a wide range of thought and ideology. But Wolff suggests the American mind is too small to accept a “literate” contribution. His presumptions of what constitutes literate media are purely ideological and elitist. He offers as evidence his qualitative evaluation that the American Guardian prototype is a writer’s publication, the design is boring, and the type difficult to read (Typography studies long ago demonstrated that sans-serif type gives readers headaches–what are they thinking?).
Sounds like a winner to me.
I have no problem with the Guardian’s ideology (or the Washington Times’ or FOX News’ for that matter). On second thought, I think I’d like to see the Guardian and an overtly conservative national paper rumble in the streets of America.
UPDATE (9:55 a.m.): Let me anticipate this reaction: “But the New York Times is liberal, and so is most of the news media in America.” Spend an hour at the AIM and FAIR web sites, and then ask yourself how each can find evidence of dreaded liberal or conservative bias if the news media is so overwhelmingly one way or the other.
Media bias in America is a local phenomenon: local to a person, place, issue, etc. Anecdotal evidence of real ideological bias is easy to find. And with it, anyone can “prove” any particular bias they wish to criticize. To do so, however, one must ignore a boatload of contending evidence, as AIM and FAIR do on a daily basis. If you haven’t done so already, please read about the very real, and far more dangerous, structural biases of journalism.
MEDIA BIAS
Andrew Cline has some thoughts on the American edition of The Guardian referenced here recently. He also disputes the notion of systemic media bias: Spend…