The Real Media Bias

Eric Zorn argues that the real media bias is against complexity:

LIke a lot of other Illinois journalists, I've just spent the best part of the last year rhetorically pounding the stuffing out of the very white Rod Blagojevich and taking regular whacks at the disgraceful demagoguery of the similarly pasty John McCain. At the same time I was getting slapped around by detractors for allegedly going too easy on African-American candidate, now President Barack Obama.

 So pardon me for not offering my guilty assent to the notion in the debate du jour that journalists go easier on white politicians than black politicians (vote), and for not buying into the notion that somehow we'd be looking the other way if Roland Burris were white.

The bias that I see in the media -- the tendency, the weakness -- is for simplicity over complexity; for so-called high-concept scandals (easy to understand and summarize in a sentence or two) and against low-concept scandals (murky, mysterious, multi-layered tales of political intrigue).

Part of the reason I like Zorn's work is that he is more inclined than most columnists to challenge ehco-chamber narratives.  A liberal who has questioned the wisdom of gun control laws, Zorn presses readers to step outside the bounds of what they think they know.  It isn't unusual for him to ask a question without supplying the answer, pressing his readers to question their own assumptions, to move beyond comfortable responses.

Comments

[John]

But wasnt the Right Wing Noise Machine (David Brock) the principal agent of/for reducing everything to emotionally manipulative sound bites---courtesy of Limbaugh/Hannity/O'Reilly etc

Thus leading to the politics of binary exclusions.

I am right, you are wrong--bang you are dead.