Why America Needs Biased Media: Part 2

I would like to thank everyone who read and responded to Part One of this series last week. As expected, the post received a wide array of responses, which is exactly what I had hoped. Before we go on, I want to remind everyone that by definition, bias is simply the act of being influenced unobjectively in one direction or another. I'll be the first to admit that it's dangerous. However, it serves its purposes as my arguments show. For one thing, bias brings public awareness to important issues by capturing individual interests with rhetoric. In addition, it uses that public awareness to coerce the MSM into covering things that it doesn't want to cover. In turn, the MSM does (or used to do) an in-depth investigation and the facts, whatever they are, are brought to light for all to see. With that in mind, let's take up where we left off.

The Media Should Be Biased, For America's Sake: Part Two

Given the success of slanted media in the years before the Revolution, it shouldn't surprise us that the media was here to stay after. In fact, between the end of the Revolutionary War and 1800, newspapers popped up all over the United States. Also during that time, the ideological factions that had united to fight the British began to separate and grind against each other. Needless to say, newspapers took sides and often chose the wrong one.

President John Adams, Like Bush, Wanted To Be A King

When the Federalist Party put John Adams on the throne, er, in the White House, he set about destroying in as many ways as he could the rights guaranteed by the Constitution as well as the idea that the United States is a democratic republic. He was a fan of the British monarchy's method of rule and believed the masses were unworthy of ruling themselves. He was uncomfortable sharing information with his citizenry and even felt that his word should be law. Sounds familiar, like a certain tyrant sitting in Washington now, doesn't it? Needless to say, most newspapers were forced to tread lightly or not at all over his decrees if they wanted to stay in business. He even passed laws to make sure they toted the line.

In 1798, "President" Adams pushed for and got the Sedition Act, which made opposition to government measures illegal. Naturally, Federalist newspapers condemned anyone who spoke against it. However, Democratic-Republican (yes, the party that later split into the Democratic and Republican Parties) newspapers condemned the act openly. No paper was more critical than The Aurora, a paper owned and operated by Benjamin Franklin's grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache.

The Aurora and Benjamin Franklin Bache

Bache founded The Aurora in 1790. Located in Philadelphia, he drew on the liberal sentiments of that community for inspiration in his war-like condemnation of Adams and his Sedition Act. Very popular and a follower of Thomas Jefferson's liberal idealism (liberal for that time), he published article after article blasting Adams and the right-wing Federalists in general. Ultimately, this landed him in jail with a fine and prison sentence. His popularity earned him an early release but sadly he died of yellow fever shortly afterwards. While it's safe to say his passing wasn't truly mourned by Adams, his martyrdom helped bring the right-wing Federalists down. In 1801, Thomas Jefferson settled into his new job as President and within a few years, the Federalist Party died out.

In short, the lesson here is that if newspapers had simply reported on Adams' doings without spinning it so as to catch and hold the public's attention, it is highly possible that Americans who opposed his tyranny would have thrown in the hatchet, feeling that the Revolution had failed to prevent tyranny and that their cause was hopeless. It is hard, after all, to rally when there is no cause to rally to. Now let's skip ahead a few years and see how the MSM was coerced into discussing the immorality of slavery.

Opposition To Slavery Picks Up Steam

By 1830, every community that was a community had a newspaper. In the same token, every community that was a community tended to be either for slavery or against it. There were, by far, more opponents of slavery than advocates but the argument that slavery was immoral was relatively new and no one seemed to know how to use it advantageously. To make matters worse, the pro-slavery crowd tended to be rich and was willing to use that wealth to fund newspapers. These newspapers, in turn, rhetorically supported slavery and published arguments suggesting that Africans were inferior and thus lucky to be slaves. Mournfully, this environment maintained a high level of racism among the public and prevented the abolition movement from gaining ground. What the movement needed was a spark of rhetorical bias.

William Lloyd Garrison and The Liberator

In 1831, an abolitionist named Garrison founded a newspaper in Boston called The Liberator. Now, Garrison knew there were many abolitionists throughout America. He also knew that many were afraid to speak out against slavery because of the harm that slavery advocates' money could bring to bear against them. Thus, he was aware that it would be all but impossible to get local newspapers on his bandwagon. Because of that, he developed a system to turn to his own purposes the uneducated rhetoric of the conservative, pro-slavery crowd. Here's how it worked.

In The Liberator, Garrison would publish an article blasting the immorality of slavery and ridiculing slavery advocates. Naturally, pro-slavery newspapers would editorialize what he said and would then reprint his articles along with a nasty response. Then, Garrison would print a response to their response, followed by another article blasting slavery. Can you see where this is going? He figured out that the only way to get the MSM to discuss slavery was to be so blunt, so extreme and so outspoken that pro-slavery elements in society would have no choice but to respond. This of course divided the nation into two camps even more so than before but it also brought more Americans into abolitionist ranks by giving them a rallying point and by proving to them the ignorance and greed of slavery advocates.

The lesson here is that bias, if strategically used, can be a tool to force important issues into the public eye. The MSM often doesn't follow a story or cover a topic because they believe it's "too controversial" or "not sensational enough" or for other equally unjustified reasons. Sometimes, only a strong rhetorical bias can break the gridlock the MSM places or allows ot be placed or is paid to place on the flow of information. In this case, Garrison found that truth and reality were themselves a bias and used rhetoric to draw his enemies out where they were vulnerable. Though he had a $20,000 bounty put on his head by slave owners and couldn't mail his newspapers because the US Postal Service was destroying them, Garrison punched a hole in the pro-slavery lines using bias alone. Could he have succeeded by merely reporting the facts? There is no evidence to suggest this whatsoever.

Conclusion

Once again, it is apparent that without a strong driving bias, many of the things that are good about the United States would have been lost or simply wouldn't have come about. Bias is dangerous but it isn't inherently bad unless it's an evil bias, an abused bias or labeled as such by those who have something to hide. Today's examples along with those from last week demonstrate why we need a certain level of bias in our newspapers, magazines and television news. In fact, the very act of investigating something is a bias as is the act of choosing not to investigate. Thus, we come to the source of the controversy in our own time. There is nothing wrong with investigating the facts to find the truth. However, in the current political climate, extremist politicians are labeling investigative reporting as "negatively biased reporting" and by use of clever rhetoric, are convincing their followers that this is so. This is a case of good bias, evil bias and evil rhetoric by those with things to hide. Next week, in Part Three of this series, we will examine this current media bias controversy and compare it to the examples we've looked at so far. Where does the evil bias come from today? Who has something to gain or lose from it? Who is hiding something? Who is abusing the system? We'll look at all of those questions next week. For now, thank you for reading!