The MSM (Part I)

David Brooks said last night on “The Lehrer Report” that polls reflect people who reflect the cluster of beliefs that best honors them. In other words, people validate themselves by associating with the values system that tells them they are worth something.

We have two general clusters of beliefs in America today, those reflected by the Democrats and those reflected by the Republicans. Fox News and talk radio have given Republicans somewhere to go besides churches to validate their beliefs.

The Democrats, who during the Roosevelt years built the modern-day intelligentsia that now dominates five of America’s nine major institutions, have long had the media—now called the “mainstream media” (MSM) to distinguish it from Fox and talk radio—to validate and amplify their beliefs, along with the resources of government bureaucracies, entertainment and the arts, academe, and philanthropy/nonprofits (the “Third Sector”).

Religion is divided, recognizing that Judaism, mainline Protestantism, and Catholic support for welfare and peace lean Democratic. So is big business divided (think John Corzine, Robert Rubin, Warren Buffett, Felix Rohatyn, George Soros, Maria Cantwell, etc.). The only Republican institutions in the big nine are the military and small business. (My thanks to John Glassman, American Enterprise Institute, for this analysis [Scripps Howard News Service, 1.18.05]).

While Fox News plays a vital role for Republicans, it can’t match the MSM’s domination of our national dialog. And Fox has freed the MSM to be more openly partisan; with Fox around, other media have less reason to be “fair and balanced.”