What Do the Right Wing Conservatives Have in Common With an Italian Communist?

It's pretty much a fact that the right wing has been hating the media ever since that televised debate between Nixon and Kennedy. That there is bias, I agree. I also don't find it a bad thing to have biases, although one should be aware of them, not so much for any sentimentalists feelings of objectivity but so that you can take the most advantage of your bias.

I definitely don't think a journalist should invent facts or tell lies. Having a bias does not imply these things. What it does imply is a selection of the facts reported; interpretation of those facts; and a selection of support. Saying that, I think it's entirely fair and democratic to have media outlets that satisfy the different points of view.

What I find funny in all this is that it was Antonio Gramci who theorized aboout having communists trying to wrest some space in the media monopoly to present their views. I doubt Palin, Limbaugh, Coulter and company would smile about it however, I love historic irony.

Below you can read an excerpt of an article by Antonio Gramci. Just make the appropriate changes to make it work for the right wing or any other bias out there you most prefer.

Newspapers and the Workers

Source: Avanti! (Piedmont Edition) December 22, 1916;
Translated: by Mitchell Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike)
marxists.org 2008.

These are the days of subscription campaigns. The editors and administrators of bourgeois newspapers tidy up their display windows, paint some varnish on their shop signs and appeal for the attention of the passer-by (that is, the readers) to their wares. Their wares are newspapers of four or six pages that go out every day or evening in order to inject in the mind of the reader ways of feeling and judging the facts of current politics appropriate for the producers and sellers of the press.

We would like to discuss, with the workers especially, the importance and seriousness of this apparently innocent act, which consists in choosing the newspaper you subscribe to. It is a choice full of snares and dangers which must be made consciously, applying criteria and after mature reflection.

Above all, the worker must resolutely reject any solidarity with a bourgeois newspaper. And he must always, always, always remember that the bourgeois newspaper (whatever its hue) is an instrument of struggle motivated by ideas and interests that are contrary to his. Everything that is published is influenced by one idea: that of serving the dominant class, and which is ineluctably translated into a fact: that of combating the laboring class. And in fact, from the first to the last line the bourgeois newspaper smells of and reveals this preoccupation.

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