At Salon, Alex Pareene has a well-observed piece on the latest developments and the broader context of Fox's war on NPR ("House GOP fails to defund NPR 'Nazis'"), which begins:
Phew! NPR will not have some minuscule fraction of its budget endangered by angry Republicans. For now. The vote to defund NPR -- which is not really funded by the federal government -- failed in the House of Represenatives 239-171.
But this isn't the end of it! Don't the Democrats know that the midterm elections were a referendum on Nancy Wilson's "Jazz Profiles"?
House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R., Va.) said the vote demonstrates that Democrats "just don't get it" and "are still not ready to listen" to the American people after getting thumped on Nov. 2. He suggested that House Republicans will pursue another vote on the matter when the new Congress convenes next year, when the outcome is likely to be different. "If the Democrat majority wants to continue to ignore the will of the people that's their prerogative, but the new Republican majority will not follow suit next year," he said.
Democrats just don't get it. Republicans know the American people want Congress to defund NPR because defunding NPR won an online poll, the modern equivalent of a Constitutional Convention.
Why did it win that silly poll? Because it's a dumb thing that Fox won't shut up about, and that is all the House of Representatives will tackle for the foreseeable future.
The piece goes on to note:
Fox hates NPR for cultural reasons -- one strives to present an objective view of world events in as fair a style as possible, while the other one is a media experiment in infusing everything from a relentlessly mindless morning show to a psychotic Bircher's revival show with Republican propaganda (with one hour set aside for car chases and bear sightings) -- but the event that led to the pointless foofaraw was NPR's long-overdue dismissal of official Fox Liberal Juan Williams, who explained that he was scared of "Muslims" in their Muslimy clothes, and then refused to actually apologize when told that that offended his Muslim co-workers at NPR. Fox gave him $2 million to sit around being a symbol of the culture wars.
Rupert Murdoch, Fox's owner, has waged war against public broadcasting in every nation where he has a media presence. (His father, Sir Keith Murdoch, began the campaign by complaining that Australian Broadcasting Corp. -- their BBC -- would be "improper competition" to his newspapers.) His newspapers and his son are currently battling the BBC.
And, of course, proceeds to Roger Ailes most recent ranting:
"They are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism. These guys don't want any other point of view. They don't even feel guilty using tax dollars to spout their propaganda. They are basically Air America with government funding to keep them alive."
But, you know, he sort of has a point. NPR sorta is like the Nazis--the Soup Nazi, that is. Except with facts (relative to Fox, that is.) This was proven quite decisively seven long years ago, when the Program on International Policy (PIPA) at the University of Maryland published a report, "Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War".
The report focused on three fundamental "misperceptions" (AKA lies)--that Irag had WMDs, the Iraq was connected to al Qaeda and that world opinion favored the US invasion of Iraq. Unsurprisingly, it found that Fox viewers were the most likely to believe these lies, and NPR viewers were the least likely. Furthermore, belief in the lies was related to support for the war. Details in charts on the flip.
This week brought us yet another classic example of the difference between the rightwing propaganda model and the center-left reality-based deliberative approach to the world, its problems, puzzles and issues. On Tuesday, Nate Silver at 538 wrote a diary about an apparent push poll designed to push the (product as well as propaganda) line that Obama won the election through the ignorance of his supporters. Nate followed up with a second diary, containing an interview with the propagandist involved, John Ziegler, who quickly lapsed into ad hominem attacks and vulgar invective. After a pause, Nate posted a third diary, reflecting on the exchange and exploring the notion that the propagandist's background in talk radio reflected something fundamental about how movement conservatism had lost touch with the art of persuasion.
It's a fascinating--not to mention hilarious--series of posts, which is highly recommended for those who missed it. But I thought it could benefit from a bit of contextual comparison. This poll was created and conducted to push a particular thesis, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that. Rather, the problem comes from a lack of honesty and intellectual seriousness. And, of course, there's always the projection factor. Because, of course, it's looooong been the case that conservative voters and/or candidates who have no idea what the hell they're talking about.
All these points are amply illustrated by simple comparison with an October 2004 report from the Project on International Policy Alternatives (PIPA), "The Separate Realities of Bush and Kerry Supporters" (pdf). In PIPAs findings (discussed on the flip) it was the Bush supporters who were significantly detached from reality. Quite unlike the propagandist in this case, the misperceptions flowed directly from the core of major, consequential and/or long-standing policy debates, and relevant questions were culled from polls that had a much broader initial purpose. A main poll sharpened the focus on the issue of divergent perceptions, but this poll built quite logically on the polling preceding it. While PIPA has always been concerned with the relationship between attitudes and perceptions, it has been much more interested in understanding and exploring how false perceptions impact and/or reflect opinions and attitudes, rather than leading off with blame. Indeed, PIPA is quite aware that it's usually impossible to tell whether the misperceptions lead to questionable positions, or whether the positions lead to the misperceptions.
STATE BLOGS
