:::More Notes From Underground:::

Atrios has a thoughtful post about why both the left and the right claim that there is a media bias against them. Money quote:

"I think many members of the press think they inhabit an imagined center, and take pride in the fact that people on the left and right often object to the way in which they tell the story. Both sides complain, they must be doing something right. But this imagined center has nothing to do with any kind of actual "political center." It is, instead, the dominant narrative as expressed by an elite class and subculture which inhabits the world of Washington journalism. It isn't left or right per se, and certainly is not "the center," but simply the reflection of the values and worldview of the self-appointed but largely out of touch arbiters of sensibility."

This is probably the most coherent critique of the media that I have seen. It probably also (partly) explains the blogging phenomenon. We have so many satellite and cable channels dedicated to broadcasting an extremely narrow sliver of events and interpretation. Come to thing of it, alongside blogging, documentaries are another big cultural phenomenon of the past five years or so. Both of these phenomena have grown out of this sense that the media's dominant narrative has left too many people wanting.

On YouTube I've seen that debate between Bill Buckley and Noam Chomsky. It's eighteen minutes of two very different viewpoints on Vietnam and US power. You just can't expect to see something like that anymore.