People who talk about the “liberal” media reference a specific fact set:

• Media people tend to be Democrats.
• Media people are disproportionately educated in Ivy League and top-tier universities where traditional values are subjected to rigorous critique
• The media, for the most part, take a liberal slant on social issues like abortion and homosexuality.
• The media cover American life from a distinctly secular perspective and references to religion are often pejorative or related to scandal
• The media avoid frank discussion of racial issues and pundits who offend minority groups frequently get the axe.

The following article, compiled by a liberal blogger who calls himself akadjian, suggests that the media is driven by money not ideology.  If MSNBC skews left and FOX tilts right, it’s because targeting a specific demographic can be good for the bottom line. Because the media business is about producing profits there is a strong disinclination to cover stories that reflect badly on rich people or that question the fundamental character of American economic life.

If the argument below is that the American media never touch these stories, I don’t buy it.  All of the issues below are regularly featured on MSNBC (particularly on the Rachel Maddow Show) and pop up occasionally in the mainstream media.  But these stories don’t get nearly the coverage they deserve, partly true because they aren’t sexy or titillating; and partly because the folks who pay the bills shape the editorial policy of most media outlets.  Normally this influence is indirect (editors know where the lines are drawn), but I suspect the one-percent has its ways of expressing displeasure and punishing offenders.

You will be particularly interested in number 11: Nixon’s Southern Strategy.  It begins with a 1970 quote from a candid Kevin Philips:

The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That’s where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.

Notice the logic here.  It isn’t that Democrats won’t be able to attract enough Black and Latino voters to win; it’s that the Blue team’s very success with minority voters will drive White voters into the Red camp.

The implications of this insight (and Philips nailed it) are staggering.  It means that every time lefties get a bunch of minority folk and counterculture Whites together to demand justice we are begging the White majority to adopt the opposing view.   That’s not what we’re trying to do; but that’s what we’re doing.  At some point we progressive types must start taking the gut reaction of White conservatives into consideration and ask how we can get a conversation started.  Without at least 30% of the White electorate you can’t win a statewide election in Texas or anywhere else across the South and much of the American heartland.  In Texas, 80% of White voters went for Romney in 2012 and I suspect the figure was even higher among White males.

Read the list and tell us what you think.

15 things everyone would know if there were a liberal media