In his 1995 book Banal Nationalism, Michael Billig explains how a constant stream of banal, subtle nationalistic messages in Western media quietly encourages citizens to obey the law and be nice to one another in ways they might not otherwise be. As long as there’s a political spectrum of sources balancing each other out, though, this isn’t so bad.
[I]n the established nations, there is a continual ‘flagging’, or reminding, of nationhood. The established nations are those states that have confidence in their own continuity, and that, particularly, are part of what is conventionally described as ‘the West’. The political leaders of such nations – whether France, the USA, the United Kingdom or New Zealand – are not typically termed ‘nationalists’. However…nationhood provides a continual background for their political discourses, for cultural products, and even for the structuring of newspapers. In so many little ways, the citizenry are daily reminded of their national place in a world of nations. However, this reminding is so familiar, so continual, that it is not consciously registered as reminding. The metonymic image of banal nationalism is not a flag which is being consciously waved with fervent passion; it is the flag hanging unnoticed on the public building.
You can test this yourself if you travel. The Italian flag strikes you in Italy. The Union Jack in London. Or, more dramatically, read the press there and you’ll immediately notice a surprising number of stories that strike you as "nationalistic" for that place. Spend long enough abroad, and then return to the States, and you’ll notice it here as well. Eventually, however, as you begin to follow the press regularly (here or abroad) your awareness of this fades. I’ve had this happen several times when I lived in various countries abroad. Coming home to the US, it stuns me…and then, again, fades.
Flying down and then back from Miami this past weekend, I watched the FOX News channel on the plane. I don’t have cable at home and so almost never have the, er, pleasure of the incessant nationalistic message it broadcasts. It hit me like a ton of bricks.
But why?
If Billig is correct, NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, etc. broadcast a banal nationalistic message as well. Trying to be "moderate" for a moment, I suspect that theirs is more liberal, as am I, so I don’t notice their nationalism.
Still, while flying, I watched Bill O’Reilly rant about how secular liberals were hell-bent on destroying our American traditions at Christmas. I watched Hannity and Colmes (could they pick a less attractive Liberal?), where the question was whether the New Deal actually helped or seriously hurt the nation (no points for guessing Hannity’s POV). Against a backdrop of rhetorical flag waving, the message was clear and frightenly consistent given that the election is over: liberalism is bad and destructive and ugly.
Perhaps there’s a similar drum-beat of a message in the "liberal" press—conservatism is bad and destructive for the nation, and I’m just tone death to it—but that doesn’t make this next bit of news any less alarming for me: via Kos, via constant reader wilfred, we learn that that Clear Channel will be getting its national radio news from FOX News:
Clear Channel Communications Inc., the nation’s largest radio station operator, has selected Fox News Radio to provide national news for most of its news and talk stations in deal expected to nearly double Fox’s radio presence.
No terms of the five-year cash deal were disclosed Monday. But Fox, a unit of News Corp., said if all options in the agreement are exercised, its radio service could have more than 500 affiliates by the middle of next year.
Which leads to this sincere question. Are the conservatives among us (and note, I credit everyone who reads this site as being above average intelligence) comfortable with the FOX News message in general? Does it seem as "fair" and "balanced" to you as NBC does to me? Does NBC or ABC seems as alarmingly partisan to you as FOX does to me? Given the reach they’re about to have, I’m curious if this alarms you at all? I mean, I’m totally in favor of significant limits on the "liberal" press’s reach. In a nutshell: Has FOX’s reach gotten Orwellian?
NBC and CBS seemed alarmingly partisan to me ten years ago. Which is why I stopped watching TV news and relied entirely on print sources (and then the internet). I didn’t have cable, and since I’ve gotten out of the habit of watching TV news I never really started watching Fox, so I can’t comment on whether it is the same thing in the opposite direction.
Fox’s reach even now doesn’t begin to approach the liberal media’s domination of the news scene in the 1970s and 1980s. From my perspective it is a bit premature to be talking about Orwellian levels of control.
Please check PBS News Hour. I honestly try to find partison commentary in thier reports and can’t find any. In depth and and quite informative.
NBC and CBS seemed alarmingly partisan to me ten years ago.
Yeah, I hear other people saying that too. It surprises me, but then, so does hearing folks say FOX offers solid journalism.
How did this divide happen?
Please check PBS News Hour.
Leading up to the election, it’s all I watched.
I live in Norway and you are dead on when you talk about leaving the States and coming back and the nationalism hits you in the face, something I never noticed really as I grew up there.
Strangely, I get CNN International, BBC World and FOX on my satellite system (strangely because I am not sure that FOX is carried in many countries; they certainly don’t have a very international news slant). The differences are immense. FOX seems almost to be a parody when you compare the coverage of international events. And after watching CNN International (much more balanced than the American version) for a long time now, the nationalism and flag waving on FOX hits you full in the face.
As to the radio thing, I am more of a lefty/libertarian so it’s a little disconcerting that so many people are getting their news from FOX only. I would be more comfortable with FOX if they would just cut the BS and call themselves a partisian news source and drop all the “Fair and Balanced” charade.
Daniel Neiwert has been monitoring the tilt towards fascism in the media. His beat has been domestic terrorism for the last 25 or so years.
Link to a long pdf that is well worth your time to read:
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/Rush%20Newspeak%20%20Fascism.pdf
Another attempt at a link
There are some spaces in the url that I put above.
The link to Orcinus (Daniel’s blog) is on Hilzoy’s list.
Small correx, David Neiwert, not Daniel.
Separate bias from this question–
will your view of the world be:
1) factually accurate &
2) reasonably complete
if you rely only on this news source?
The BBC, the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, NOW with Bill Moyers–they are all liberal by U.S. standards, especially the BBC and the New Yorker. The Economist, the London Times, the Wall Street Journal–those are conservative. The News Hour and the Christian Science Monitor seem pretty much down the middle to me. But all of them are as accurate, as reliable, as any news source out there, including news sources where it would be harder to identify a bias.
Whereas if you rely on the Daily Mirror, the NY Post, the Washington Times, Fox News, the Nation, CNN, MSNBC–you will not have an accurate view. Let alone if you rely on talk radio.
Bias matters, but quality, factual accuracy, judgment, basic standards of journalism–these matter more. Not everything is relative. Seymour Hersh is a better reporter than Geraldo or Oliver North. Michael Kelly was a better reporter than Robert Fisk is. Christiane Amanpour is a better reporter than Paula Zahn. If you took a poll of the entire Middle East, many more people would agree with Al Jazeera’s views than Ha’retz’s. It would be a landslide. But there is no question, no question at all, that Ha’aretz is a better, more reliable news source that gives a more accurate picture of what is happening in the world.
What worries me about Fox and the NY Post and talk radio is not that they’re conservative. It’s that they’re more interested in pushing their agenda than finding the truth. The BBC, the NY Times, the New Yorker, certainly Dan Rather at times–they’re all fallible, they’re all capable of subordinating the truth to their political agenda. But at those places it’s the exception. At Fox, and on talk radio, it’s the rule. And a large % of the population trusts no other news source–considers Fox less biased than a C-Span camera feed. That’s why they worry me.
(I realize the network news is conspicuously absent from this discussion. I don’t watch it, so I couldn’t tell you.)
Katherine, Sebastian,
I suspect that Katherine’s analysis would not be disagreed with by most conservatives. That is, FOX’s coverage is so far from complete and their self-critique so secondary to their message, that they are actually inaccurate.
I suspect further than in what amounts to relief to see conservative values countering the perceived otherwise totally liberal press, many conservatives, while not perhaps admiring the journalist standards of FOX appreciate the “balance” it brings, not to its own reporting, but rather to the field as a whole.
Would that be accurate?
What’s the utility of a news organization that even its fans agree offers factually inaccurate, incomplete coverage?
Is its sole raison d’etre ideological validation?
Once again I can’t speak for FOX, I have never watched it. But I will say that as for: “will your view of the world be:
1) factually accurate &
2) reasonably complete
if you rely only on this news source?”
If the news sources were NBC news or CBS news or ABC news the answer would have been no when I watched them 10 years ago, and I have not heard the slightest indication that they have improved since then. In fact all hints are the opposite.
And like it or not, far more people get their news from the big three than from any other major source in the US.
NBC and CBS seemed alarmingly partisan to me ten years ago.
10 years ago, the GOP was foisting its ‘Contract on America’ nonsense. With their willing partners, the mainstream media.
A room-temperature IQ, ethically-challenged, little hustler named Newt Gingrich was being hailed by the mainstream media as a genius.
That was the major US story, aside from the Simpson trial.
I don’t see how the NYT and the BBC can be considered accurate.
Both have had so many facts wrong in the big stories of the last few years they should ashamed, no matter what your political affiliation
I don’t see how the NYT and the BBC can be considered accurate.
Both have had so many facts wrong in the big stories of the last few years they should ashamed, no matter what your political affiliation
The difference, of course, is that when journalists at the NYT or the BBC get the facts wrong, investigations occur and people get fired. Procedures get put in place to make it less likely that journalists will get the facts wrong in the future.
For Fox, getting the facts wrong is the procedure.
Why isn’t there a good conservative news outlet in the U.S.? I listed the Wall St. Journal but that’s actually an excellent middle of the road news desk combined with a lousy doctrinaire conservative editorial page that routinely contradicts its own news pages.
I have my answer, but it’s not flattering.
The NY Times and the BBC have made major errors, but 1) they have been exagerrated by ideological bullying and 2) they have been corrected, and 3) they still are a tiny fraction of the total news stories written by those papers.
The difference, of course, is that when journalists at the NYT or the BBC get the facts wrong, investigations occur and people get fired.
Unless you’re Judith Miller, or Elizabeth Bumiller, or… well, you get the picture. There’s a marked ideological component in the recent spate of firings and non-firings that I find distinctly disturbing.
I like Economist magazine: its editorials, even the wackier ones, are intelligent and well-written, and its reporting is excellent.
I know Economist isn’t a US publication. Too bad.
I’m not sure it’s fair to criticize conservative media in the US for being lousy sources of news and information. That’s not their mission, and they’re not shy about saying so.
Conservative media organizations in the US are unabashedly clear on what their mission is: “Supporting the President” (as explicitly stated in press releases and internal memos). Fox’s viewers are just as candid: they watch Fox because it shows them news they like and confirms their beliefs.
I like Economist magazine
Did you know that Indonesia is at a crossroads?
But seriously, for a long time in this country most papers had a party (not merely ideologicial) slant. The yellow press and such. While I’m not looking for a return to the gilded age, I doubt FOX and talk radio will bring down the country. But things will get worse before they get better.
Seb, you experience might be because there was a R in the white house for 12 years. The press, since watergate has always trained its sights on the president regardless of party. Yeah I will admit that the dem congresses of the 80s seemed to get a pass that 1994 didn’t, but what really worries me now is the reluctance to challenge the president these days.
Lake Wobegon, where all of our children are above average…
My answer is: I can’t answer the question. The only time I’ve ever so much as visited Fox News was on election night. Really…Bill O’Reilly is a newscaster? I thought he did opinion pieces.
To be fair and balanced about it, though, I give NBC, CBS and ABC about the same amount of attention.
It has been a conservative article of faith for the last thirty-plus years that the media is hopelessly slanted to the left. I can’t say I’m surprised by Sebastian’s appraisal of “alarmingly partisan” network news ten years ago – the same network news that lashed Bill Clinton right out of the gate and delighted at Newt’s “Republican Revolution” – but it’s disappointing to not be able to find one person on the right who doesn’t claim the mantle of the victimized here.
The Fox strategy is, and has always been, to be openly, actively, outrageously rightist, and to stand behind the myth of a politically-biased media to justify its distortions as “balance.” Most on the right seem to have swallowed this whole.
Except for those of us who don’t care. I guess I’m a Luddite; I take my news in print.
The Economist, conservative?!? er, katherine, I can’t think of a more liberal paper…
Are Bill O’Reilly and Hannity & Colmes newsmen or commentators? There’s a crucial difference between the latter, who is explicitly there to promulgate his opinions, and the former, who is (ideally and ostensibly) there to provide just the facts. While commentators certainly influence people’s opinions, their biases are a given and right out in the open. Bias in ‘hard news’ is far more insidious, and far more destructive to the credibility of the MSM (as Dan Rather has found out).
“and delighted at Newt’s ‘Republican Revolution'”
Which networks liked Newt Gingrich and the Contract for America? My recollection was that Newt Gingrich was almost universally despised by the major media and the the Contract was almost universally ridiculed by the major media. Did I miss something?
“I don’t see how the NYT and the BBC can be considered accurate.”
Don’t know about the NYT (which, personally, I find inferior to any of the UK broadsheets), but if you travel around the world you’ll find it hard to find a more-respected source of news than the BBC World Service. Anywhere.
“The Economist, the London Times, the Wall Street Journal–those are conservative.”
Umm, the Economist is more liberatarian than conservative, the [UK] Times is probably the worst of the five national UK broadsheets (its reporting is worse than the FT, Torygraph, Gruaniad, or Independent), and the WSJ reporting is great but the opinion section is nuts.
“The News Hour and the Christian Science Monitor seem pretty much down the middle to me.”
Funny, I’d put the Monitor as leaning liberal. Great newspaper though – ‘cos it arrives in the post after other papers, it has to have a different angle on the news. Great for indepth stories with human interest twists.
“But all of them are as accurate, as reliable, as any news source out there, including news sources where it would be harder to identify a bias”