The conservative voice in America is being silenced by the mainstream media and by Big Tech social media companies that are perceived as liberal. Or that is the belief of many Republicans who are quick to adamantly make that point.
Since its inception, the media has been labeled the “liberal media,” but is that true? In the beginning, being a journalist attracted more liberal-minded individuals than those who subscribed to the tenets of conservative ideology.
The idea of holding politicians and authority accountable seemed more attractive to liberal-minded individuals while those who were more conservative gravitated toward earning more money in the world of business. So, yes, the press/media was more liberal than conservative. However, there was much greater respect for objectively reporting the news then than there is today.
In the 1960s, President Richard Nixon referred to the power of the “silent majority.” This was a term given to an unspecified large group of Americans who were not prone to give their opinions on issues. As the term suggests, a majority of Americans did not feel represented by the mainstream media and believed their voice was being silenced.
Frustration over the liberal media had reached a tipping point; and in the late 1980s, Rush Limbaugh began making waves as a conservative voice in the jungle of liberal media. That was the moment the “silent majority” would no longer be silent. Limbaugh represented many Americans who felt their views were not being represented by the media and a revolution was born.
Rush Limbaugh tapped into a vein in the body of American politics that revealed how anemic the conservative voice had been. Feeling they finally had a representative in the media that said what they were thinking led to Limbaugh being to attract a massive audience. Soon, other radio stations across the country followed Limbaugh’s lead and featured conservative talk hosts.
Fast forward to today and the perception of the power and influence of the liberal media is more perception than reality. While it can be argued that the primary networks - CBS, NBC, and ABC may lean left, a recent experiment on my talk show demonstrated that the evening newscasts on all three of the broadcast networks was more objective than the rhetoric about the power of the liberal media suggests. And with the multiple options for consuming up-to-the-minute news, the three broadcast networks do not possess the same status of the past.
From my perspective in the business, I have long argued that fear over the power and influence of the liberal media are now more myth than reality. The number of conservative hosts on conservative radio stations across the country shows complete conservative domination of the medium. Wikipedia lists the 20 top radio shows in America, and 9 are conservative shows while only 1 is liberal. The others fall into the category of music and news-magazines.
Air America was a liberal national radio network that was on the air from 2004 to 2010, but it was a miserable failure. It seems as if the medium of radio was driven by conservative demographics, and that is partly due to the element of conflict.
Generally speaking, liberal attitudes are less combative and more aligned with the idea of you live your life and I’ll live my life. Conservative talk show hosts purposely created conflict with the attitude of this is what I believe and here’s why you should believe it, too. It was the element of conflict, which has been an integral part of talk radio, that generally made conservative talk more entertaining than liberal talk.
The cable news channels are dominated by The Fox News Channel, CNN, and MSNBC. Newsmax and One America News have attempted to flank Fox News on the right; but after a quick surge after the election, both have been a failure in the ratings.
In the ratings for Monday, August 2 - Fox News is a solid #1 with MSNBC #2 in most areas. CNN continues to bleed ratings and is now #3. Fox News host Tucker Carlson is the top-rated cable news host with double the audience of MSNBC or CNN. In fact, Carlson’s ratings are greater than MSNBC and CNN combined.
Other shows are more competitive and in many cases the combined audiences of MSNBC and CNN beat Fox News. Newsmax, which carries the slogan, “Real News for Real People,” lost 50% of its audience from the early January to mid-July. Newsmax is no longer a factor in the cable news ratings war.
Congressman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), recently said, “Big Tech is out to get Republicans.” That is a rallying cry for Republicans, who are now playing the victim card and spreading the information that Big Tech and social media sites discriminate against the conservative voices, and former President Trump has fanned the flames by saying that social media is censoring conservative speech.
The idea that social media sites like, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are censoring the conservative voices in America is the perfect rhetoric to cause widespread hysteria among Republicans, but the numbers expose that fear as irrational. There are those who believe that Trump lost the election because the media was against him.
Perception is powerful even if not realistic. A Pew Research Center poll shows 90% of Republicans believe companies censor social media sites, while 50% of Democrats believe the same.
It has been observed that if the top social media sites are censoring the conversative voices, it is doing a terrible job. During the campaign President Trump’s Facebook page had about 32 million followers - twice the number of challenger Biden’s followers. Black Lives Matter had 740,000 Facebook followers. An anti-Black Lives Matter FB page registered 2.3 million followers.
Twitter seems to be more innately liberal - not because of censorship - but because 70% of active tweeters identify with Democrats.
From January 1 through November 3, 2020, President Trump had 654 million likes, shares, and comments. Bernie Sanders was second with only 33 million.
When former President Trump was banned from Twitter 2 days after the attack on the US Capitol, Republicans interpreted that as censorship.
But Trump was not being censored - he was being banned for violating the rules of the platform by continuing to post misinformation deemed to be too provoking to society.
Shortly after the election in November of 2020, Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced, “Social media rigged the election in front of all of us.” With absolutely no evidence to support the claim - it was received as fact by many Republicans
Perception is said to be reality - but perception is the belief that something is real when it is not. Feeding into the condemnation of the liberal media over time, the idea that the mainstream media and social media are censoring the conservative voices fits what many Americans believe.
But for the record - there is no proof that in 2021 the conservative voices are censored and the number of conservative radio stations, top-rated Fox New, and the dominance of conservative social media activity clearly shows that the conservative voices are being heard loud and clear.
