The media and Charles Murray

Charles Murray's recent essay on inequality has created notice in the blogosphere. Eric Alterman has written two long posts on how Charles Murray is living proof that there's no Liberal Mainstream Media.The point of this post is not talk about Murray's evidence, but talk about the Liberal Mainstream Media.Thus,for Murray's views to get wide circulation,a right-wing publicity machine had to do the work.Of course Charles Murray,couldn't get tenure at any prominent university.Registered Republicans,libertarians,and evangelical Christians are almost non-existent in the social sciences.Murray's backers had to be clever but they had something different on their side:novelity.Could Charles Murray get great sales if his book espoused the typical tenured professor call for egalitarianism? Of course not.Murray's views are shocking because they aren't represented in academia.

Alterman in his post, says Murray's book Losing Ground was supposed to be an antidote to Michael Harrington's influential book The Other America.The Other America was a book that greatly influenced LBJ's Great Society.This is possibly the best example of the liberal media at work.Michael Harrington was the leader of the Democratic Socialists of America which is the now the largest socialist organization in America.Did the New York Times or the Washington Post ever tell its' readers that Harrington was a socialist? Harrington's evidence of mass poverty in America wasn't good enough for academic journals like American Economic Review or the Journal of Political Economy,but could be sold by the liberal MSM as long as Harrington wasn't continually described as a socialist.


In the recent past look at how Barbara Ehrenreich, Gloria Steinem, Harold Meyerson,and Cornel West are treated by the media.They are seen as liberals, not leaders of the Democratic Socialists of America.What better proof of the liberal media covering for a bunch of real radicals?