Extremist Fringe and Right-Wing Media

If Shepard Smith isn't careful about showing journalistic integrity he might lose his gig with Fox News. Take a look at his comments about the e-mails he gets daily from the unhinged right as he reported on the Holocaust Museum shooting yesterday. He also played comments from Fox reporter Catherine Herridge saying that the DHS report on the potential for terrorist acts by right-wing extremists attacked by Republicans has to be seen "in a somewhat different light."

While Fox News and other right-wing media cannot be held directly responsible for recent violent acts of extremists, conservative commentator Kathleen Parker notes that the GOP has definitely pandered to this element. New Yorker blogger George Packer argues that the extreme fringe of the right has much more influence on the mainstream GOP than the extreme fringe of the left does on the Democrats.

Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck have far more power in the Republican Party (it sometimes seems to include veto power) than (Naomi) Klein, (Spike) Lee, and (Michael) Moore have in the Democratic Party. The views of right-wing commentators in the grip of the paranoid style (Obama is a stealth radical, the Democrats are imposing socialism) are much closer to mainstream conservative and Republican belief than the views of their counterparts on the left (the levees in New Orleans were blown up by the government, the White House had something to do with 9/11) are to mainstream liberal and Democratic belief.

The reasons are complex, but I would list these: the evangelical and occasionally messianic fervor that animates a part of the Republican base; the atmosphere of siege and the self-identification of conservatives as insurgents even when they monopolized political power; the influence of ideology over movement conservatives, and their deep hostility to compromise; the fact that modern conservatism has been a movement, which modern liberalism has not.

Fox News regularly features extreme right-wing figures such as Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, and Laura Ingraham whose commentary is often fact-challenged and delivered with an angry, belligerant edge. Time magazine recently noted that the tone of Fox News is highly visceral and emotionalized in a profile of the network and its owner Rupert Murdoch. Keith Olbermann can get a bit over the top with some of his commentary on MSNBC's Countdown. However, none of his critics seem to be able to come up with specific quotes when they accuse him of "hate speech" similar to that of right-wing media stars such as O'Reilly. Olbermann does feature film producer Michael Moore occasionally but not with near the frequency that O'Reilly, Coulter, Malkin and other right-wing fire-breathers appear on Fox. The style of Olbermann, MSNBC colleague Rachel Maddow and guests like Moore is usually playful humor rather than the angry rant favored by Fox News guests.

Right-wing media has identified a niche audience of hard-core conservatives and has made millions of dollars by playing to them shamelessly, often at the expense of factual accuracy, fairness and journalistic ethics. This country has a long history of political violence, a public mental health system that is inadequate to serve the needs of the mentally ill and a vast supply of easily accessible weapons. Consevative media unquestionably plays a role in irresponsibly encouraging a dangerously angry and unbalanced minority on the fringes of the right.

UPDATE: Paul Krugman makes the same point in his New York Times column.

Credit where credit is due. Some figures in the conservative media have refused to go along with the big hate — people like Fox’s Shepard Smith and Catherine Herridge, who debunked the attacks on that Homeland Security report two months ago. But this doesn’t change the broad picture, which is that supposedly respectable news organizations and political figures are giving aid and comfort to dangerous extremism.

Zachary Roth of Talking Points Memo summarizes the absurd effort by these same right-wing media figures to cast alleged Holocaust Museum gunman James von Brunn as a "leftist."

UPDATE #2: Predicatably, Shepard Smith is catching flak from the far right for acknowledging the obvious prescience of the DHS report. There is a steep price on the right for crossing the party line.

UPDATE #3: Frank Rich of The New York Times comments on the role of silence by conservative politicians.

Hard-core haters resolutely dismiss any “mainstream media” debunking of their conspiracy theories. The only voices that might penetrate their alternative reality — I emphasize might — belong to conservative leaders with the guts and clout to step up as (2008 GOP Presidential candidate John) McCain did last fall. Where are they? The genteel public debate in right-leaning intellectual circles about the conservative movement’s future will be buried by history if these insistent alarms are met with silence.

--Ballard Burgher