Bill Moyers On Democracy In America

Moyers: 'Democracy in America Is a Series of Narrow Escapes, and We May Be Running Out of Luck'
By Bill Moyers, Doubleday

Posted on May 17, 2008, Printed on May 18, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/85521/

The following is an excerpt from Bill Moyers' new book, "Moyers on Democracy" (Doubleday, 2008).

Democracy in America is a series of narrow escapes, and we may be running out of luck. The reigning presumption about the American experience, as the historian Lawrence Goodwyn has written, is grounded in the idea of progress, the conviction that the present is "better" than the past and the future will bring even more improvement. For all of its shortcomings, we keep telling ourselves, "The system works."

Now all bets are off. We have fallen under the spell of money, faction, and fear, and the great American experience in creating a different future together has been subjugated to individual cunning in the pursuit of wealth and power -and to the claims of empire, with its ravenous demands and stuporous distractions. A sense of political impotence pervades the country -- a mass resignation defined by Goodwyn as "believing the dogma of 'democracy' on a superficial public level but not believing it privately." We hold elections, knowing they are unlikely to bring the corporate state under popular control. There is considerable vigor at local levels, but it has not been translated into new vistas of social possibility or the political will to address our most intractable challenges. Hope no longer seems the operative dynamic of America, and without hope we lose the talent and drive to cooperate in the shaping of our destiny.

The earth we share as our common gift, to be passed on in good condition to our children's children, is being despoiled. Private wealth is growing as public needs increase apace. Our Constitution is perilously close to being consigned to the valley of the shadow of death, betrayed by a powerful cabal of secrecy-obsessed authoritarians. Terms like "liberty" and "individual freedom" invoked by generations of Americans who battled to widen the 1787 promise to "promote the general welfare" have been perverted to create a government primarily dedicated to the welfare of the state and the political class that runs it. Yes, Virginia, there is a class war and ordinary people are losing it. It isn't necessary to be a Jeremiah crying aloud to a sinful Jerusalem that the Lord is about to afflict them for their sins of idolatry, or Cassandra, making a nuisance of herself as she wanders around King Priam's palace grounds wailing "The Greeks are coming." Or Socrates, the gadfly, stinging the rump of power with jabs of truth. Or even Paul Revere, if horses were still in fashion. You need only be a reporter with your eyes open to see what's happening to our democracy. I have been lucky enough to spend my adult life as a journalist, acquiring a priceless education in the ways of the world, actually getting paid to practice one of my craft's essential imperatives: connect the dots.

The conclusion that we are in trouble is unavoidable. I report the assault on nature evidenced in coal mining that tears the tops off mountains and dumps them into rivers, sacrificing the health and lives of those in the river valleys to short-term profit, and I see a link between that process and the stock-market frenzy which scorns long-term investments -- genuine savings -- in favor of quick turnovers and speculative bubbles whose inevitable bursting leaves insiders with stuffed pockets and millions of small stockholders, pensioners, and employees out of work, out of luck, and out of hope.

And then I see a connection between those disasters and the repeal of sixty-year-old banking and securities regulations designed during the Great Depression to prevent exactly that kind of human and economic damage. Who pushed for the removal of that firewall? An administration and Congress who are the political marionettes of the speculators, and who are well rewarded for their efforts with indispensable campaign contributions. Even honorable opponents of the practice get trapped in the web of an electoral system that effectively limits competition to those who can afford to spend millions in their run for office. Like it or not, candidates know that the largesse on which their political futures depend will last only as long as their votes are satisfactory to the sleek "bundlers" who turn the spigots of cash on and off.

The property qualifications for federal office that the framers of the Constitution expressly chose to exclude for demonstrating an unseemly "veneration for wealth" are now de facto in force and higher than the Founding Fathers could have imagined. "Money rules Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. The parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us." Those words were spoken by Populist orator Mary Elizabeth Lease during the prairie revolt that swept the Great Plains slightly more than 120 years after the Constitution was signed. They are true today, and that too, spells trouble.

Then I draw a line to the statistics that show real wages lagging behind prices, the compensation of corporate barons soaring to heights unequaled anywhere among industrialized democracies, the relentless cheeseparing of federal funds devoted to public schools, to retraining for workers whose jobs have been exported, and to programs of food assistance and health care for poor children, all of which snatch away the ladder by which Americans with scant means but willing hands and hearts could work and save their way upward to middle-class independence. And I connect those numbers to our triumphant reactionaries' campaigns against labor unions and higher minimum wages, and to their success in reframing the tax codes so as to strip them of their progressive character, laying the burdens of Atlas on a shrinking middle class awash in credit card debt as wage earners struggle to keep up with rising costs for health care, for college tuitions, for affordable housing -- while huge inheritances go untouched, tax shelters abroad are legalized, rates on capital gains are slashed, and the rich get richer and with each increase in their wealth are able to buy themselves more influence over those who make and those who carry out the laws.

Edward R. Murrow told his generation of journalists: "No one can eliminate prejudices -- just recognize them." Here is my bias: extremes of wealth and poverty cannot be reconciled with a genuinely democratic politics. When the state becomes the guardian of power and privilege to the neglect of justice for the people as a whole, it mocks the very concept of government as proclaimed in the preamble to our Constitution; mocks Lincoln's sacred belief in "government of the people, by the people, and for the people"; mocks the democratic notion of government as "a voluntary union for the common good" embodied in the great wave of reform that produced the Progressive Era and the two Roosevelts. In contrast, the philosophy popularized in the last quarter century that "freedom" simply means freedom to choose among competing brands of consumer goods, that taxes are an unfair theft from the pockets of the successful to reward the incompetent, and that the market will meet all human needs while government itself becomes the enabler of privilege -- the philosophy of an earlier social Darwinism and laissez-faire capitalism dressed in new togs -- is as subversive as Benedict Arnold's betrayal of the Revolution he had once served. Again, Mary Lease: "The great evils which are cursing American society and undermining the foundations of the republic flow not from the legitimate operation of the great human government which our fathers gave us, but they come from tramping its plain provisions underfoot."

Our democracy has prospered most when it was firmly anchored in the idea that "We the People" -- not just a favored few -- would identify and remedy common distempers and dilemmas and win the gamble our forebears undertook when they espoused the radical idea that people could govern themselves wisely. Whatever and whoever tries to supplant that with notions of a wholly privatized society of competitive consumers undermines a country that, as Gordon S. Wood puts it in his landmark book The Radicalism of the American Revolution, discovered its greatness "by creating a prosperous free society belonging to obscure people with their workaday concerns and their pecuniary pursuits of happiness" -- a democracy that changed the lives of "hitherto neglected and despised masses of common laboring people."

I wish I could say that journalists in general are showing the same interest in uncovering the dangerous linkages thwarting this democracy. It is not for lack of honest and courageous individuals who would risk their careers to speak truth to power -- a modest risk compared to those of some journalists in authoritarian countries who have been jailed or murdered for the identical "crime." But our journalists are not in control of the instruments they play. As conglomerates swallow up newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, and networks, and profit rather than product becomes the focus of corporate effort, news organizations -- particularly in television -- are folded into entertainment divisions. The "news hole" in the print media shrinks to make room for advertisements, and stories needed by informed citizens working together are pulled in favor of the latest celebrity scandals because the media moguls have decided that uncovering the inner workings of public and private power is boring and will drive viewers and readers away to greener pastures of pabulum. Good reporters and editors confront walls of resistance in trying to place serious and informative reports over which they have long labored. Media owners who should be sounding the trumpets of alarm on the battlements of democracy instead blow popular ditties through tin horns, undercutting the basis for their existence and their First Amendment rights.

Bill Moyers is the author of "Moyers on Democracy" (Doubleday, 2008) and the host of the PBS show, Bill Moyers Journal.

© 2008 Doubleday All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/85521/

Notes Toward A Definition Of Culture

NOTES TOWARD A DEFINITION OF CULTURE
Marshall Soules

In 1871 E.B. Taylor defined culture as "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs, and many other capabilities and habits acquired by...[members] of society."

"Culture means the total body of tradition borne by a society and transmitted from generation to generation. It thus refers to the norms, values, standards by which people act, and it includes the ways distinctive in each society of ordering the world and rendering it intelligible. Culture is...a set of mechanisms for survival, but it provides us also with a definition of reality. It is the matrix into which we are born, it is the anvil upon which our persons and destinies are forged." (Robert Murphy. Culture and Social Anthropology: An Overture. 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1986: 14)

THE PREDICAMENT OF CULTURE

In the opening chapter of his influential book on the practices of anthropology, James Clifford claims that the modernist age is marked by a sense that "all the beautiful, primitive places are ruined," that there is a kind of "cultural incest, a sense of runaway history" haunting us, and giving us the feeling that cultural authenticity has been lost. (4)

Traditionally, change has been interpreted as disorder, as chaos, as loss of authenticity. But in the global intermixture of cultures that we have witnessed in this century, the authenticity of former cultures may not be lost in quite the ways we imagine them to be: "local authenticites meet and merge in transient urban and suburban settings," according to Clifford. This complex process of acculturation, of meeting and merging, poses a predicament for the contemporary student of culture: the student of culture must consider both "local attachments"--regional dialects and traditions, for example--and "general possibilities."

This predicament is based on the observation that "there is no going back, no essence to redeem" once authentic traditions yield to the attractions of global culture. Clifford's book does not see the world as populated by "endangered authenticities." Instead, the world "makes space for specific paths through modernity." He concludes from this that "the time is past when privileged authorities could routinely 'give voice' (or history) to others without fear of contradiction" (7).

Clifford proposes that the student of culture is faced with a series of important questions which challenge traditional assumptions of "ethnographic authority":
Who has the authority to speak for a group's identity or authenticity? What are the essential elements and boundaries of a culture? How do self and other clash and converse in the encounters of ethnography...? What narratives of development, loss, and innovation can account for the present range of local oppositional movements? (8)
A question that Clifford does not ask: Who will document and publish these narratives of "local oppositional movements" when the status quo is the first order of the media's business? While we wait for the media to tell our stories accurately, local cultures attempt to find ways of living with invasive cultures without abandoning all their traditional ways.

Ethnography, which cannot be separated in practice from anthropology, is the "systematic description of a culture based on firsthand observation" (Haviland 1989), requiring "participant observation." For Clifford, the predicament of culture involves the difficulty of being in a culture while looking at it, "a form of personal and collective self-fashioning." (Anthropologist Ted Carpenter was fond of quoting John Culkin's remark: "We don't know who discovered water, but we're certain it wasn't a fish.") A modern ethnographer must move between cultures: "[Ethnography] is perpetually displaced, both regionally focused and broadly comparative, a form both of dwelling and of travel in a world where the two experiences are less and less distinct" (9).

In The Predicament of Culture, Clifford approaches ethnographic texts as "orchestrations...constructed domains of truth, serious fictions" (10). As such, in many ways they resemble those art forms which make use of collage, juxtaposition, and other forms of extended comparison.

In defining culture, then, it is important that we locate ourselves (and our beliefs, ethics, and assumptions) in relation to the culture we are studying, since culture is context-specific. It is also important to keep in mind, according to Clifford, that local cultures (sub-cultures) are often established in opposition to what might be termed the official culture--the status quo--defined by those with significant access to the media. In many cases, this opposition is between the individual, or small group, and the larger cultural body used as a sign of social cohesion and control. While popular culture is often defined as mass culture--the culture of the majority--it can also be seen as a site of continual change, adaptation, and subversion.

(James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1988.)

FISH OUT OF WATER

"We don't know who discovered water, but we're certain it wasn't a fish."
John Culkin (qtd. in Edmund Carpenter's
They Became What They Beheld )

We've been born into a world where most of what passes for reality is mediated for us. Even before television, radio, newspapers, computers, and books begin telling us stories about what is happening out there, our parents or caregivers speak to us about the perils and joys of the world. As human beings we intuit that there is something out there that exists, undeniably, apart from us and our perceptions.

Who in North America doubts that media play a significant role in our lives? Think of politics, commerce, education, recreation, art and culture, or social interaction--it would be difficult, if not impossible, to discuss any of these activities without some acknowledgement of the medium through which we "know" about these things.

We are inundated by messages speaking about technological determinism: the belief that technology must be adopted as it becomes available if we are to evolve as a species (or at least as a global corporate culture!). Where are the perceptive critics of the media who can balance this wave of technological promotion on the one hand, with the cynicism of the common people on the other? The real test for a student of the media is to find the middle path--the path free of ideology and rhetoric, at the mid-point between a technological utopia and the irrational fear of technological change--to arrive at a clear-eyed and knowledgeable assessment of the way we communicate with one another.

We're on the edge of the (former) empire, and that gives us a certain vantage point. The Canadian media theorist Harold Adams Innis created a philosophical niche for the media analyst who lives on the margins of powerful nations. Along with his disciple, Marshall McLuhan, Innis established strategies for investigating both the medium and the message. We need a model for investigating the media which provides a perspective, a place to stand, without removing us too far from the centre of the action. Like the fish in water, we are so immersed in our (mediated) environment we forget it's even there.

FISH OUT OF WATER

"We don't know who discovered water, but we're certain it wasn't a fish."
John Culkin (qtd. in Edmund Carpenter's
They Became What They Beheld )

We've been born into a world where most of what passes for reality is mediated for us. Even before television, radio, newspapers, computers, and books begin telling us stories about what is happening out there, our parents or caregivers speak to us about the perils and joys of the world. As human beings we intuit that there is something out there that exists, undeniably, apart from us and our perceptions.

Who in North America doubts that media play a significant role in our lives? Think of politics, commerce, education, recreation, art and culture, or social interaction--it would be difficult, if not impossible, to discuss any of these activities without some acknowledgement of the medium through which we "know" about these things.

We are inundated by messages speaking about technological determinism: the belief that technology must be adopted as it becomes available if we are to evolve as a species (or at least as a global corporate culture!). Where are the perceptive critics of the media who can balance this wave of technological promotion on the one hand, with the cynicism of the common people on the other? The real test for a student of the media is to find the middle path--the path free of ideology and rhetoric, at the mid-point between a technological utopia and the irrational fear of technological change--to arrive at a clear-eyed and knowledgeable assessment of the way we communicate with one another.

We're on the edge of the (former) empire, and that gives us a certain vantage point. The Canadian media theorist Harold Adams Innis created a philosophical niche for the media analyst who lives on the margins of powerful nations. Along with his disciple, Marshall McLuhan, Innis established strategies for investigating both the medium and the message. We need a model for investigating the media which provides a perspective, a place to stand, without removing us too far from the centre of the action. Like the fish in water, we are so immersed in our (mediated) environment we forget it's even there.

How The Media Define Masculinity

Media Awareness Network www.media-awareness.ca

How the Media Define Masculinity

Families, friends, teachers, and community leaders all play a role in helping boys define what it means to be a man. Mainstream media representations also play a role in reinforcing ideas about what it means to be a "real" man in our society. In most media portrayals, male characters are rewarded for self-control and the control of others, aggression and violence, financial independence, and physical desirability.

In 1999, Children Now, a California-based organization that examines the impact of media on children and youth, released a report entitled Boys to Men: Media Messages About Masculinity. The report argues that the media’s portrayal of men tends to reinforce men’s social dominance.

The report observes that:
the majority of male characters in media are heterosexual
male characters are more often associated with the public sphere of work, rather than the private sphere of the home, and issues and problems related to work are more significant than personal issues; non-white male characters are more likely to experience personal problems and are more likely to use physical aggression or violence to solve those problems
Children Now conclude that these dominant trends in the media’s portrayal of men reinforce and support social attitudes that link masculinity to power, dominance and control.

In Tough Guise: Violence, Media and the Crisis in Masculinity, Jackson Katz and Jeremy Earp argue that the media provide an important perspective on social attitudes—and that while the media are not the cause of violent behaviour in men and boys, they do portray male violence as a normal expression of masculinity.

In a roundtable discussion that appeared in Châtelaine Magazine, TV journalist Denise Bombardier underlined the difference in the way the media treats violence, depending on the sex of the aggressor. "In Quebec, when a man kills his son, the headlines read ‘Another Case of Domestic Violence,’ she notes. If it’s a woman who kills her son, it is reported 'A Woman Depressed.'"

The portrayal and acceptance of men by the media as socially powerful and physically violent serve to reinforce assumptions about how men and boys should act in society, how they should treat each other, as well as how they should treat women and children.

Common Stereotypes of Men in Media

Various media analysts and researchers argue that media portrayals of male characters fall within a range of stereotypes. The report Boys to Men: Media Messages About Masculinity, identifies the most popular stereotypes of male characters as the Joker, the Jock, the Strong Silent Type, the Big Shot and the Action Hero.

The Joker is a very popular character with boys, perhaps because laughter is part of their own "mask of masculinity." A potential negative consequence of this stereotype is the assumption that boys and men should not be serious or emotional. However, researchers have also argued that humorous roles can be used to expand definitions of masculinity.

The Jock is always willing to "compromise his own long-term health; he must fight other men when necessary; he must avoid being soft; and he must be aggressive." By demonstrating his power and strength, the jock wins the approval of other men and the adoration of women.

The Strong Silent Type focuses on "being in charge, acting decisively, containing emotion, and succeeding with women." This stereotype reinforces the assumption that men and boys should always be in control, and that talking about one’s feelings is a sign of weakness.

The Big Shot is defined by his professional status. He is the "epitome of success, embodying the characteristics and acquiring the possessions that society deems valuable." This stereotype suggests that a real man must be economically powerful and socially successful.

The Action Hero is "strong, but not necessarily silent. He is often angry. Above all, he is aggressive in the extreme and, increasingly over the past several decades, he engages in violent behavior."

Another common stereotype...
The Buffoon commonly appears as a bungling father figure in TV ads and sitcoms. Usually well-intentioned and light-hearted, these characters range from slightly inept to completely hopeless when it comes to parenting their children or dealing with domestic (or workplace) issues.

Children's Perceptions of Male Stereotypes

In 1999, the research group Children Now asked boys between the ages of 10 and 17 about how their perceptions of the male characters they saw on television, in music videos and in movies. From the study, the group concluded that the media do not reflect the changing work and family experiences of most men today—and that this fact is not lost on the boys, who noticed the discrepancies between the media portrayals and the reality they knew.

Some of the study’s main observations:
on television, most men and boys usually keep their attention focused mostly just on women and girls
many males on TV are violent and angry
men are generally leaders and problem-solvers
males are funny, confident, successful and athletic
it’s rare to see men or boys crying or otherwise showing vulnerability
male characters on TV could not be described as "sensitive"
male characters are mostly shown in the workplace, and only rarely at home
more than a third of the boys had never seen a man on TV doing domestic chores

The study also revealed that the boys were quite aware that these male characters on television differed from their own friends and fathers, and from themselves. They had also noticed that media portrayals of success do not necessarily reflect their own ideas of real-life success.
The work of French sociologist Pascal Duret sheds a different light on the subject. In his 1999 study Les jeunes et l’identité masculine, Duret attempted to analyze young peoples’ perceptions of male "virility." Though responses varied according to sex and social class, most kids saw virility in terms of physical strength and a muscular body. Courage, and the ability to protect, were also considered to be virile traits.

When young people were asked to name models of virility from the movies, actors like Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger were common choices. But it wasn’t just the actors’ physical appearances that made them virile in the eyes of the young people; it was also the context in which they appeared. What these actors had in common was violent scenes in their films, and Duret concluded that even though the young people may have been unaware of their bias, for them violence was an essential aspect of virility.

As well, social class had a major impact on perceptions of virility: young people from disadvantaged backgrounds viewed virile characteristics much more positively than youths from more advantageous backgrounds. Duret attributed this difference to the value poor people can give to the idea of the "self-made man," who can become what he (or she) wants by dint of hard work.

This research, and the Children Now study, both suggest that the media should take the opportunity to reach beyond these stereotypes—and to present a fuller and more realistic picture of the lives, experiences and identities of men and boys today.

Men's Magazines and the Construction of Masculinity

Although most contemporary research on the portrayal of masculinity in the media has focused on violence, research has also begun to examine the portrayal of masculinity in men’s magazines such as Playboy, Maxim, GQ, and Esquire. These magazines, which focus on matters such as health, fashion, sex, relationships, and lifestyle, play a part in defining what it means to be a modern man.

Some critics argue that these magazines represent an improvement in media portrayals of gender since they focus on topics previously thought to be solely the concern of women. But others argue that such magazines still rely on stereotypical portrayals of men and masculinity, featuring handsome, white, well-built and well-dressed men, interested only in acquiring the finer things in life.

Media commentators argue that these magazines continue to relegate women to the background and, in doing so, are examples of social backlash directed against specific gains made by women in the paid labour force, mass media industries and other professions. They say that it is no coincidence that as women are achieving greater social, political and professional equality, these magazines symbolically relegate them to subordinate positions as sex objects.

While magazines such as Playboy and Maxim are criticized for objectifying women’s bodies, recent discussions about men’s magazines are focusing on what these magazines say about men and masculinity. Academics argue that the recent popularity of these magazines is a reflection of men’s uncertainty over the roles they are expected to assume in society, at work, and in their relationships.

In her 1983 discussion of Playboy, Barbara Ehrenreich notes when the magazine emerged in 1953, American men were beginning to feel constrained by the demands of marriage, work and fatherhood—and Playboy unapologetically celebrated the bachelor’s lifestyle.
She argues that Playboy painted an idealistic picture of the well-educated, confirmed bachelor who appreciates the finer things in life: wine, jazz, scotch, art, and women. Playboy’s success was built on its celebration of male independence from the domestic responsibilities of marriage and fatherhood.

Masculinity and Sports Media

Sports media also contribute to the construction of masculinity in contemporary society. A study conducted by the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles reports that 98 per cent of American boys between the ages of 8 and 17 consume sports media. Since professional sports are virtually dominated by men—from the athletes and coaches to the commentators and reporters—sports media have the potential to transmit powerful ideas about manliness and masculinity.

Recent studies on gender and sports media find that sports commentary reinforces perceptions of "violent masculinity." By praising athletes who continue to play while injured, and by using language of conflict and war to describe action, sports commentary reinforces violence and aggression as exciting and rewarding behaviour.
Sports broadcasts focus heavily on violence in professional sports, often replaying and over-analyzing footage of graphic injuries, accidents and fights. A 1999 Children Now study points out that conflict between players of opposing teams is often created or inflated to promote upcoming games.

The studies conclude that this focus on personal rivalry, conflict, and fierce competition reinforces the social attitude that violence and aggression are normal and natural expressions of masculine identity.

Masculinity and Advertising

In its study of masculinity and sports media, the research group Children Now found that most commercials directed to male viewers tend to air during sports programming. Women rarely appear in these commercials, and when they do, they’re generally portrayed in stereotypical ways.

In fact, in his analysis of gender in advertising, author and University of North Texas professor Steve Craig argues that women tend to be presented as "rewards" for men who choose the right product. He describes such commercials as "narratives of playful escapades away from home and family." They operate, he says, at the level of fantasy—presenting idealized portrayals of men and women. When he focused specifically on beer commercials, Craig found that the men were invariably "virile, slim and white"—and the women always "eager for male companionship."

Author and academic Susan Bordo (University of Kentucky) has also analyzed gender in advertising, and agrees that men are usually portrayed as virile, muscular and powerful. Their powerful bodies dominate space in the ads. For women, the focus is on slenderness, dieting, and attaining a feminine ideal; women are always presented as not just thin, but also weak and vulnerable.

hese critics and others suggest that just as traditional advertising has for decades sexually objectified women and their bodies, today’s marketing campaigns are objectifying men in the same way. A 2002 study by the University of Wisconsin suggests that this new focus on fit and muscled male bodies is causing men the same anxiety and personal insecurity that women have felt for decades.

Male Authority in the Media

"Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth."
Simone de Beauvoir

The media’s voice of authority is most often that of a middle-aged, professional, white male.
These men dominate the opinion-shaping forums of talk radio, newspaper journalism, and television news and commentary, and male voices are those most commonly heard in television and radio commercials.

In 1996, NewsWatch Canada, an independent organization that assesses the portrayal of diversity in Canadian news, conducted a study of the CBC’s flagship program The National. The study found that:

84 per cent of news sources were male (only 8 per cent of which were visible minorities)

89 per cent of commentators were men in "elite" occupations

The U.S. media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) reported similar trends in the American media in the early 90s:

89 per cent of the guests on ABC's Nightline were male, 92 per cent were white and 80 per cent were professionals

87 per cent of the guests on PBS's MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour were male, 90 per cent were white, and 67 per cent were current or former government officials

These voices are presented as the voices of experts, and studies have indicated that experts often represent conservative points of view, favouring the interests of powerful individuals, social groups and institutions. Little attention is paid to the opinions and experiences of women, gays and lesbians, members of visible minorities, or the working classes.

Non-white or working class men are also marginalized. Men who are members of minority groups are typically called upon as experts only in response to minority community matters, drugs and crime. And, as Barbara Ehrenreich notes, news and current affairs programming portrays working class men as dumb, inarticulate and old-fashioned.

Although information media are often presented as informed and "objective," many commentators argue that white male dominance of these media helps perpetuate sexism, racism, and class privilege in society. It is also argued that such coverage presents white masculinity as the social and cultural norm.

Entertainment media reinforce the stereotypes of the rich white male and the working class buffoon. Richard Butsch argues that television programmes tend to exaggerate affluence, and portray working class men as immature, irresponsible, and requiring the supervision of their “betters.”