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Two Steps Ahead of the Thought Police. - book reviews
National Review, August 29, 1994 by Jack Fowler
PRACTICAL men, Keynes said, far from being the independent thinkers they believe they are, are usually the unwitting slaves of some defunct economist. Today Keynes would surely add TV journalists, from whom the average American receives 80 per cent of his economic information. Out of Focus does for TV viewers what Consumer Reports does for car buyers, exposing the recurring flaws in the reports of Ray Brady, Irving R.
Levine, most of the CNN staff, and the like, while extolling the workmanship of John Stossel, Steven Aug, and ABC. One man's opinion? Hardly. Burton Yale Pines enlisted the monitoring facilities of the Media Research Center to analyze virtually every economics and business story aired in 1992-69 hours of network programming. The vast bulk of what we saw that year was straightforward, factual, and a bit boring. The problem lies in the 12 hours devoted to economic "analysis." The American economy is overwhelmingly portrayed as a cruel game, full of fraud, bankrupticies, and ineptness, where white businessmen bilk consumers, who desperately need the protection of government. A more subtle, and thus far more dangerous, bias is that of most prime-time entertainment shows. Mr. Pines dissects their anti-capitalist themes brilliantly. But conspiracy theorists take note: the author does not think TV's leftist tilt is deliberate. Network executives certainly know that their profits depend on free enterprise, and those few reporters who are well trained in economics or who have first-hand knowledge of their subject matter usually get the story right. The problem--and the opportunity for the Left--is that most of the talking heads are economic illiterates.
COPYRIGHT 1994 National Review, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group
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