http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/06/30/from-gay-marriage-to-confederate-flag-how-media-are-turning-intolerant/?intcmp=latestnewsFrom gay marriage to Confederate flag, how the media are turning intolerant
By Howard KurtzPublished June 30, 2015
In a time of rapid social upheaval, too many Americans find themselves marginalized by the media.
What they believed yesterday is no longer acceptable today. The world that they knew is crumbling. And for many of these folks, the mainstream media are on the other side.
And this is a problem, one that strikes at the core of the news business and its claim to fairness.
If you are an American who is opposed to gay marriage or respects the Confederate flag, you barely see yourself reflected in the coverage. The message is that you are clueless, out of touch, a lost cause. And in some quarters it’s worse: that you are a bigot, a homophobe and a racist.
This even applies to the laudatory coverage of Bruce Jenner becoming Caitlyn Jenner, or Pope Francis’ call to arms against climate change. The world is spinning out of control, as some see it, and the media are redefining the rules.
I fully understand why same-sex marriage in particular is viewed as a triumph, in a country that no longer denies two people in love the right to wed. But not only was the Supreme Court divided 5 to 4, some 40 percent of the country is still opposed to gay marriage—for either personal or religious reasons--and their views should be accorded some respect.
Some journalists just come out and say it: there aren’t two sides in the gay marriage debate.
Most news organizations have so tilted their coverage in favor of the court’s ruling that you might get the impression that only an extreme few think differently.
Yet public opinion was very different when Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, and even when George W. Bush pushed a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in 2004. Barack Obama’s position until the spring of 2012 was that marriage is between a man and a woman.
Now those who still believe that are being told, in effect, that they are not just wrong but immoral.
I also understand why many view the Confederate flag as the symbol of a treasonous regime that fought to uphold slavery. Republican Gov. Nikki Haley acknowledged that, even as she said that for some South Carolinians it is also a symbol of heritage and of their ancestors’ bravery.
But again, the media consensus is that anyone who wants to preserve that Civil War relic is soft on slavery and hostile to blacks.
It’s worth noting, of course, that the flag isn’t being banned. The only issue is whether states like South Carolina and Alabama will lend their political endorsement by displaying it at their state capitols.
The New York Times and Washington Post have good pieces on how the Republicans are trying to cope with this more liberal landscape.
Conservative writer Rod Dreher says in Time:
“Discerning the meaning of the present moment requires sobriety, precisely because its radicalism requires of conservatives a realistic sense of how weak our position is in post-Christian America … This is the new normal.”
On a more personal note, here’s an email I got after Sunday’s show, from Jeff P:
“It is amazing that one of your guest this morning on Mediabuzz said
the confederate flag should come down if it is offensive to our neighbors.
But if you are one of the 40% who disagree with gay marriage for religious or
other reasons, you need to shut your mouth and accept. How long will it be
until someone complains about the American flag and we take that down? Your
guest speak out of both sides of their mouth. You can't have an opinion and
speak about it in this country anymore if you are on the right. And Fox and
most media outlets champion this thinking.”
In the future, when same-sex marriage is widely accepted and the Confederate flag fades as an issue, most people may look back and wonder what the fuss was about. But for now, the media ought to practice something they have long preached, and that is tolerance.
