Ends and Odds: The Ravings of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe; Chapter Eight of 'Why Feminism Didn't Lead To Socialism'

   Chapter Eight of 'Why Feminism Didn't Lead To Socialism'.


       The power of the media also helped defeat part of the aims of the New Left. It too targeted the protestors. In the early 1970's, the business class in North America and Western Europe launched a massive counterattack against the New Left. One of its weapons was the media.
      It happened this way. Lewis Powell, a rich Republican phoned up U.S. President Richard Nixon one day in 1971. "Mr President," Powell said in effect. "I'm really worried. I've been watching television news."
     On many t.v. news programs, Powell said, he saw one person after another attack the free enterprise system. "If this goes on," Powell is supposed to have said, " the free enterprise system won't survive.We must fight back." Nixon told Powell to write him a memorandum on his topic. Powell did this and later Nixon appointed Powell to the U.S. Supreme Court..
     Some observers doubt this story. Yet soon in the early 1970's, the U.S. media switched sharply to the right. To be fair most media outlets have usually pushed right wing views. Most media in North America and elsewhere are owned by rich powerful families. For instance 'The Montreal Star' way back in 1960 endorsed the very right wing Union Nationale in the 1960 Quebec provincial election. 'The Star' was owned by the  wealthy McConnell family. 'The New York Times' and most other media in the U.S. supported the Vietnam War and the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Most Canadian newspapers and some t.v. stations came out for Conservative leader Stephen Harper in the 2015 Canadian election.
    The social media also seemed to have helped elect right wing governments including the very conservative presidency of Donald Trump. Still, from time to time, parts of the media gave space to left wing activists. In the 1970's this trend vanished. Right wing think tanks sprang up denouncing publicly funded medicare, trade unions and social spending on the poor. Media moguls like the Australian Rupert Murdoch and Canadian Conrad Black gobbled up one newspaper after another and turned the papers into right wing propaganda machines.
     As far as t.v. goes, the conservative critic Robert Fulford said, "Television is the most conservative media of all." In  the 1970's, t.v. just became even more conservative. Giant t.v,. outlets like, ABC, CBS, and NBC. stopped putting out mildly liberal stuff. Soon they idolized conservative presidents like Ronald Reagan and the two Bush presidents.
    "PBS stands for the Petroleum Broadcasting Service," said U.S. activist Ralph Nader. Nader claims that PBS, the so-called public broadcasting service is just another right wing station. Nader is totally correct. PBS programs like 'The McNeill Lehrer News Hour, and the the Jim Lehrer News Hour rarely put on any progressives. The experts it used were right wing thinkers and pundits..