Recently Orville Schell, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley from 1996 to 2008 and prolific journalist/author, mourned “the cascading effects of the slow-motion downsizing of one of the planet’s most magnificent landforms,” the Himalayan glaciers.  In an LA Times opinion piece surveying what no longer works in the U.S., Schell cited areas like the environment, education, and transportation, and found American hopelessness, especially compared to contemporary China.

orville schell

Schell’s “studying of melting glaciers” was likely related to a much-hyped warning from the World Wildlife Fund, which was revealed to be a sham, based on an anecdotal report.  But Schell’s warnings, along with his list of American failings, suggest a general ideological bias.

A recent challenge has been identifying the bias of the mainstream media.  Oddly enough, exposing ideological bias has long been a favored project in communication studies, usually practiced by leftists.  One method, much used by recent multicultural leftists, has held that consciousness and meaning are contingent social constructs.  Following such post-modernists as Lyotard, these folks regard discourse  as a composite of  linguistic, social, and cultural formulations.  One need only examine these to reveal the consciousness or mentality of an author or work. (more…)