The Republican and Democrat conceptions of the American ruling oligarchy assume that the ruling class is economically, politically, and culturally the same. They both assume, in other words, that there is only one ruling class when, in fact, there really isn't. As a number of scholars have noted at least since Antonio Gramsci, there are fractions within the ruling elite, fractions that sometimes produce tensions within the ruling elite. The Republicans, for instance, particularly since they adopted so much of the rhetoric of Southern Dixiecrats, have ties to right wing oil elites and their fellow travellers. This is one of the reasons the Republican Party, as it has dixiefied since the 1950s, has developed even stronger ties with right wing economic elites and have helped these right wing economic elites move from the margins to the mainstream of American political and economic discourse since the 1950s. The Democrats, on the other hand, since the 1960s, thanks to the disenchantment with and defection of its Dixiecrats, deindustrialisation and the decline of unions, increasing DixiePublican success among White working class ethnics, and the rise of the new digital media, have aligned themselves with the economically conservative and socially somewhat liberal oligarchs, such as those in Silicon Valley.
While there is limited economic tensions between these fractions of the ruling oligarchic class. They all are, as Nancy Pelosi noted, capitalist (a fact that makes the wacky right wing's characterisation of them as socialists or communists or anarchists looney). They are just somewhat different kinds of capitalists. While both fractions are neoliberal in their economic ideology--they believe in the free market theology--the new digital oligarchic elite are more open to social liberal or social insurance liberalism than are the Republican leaning oligarchs.
While both Republican and Democrat apologists and polemicists believe the media is biased against them it is clear that they have a funamental misunderstanding of the media. Like the two Jesus's in Dire Straits song "Industrial Disease" one of these groups, one assumes, must be wrong since it would logically seem that "the media, as Republicans and Democrat partisans call it, cannot be out to get both of them at the same time in the same place.
As I have written elsewhere there are several types of media. The first type is corporate and commercial. They are owned and run by for profit corporations. Their reason to be is to sell "copy", and by se;ling you copy they also, because they are commerical, sell you tootpaste and lifestyles the things that allow them to sell copy hence their sensationalism: did you know Marion Morrison wore a toupee and had sex with n, and may have even smoked some Mary Jane?
The US's CBS, NBC, NY Times, Washington Post, Canada's CTV and the Globe and Mail, and Britain's ITV and The Times (owned by oligarch Rupert Murdoch), are examples of corporate media. There are variations in them given the political contexts in which they operate. I think ITV, British commercial TV, still fills 50 minutes of a 60 minute time slot (instead of the 42 minutes on US commercial stations, something that points up the power of corporations and the nature of the commercial media in the US) because of government regulation. With the rise of right wing populist Toryism in the UK, however, regulation has been relaxed and ITV, which initially had something like fourteen somewhat autonomous regional bodies within itself (example: London Weekend TV), is now controlled by two.
The second type of media is public and corporate. They are also supported by advertising revenue in the form of ads at the beginning and ends of programmes. They do, however, tend to be much less sensationalist in their selective journalism and hence often subscribe to parochial ideologies of journalistic practise. They are, in other words, embedded and inscribed within, thanks to sociallsation, certain ideological grounded "realities".
America's PBS and NPR, Britain's the BBC, Canada's the CBC,
Australia's ABC, and Denmark's DR, are examples of public corporate
media. Some corporate media, like PBS, gets private funding via ads at
the beginning and ends of TV programmes. The CBC, in addition to
government funding, has advertising. It has a mandate to emphasise
Canadian content hence Heartland and Murdoch Mysteries and Schiitts
Creek. The BBC is funded a licence fee, that the Tories want to do away
with, and has no commercials. All that said, the Beeb has to cowtow to
the oligarchic powers that be thanks to their control of the extent or
even the existence of the licence fee. Needless to say, the Beeb has
been one of the most significant media for years producing things like
Doctor Who, Monty Python's Flying Circus, and Fawlty Towers.
A third form of media is the sensationalist and targeted type of media. They are interested in selling product (political and ideological product rather than toothpaste) to an ideologically and sometimes ethnically segmented audience. They tend to influence true believers and their viewing numbers are exaggerated. Like the sensationalist corporate media the politically and ideologically correct media mirrors the lowest common denominator. Additionally, they don't create divisions, they mirror them. Fox and MSNBC are examples of corporate segmented politically and ideologically correct media. UK Murdoch owned The Sun, a host of Murdoch media in Australia, and, though not as much as it used to be Canada's National Post, are examples of politically and ideologically correct newspapers.
A last form of media is independent media which is not corporate. It is widely present on the internet but not widely read. Thanks to their limited sensationalism, their dissident nature (making them more factually accurate), and the fact that Mericans don't read much, independent media are at a significant disadvantage in the early twenty-first century "media market".
As is the case with the ruling class there are, not surprisingly, fractions within the corporate commercial media and the independent media. Some corporate commercial media, like the New York Times, are embedded in the ideology of what used to be called sixpenny journalism, "quality" journalism, "high" journalism. Other corporate media, such as the tabloids, are the heirs of penny journalism. While both depend on sensationalism to sell copy, the type of sensationalism they play on to sell copy are somewhat different. The tabloids tend to emphasise what is now called gotcha journalism, though one can also increasingly find this we gotcha you politicians and celebrities in "quality" journalistic publications like the Guardian as well. Additionally, the tabloids tend to dissolve to some extent the difference between the opinion and news discourses in commercial corporate journalism. Independent media is diverse in content ranging from the so-called far left of the political spectrum, to the far right of the political spectrum. One can find self-proclaimed socialist media in internetland at the same time that one can find self-proclaimed White supremacism media in worldwidewebland.
There are, of course, other differences between the two major strands of corporate commercial media. Sixpenny news organisations are more devoted to the who, when, where, how, and why practise of journalism than the penny news fraternity, which is dominated by rageoholic political and ideological correctness and whinging and whining type of journalism, the type of sensationalism that sells to the lowest common denominator masses these days. The sixpenny press tends to see itself as the fourth estate, as a check and balance on the powerful, though their muckracking or investigative journalism has declined for a number of reasons during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The sixpenny press tends to be tied to the neoliberal social liberal elites. Jeff Bezos, for example, owns the Washington Post. Tabloids, be these tabloids Australian, Canadian, or American, tend to be tied to right wing apologists and polemicists like Rupert Murdoch and the political "journalism" they engage in is mostly of the apologetic and polemical sort. What should not be missed here is that both American political parties, as that last sentence indicates, have ties, ideological ties, economic ties, political ties, and cultural ties, to different fractions of the American economic elite.
What should also not be missed is that both partisan sects, particularly in their true believe form, are equally manichean, seeing themselves as being numbered among the chosen people. They are equally messianic believing that they are on mission from god, whatever or whoever their god happens to be, to to instantiate their version of America throughout the chosen land. They are equally paranoid and conspiratorially oriented thinking the media is out to get them. they are equally utopian preaching that their way is the best way. Both fails to realise that the sixpenny press regards itself (often without reason) as the fourth estate, as a check and a balance on power and thus it sees its mission, at least in part, as expressing truth to power, whoever that power happens to be. Both praise the sixpenny media's speaking truth to power or investigative journalism only if it is speaking truth to its other. Both sectarian groups are, in other words and formally speaking, mirror images of each other.
Speaking of conspiracies, the media, by and large, are conspiratorial. They want to sell you product.
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