TV Execs Admit That Hollywood Pushes a Liberal Agenda

[True Earthling]

Come to think of it I can't think of any RW leaning prime time shows... except maybe on the Military channel...

Some of TV’s top executives from the past four decades may have gotten more than they bargained for when they agreed to be interviewed for a politically charged book that was released Tuesday, because video of their controversial remarks will soon be hitting the Internet.

In one video, Friends co-creator Marta Kauffman says that when she cast Candace Gingrich-Jones, half-sister of Republican former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, as the minister of a lesbian wedding, “There was a bit of ‘fuck you’ in it to the right wing.” Kauffman also acknowledges she “put together a staff of mostly liberal people,” which is another major point of Shapiro’s book: that conservatives aren’t welcome in Hollywood. Maybe that’s because they’re “idiots” and have “medieval minds.” At least that’s what Soap and Golden Girls creator Susan Harris thinks of TV’s conservative critics. However, the ranks of dumb right-wingers has dwindled, according to Harris, whose video has her saying: “At least, you know, we put Obama in office, and so people, I think, are getting – have gotten – a little bit smarter.”

Another video has Leonard Goldberg — who executive produces Blue Bloods for CBS and a few decades ago exec produced such hits as Fantasy Island, Charlie’s Angels and Starsky and Hutch — saying that liberalism in the TV industry is “100 percent dominant, and anyone who denies it is kidding, or not telling the truth.”
Shapiro asks if politics are a barrier to entry. “Absolutely,” Goldberg says. When Shapiro tells Fred Pierce, the president of ABC in the 1980s who was instrumental in Disney’s acquisition of ESPN, that “It’s very difficult for people who are politically conservative to break in” to television, he responds: “I can’t argue that point.” Those who don’t lean left, he says, “don’t promote it. It stays underground.”

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/tv-executives-admit-taped-interviews-193116

[Canuckistanian]

1. So? They're pushing the majority view

The present-day "conservatives" are mouth-breathing radical extremists.

If that Ayn Rand movie actually made some revenue, people would be demanding MORE conservative viewpoints.

But they aren't.

Society is Liberal. They just vote for conservatives. Sometimes.

[ohnoyoudidnt]

3. +1

[TroglodyteScholar]

5. No kidding...working conservatives these days fall into two groups:

1) Worthless assholes who don't do any work and bitch about every little thing that's asked of them

2) Worthless assholes who don't know how to make a buck without swindling someone

[underpants]

2. They should be liberal. Conservatism is corrosive.

there is nothing wrong with being right

[Dawson Leery]

4. The right wing has villified Hollywood and the Arts for years.

Remember HUAAC?

Remember, right wing productions such as "Atlas Shrugged" flopped at the box office.
This is the "free market" at work.

Still there is a market for the infamous cop shows (showing rambo types) being monkeys.

At the same time, the mainstream media is owned by massive corporations and stocked with establishment figures.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. 24 is a lefty program....

how about law and order?

Really?

COPS?

Lady COPS of Dallas, yep, very lefty.

Oy.

[HughBeaumont]

17. Oh, don't forget the news.

Like, aside from half of MSNBC's anchors, EVERY LAST DAMNED CHANNEL.

[mythology]

19. Law and Order is fairly liberal

Particularly the original series. But even Law and Order SVU which is the most guilty of the cops beating suspects still pushes a very non-conservative approach to sexual assault.

Of course you can find an exception or two like 24, but the overwhelming majority of scripted tv shows tend towards liberalism.

Part of it is that basically some conservative views can't help but be mocked. Think back to All in the Family. Archie Bunker basically played a conservative, but his bigotry was for played for laughs. Additionally there's a certain amount of stodginess associated with conservatives and that's also usually played for laughs.

[nadinbrzezinski]

24. COPS... yep, liberal

and of course let's not forget about the comedy show called CSI. (and all it's successors)

No, the media is not that liberal... perhaps I am a tad biased since I know what media that is really liberal... the American media is not it. If anything it is center left, to center.

[Very_Boring_Name]

29. I wouldn't classify COPS as either liberal or conservative

it's trash TV (entertaining trash tv).

[nadinbrzezinski]

30. With a very clear message

and sheer comedy for anybody who's been in law enforcement or has had contact with it

[PuffedMica]

7. We can't help it if liberals are more creative than conservatives

[EOTE]

22. And far more empathetic.

I believe empathy is one of the most needed qualities in a decent actor/actress. If you can't put yourself in someone else's shoes, you can't portray them very well. That, IMO, is why conservatives are so sparse in Hollywood.

[Parker CA]

8. So we get control of entertainment and the right controls the "news."

[petronius]

9. Entertainment spending is 100% discretionary - it's the purest form of capitalism

and Hollywood follows the dollar. If 'baggers want to whine about where that leads, they have to repudiate all of their Randian free market nonsense first...

[JHB]

14. Not to mention that in one aspect it's Libertarian Paradise...

Work is project-to-project. A few superstars can have a lot of leverage in negotiations, but the people who fill out the rest of the cast and crew have a lot less ... and would have even less if it weren't for the unions. So the people doing the hiring have plenty of power to shut people out on arbitrary grounds. And the conservatives want to make the whole contry more like that.

Of course, they don't actually have a problem with unfairness -- just when they perceive themselves to be the butt of it.

[bighughdiehl]

10. This is about...

Their "free market" god bitch-slapping them. But, nooooo...it must be a conspiracy...because we cons can't possibly
be wrong, or less creative then liberals, noooo.

[lolly]

11. Really? Can't think of ANY rightward leaning shows?

Every cop show leans rightward--every single one regularly includes plotlines in which vicious killers are set free because of some judge ruling on a technicality.


This piece sounds like a typical hit job of cherry picked quotations and self-serving definitions of "liberal" and "conservative."

[True Earthling]

13. I don't watch cop shows...

I mostly watch Nat Geo, Travel and the Home & Garden channel.

[PufPuf23]

12. You are funny in your obliviousness at DU.

Thanks for entertainment.

All major networks and cable "news" channels are international corporate owned and, most if not all, includiung NPR and PBS, have been compromised by neo-liberal and neo-conservative bias.

[True Earthling]

15. Funny how? Funny like a clown?

Do I amuse you? The article was about discrimination based on political views - which is perfectly legal.

It's hard to separate politics from dramas or comedies that portray life's situations since so much of daily life is touched by political issues. The only way to avoid programs with a political agenda is to watch talent shows like American Idol or reality shows like The Amazing Race.

[RainDog]

21. so what is the liberal political agenda you see in television and film

and how are conservatives (who have SO MUCH FUNDING available from people like the DeVos and Kock groups) not allowed to make a film? anyone can make a film (who knows how to make a film) and can hire any cast and crew they like. Conservatives could hire no one but conservatives on such a film and hire conservatives to promote and advertise the film.

...and they do.

but no one wants to watch these shows - or very few do - or they do so that they can laugh at banana-in-hand Cameron, the argument against intelligent design by accident.

no one stopped anyone from making the Ayn Rand movie - but few wanted to see it.

if the liberal agenda includes not demonizing homosexuals - well, that's a pretty main stream position - the majority of Americans don't seem to think it's okay to send homosexuals to religious re-education camp to "cure" them of their natural sexuality. (btw, it didn't work in any other totalitarian regime either.)

if the liberal agenda includes hunting down a terrorist and torturing ppl - hmmmm. that seems like a right wing pov - and you know, a show about that ran for a long time. and you know what else? I never watched it - but if others watched it - well, they did.

soooo... I guess I'd really like to understand what you see as the political agendas of television shows - other than to make people want to buy new and improved widget-topia.

[True Earthling]

23. In films I see liberal bias all the time... promoting liberal values

such as tolerance, equality, fairness.... and demonizing corporations, the military, discrimination and wealth.

I don't watch much TV except science & nature shows, documentaries, news and a few comedies. My favorite right now is Modern Family...hilarious!

[RainDog]

32. really? demonizing wealth?

surely you jest. have you seen the set designs for people on tv shows - or movies? not all the rich on tv are clueless. not all the rich are bad guys. in fact, how many shows can you think of that, you know, have criminals who are not wealthy? all those police shows...

discrimination - well, don't we have laws against that? is Hollywood supposed to support something that we, as a nation, have decided is so bad that we've passed laws to try to prevent it?

the military... hmmmm. band of brothers. jarhead. saving private ryan... independence day... and so on.

but, yeah, there are some movies that look at problems of greed and corruption - but usually those doing the looking aren't exactly poor themselves.

if tolerance, equality and fairness are liberal values - then liberal values are American values b/c all of those ideas are enshrined in our founding documents (even if they weren't enacted fairly at the time - but we've been working on that for a couple of centuries...)

so, are you saying that conservative values are anti-american? (actually, you know, you just might be right about that.)

[Zoeisright]

16. BFD. So they're "pushing" kindness, tolerance, intelligence, and education.

Those certainly aren't repuke values.

[saras]

18. Reality shows a well-known liberal bias

There's a reason they're called 'liberal arts' and a 'liberal education'.

And there's a reason America was designed as a liberal, democratic country.

Right-wing humor, as the internet provides plentiful evidence of, is intellectually inferior, and usually consists of thinly-veiled hate speech - humor directed to the brainstem.

The right's attempt to produce philosophy and literature results in such productions as Atlas Twitched, and The Glans.

I'd like to see them take on weeding the right-wing bias out of the military-industrial complex. There's too many conservatives there.

[tnlefty]

20. Oh my, if they can't take it in Hollywood, they can always

move into my red state hell and hook up with Fred Thompson. Poor, poor pitiful fuckheads.

Or they can follow that fine upstanding family values repuke, Kelsay Grammar, who had a mistress in NY, fathered a child with her while still married, and just find their own niche.

Poor, poor, pitiful repukes.

[merh]

25. Blue Bloods is one of the most conservative programs on air.

It replaces "24" in the nonsense view that torturing thugs is the way to save the world or the child that was kidnapped and needs her insulin.

Hell, Tom Selleck is the star and if he ain't a conservative, I don't know who is. The only thing the show is missing is that Heaton woman.

[UTUSN]

26. A wingnut sent me the o.p.'s link today, and I replied:

So, if I never saw almost any of the shows mentioned, how did I get to be a flaming Lib?! Poor widdle Wingnuts, in their limited mental condition, claim that people are BRAINWASHED into the Lib “agenda”. I remember Bernie GOLDBERG in an interview claiming that all the networks were Lib, an offshoot of why he couldn’t make it to the top of CBS, not because of his shallow intellect and talent. He claimed that any Lib caller to the show was the product of media brainwashing, could not possibly have come to a Lib view of the world without Lib propaganda from the networks.

My point is that this propaganda-escape is like the blame-the-media thing that loser politicians use. Back when the wingnuts in Texas were making national news because the State Board of Education was slashing all "Liberal" textbooks and approving junk-History, I was predictably outraged. But given the link/article in the O.P., my frustration is soothed somewhat: It makes me realize that propaganda has to be INTENSIVE and SATURATION in scale in order to seep down with any real effect. How much of any textbook does anybody remember as something that they live by in maturity?

[Kat45]

27. Well, the news media pushes a conservative agenda (for the most part).

It's certainly not liberal.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

28. It depends on how you define "liberal"

If you define it in terms of social issues, yes, it's probably fair to say that it's liberal.

But when is the last time you saw a realistic fictional portrayal of a working class family or one facing today's economic problems?

[nadinbrzezinski]

31. BINGO!

Current TV is the only place I find that... in the depth of the cable system mind you