Righting the American Dream: A Review of Diane Winston's Latest Book

You have probably heard it before. You will most likely hear it again. In fact, it’s almost so banal a “fact” that it’s become a truism: The media has a liberal bias. Some would even go so far as to say that the news media is a bastion of liberal ideology that does not reflect the diverse range of opinions held by most Americans. On social, cultural, and economic issues, it is believed, newswriters are partisans, prejudiced to the political left.

Using timely historical analysis, Diane Winston’s Righting the American Dream: How the Media Mainstreamed Reagan’s Evangelical Vision challenges the “myth of the liberal news media,” detailing how outlets across the United States “normalized and circulated Reagan’s religiously inflected neoliberalism”—what she calls his religious imaginary. This not only influenced what consumers thought about Reagan’s tenure and its era but, Winston argues, shaped policies that led to the increased “income inequality, militant unilateralism and intergroup conflict” (200) we continue to see today.

It's time to change the way we talk about Islam -- you can't just blame the media

Terrorism. Violence. Extremists. Bombs. The list could go on.

These were some of the responses at a recent community action forum hosted by Welcoming Gainesville—a local organization seeking to create a space for immigrants to thrive in their new community—when participants were asked by Hassan Shibly, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Florida, what the first words were that came to mind when they heard “Islam in the media.”

When asked why, the crowd collectively concurred that the media over-reported instances where Muslims committed acts of violence, avoided calling non-Muslim violent extremists “terrorists,” and generally did a poor job of covering Islam.