Left/Right Media Divide

As British politics becomes increasingly bland and akin to a management theory, there was an interesting letter to summed up the left/right divide:

The fundamental philosophy of the right is: "It's a tough world out there and you've got to look after your own." That of the left is, or should be: "It's a tough world out there and we've got to look after each other."

This simple yet elegant summation reminded me of a debate about how in the media left/liberal opinion if often drowned out by the right (esp. in the US). Part of this is down to the right/establishment and pro-business bias of the news media (but not entertainment media) – it was suggested that the reason it was hard to win a debate is the complexity of breaking down the right ideas – however conceptualguerilla.com did a great job of this:

When you cut right through it, right-wing ideology is just 'dime-store economics' – intended to dress their ideology up and make it look respectable. You don’t really need to know much about economics to understand it. They certainly don’t. It all gets down to two simple words...'Cheap labor'. That’s their whole philosophy in a nutshell – which gives you a short and pithy 'catch phrase' that describes them perfectly. You’ve heard of 'big-government liberals'. Well they're 'cheap-labor conservatives'....They want you naked in as harsh an economic environment as they can create. But here’s the problem. Most ordinary people aren’t so ruthless. Most people think life is for living, not working your ass off until you drop. So if we the people can provide some basic social infrastructure for things like a basic retirement, assistance for higher education, unemployment compensation to get you through those Republican periods of high unemployment – well, most people support all of that stuff. Conservatives lose elections when they talk about undoing it.