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MEDIA BIAS :
COMMENTARY
Click here
for detailed media bias evidence.
I. Why was the media so late to
cover Trent Lott, among others? (12/14/02)
We think it is instructive to
examine this question using a recent, interesting exchange on the liberal side -
between TAPPED and the Daily Howler. Reproduced below is the
exchange followed in the end by our
analysis/comments. (For updates on the Trent Lott saga, go
here).
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Direct
quote from Daily Howler [brown colored
text is our emphasis]:
Why was the press corps slow to react to
Lott’s remark? At THE HOWLER, we really can’t say. We have
said this: It’s hard to believe that the
corps is spilling with “liberal bias” when it drags its feet on a
story like this. When Andrew
Sullivan has to badger NPR on this topic, just where is the corps’
liberal bias?
Once again, liberal bias seemed to be missing in action. Indeed, as
the flap about Lott keeps unfolding, we can’t even find liberal
worldviews at well-known “liberal” sites! On Wednesday, TAPPED explained
the corps’ slow reaction. Try to believe that they said it:
TAPPED: WILL LOTT GO? It’s amazing to Tapped
that this story almost went away. (InstaPundit is correct
that the incestuousness of Washington
politics and media is largely to blame. Everybody here
knows everybody.)
Why did the corps go slow on Lott? TAPPED endorses
Instapundit, who says it shows that everyone is too buddy-buddy inside
Washington. Amazingly, it doesn’t even
occur to TAPPED that the press tends to bow to conservative power,
especially when “dirty secret” segregation groups are involved.
Does TAPPED’S buddy-buddy theory make sense? For example, did the
corps ignore the Georgia flag flap because it was just so chummy with
Peach State participants? Plainly, that story did not involve
an insider class—but the pundit corps punted there, too.
Pathetic, isn’t it? In citing Insta, TAPPED
recites Andrew Sullivan’s line (Insta voiced it first). Here
was Sullivan’s take on this topic—an interpretation which
preserves the idea that “liberal bias” is ruling the media:
SULLIVAN: Howie Kurtz notices how much quicker on the
draw the blogosphere was on the matter of Trent Lott’s declared
regrets for the passing of Jim Crow. I’m still stunned at how
little the New York Times made of it (although Krugman seems to have
drawn from lots of blogosphere arguments for his column today). Why
this discrepancy? I don’t really know. One thought I have is that
the media bigwigs really do operate socially in Washington and find
it hard to pounce on people they know, like, respect or need as a
source.
Sully says that “DC
socialization” explains the pundit corps’ lazy response. Thank
goodness! This way, he doesn’t have to voice an unwelcome thought.
He doesn’t have to say that Washington’s pundits may not be so
liberal after all.
This view makes perfect sense—from Sullivan. But
TAPPED buys it hook, line and sinker. Readers, where oh
where is liberal bias? We suffer from such a
brainwashed insider clique that even liberals can’t seem to
imagine that the pundit corps bows to con power.
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|
Direct
quote of response from TAPPED [brown
colored text is our emphasis]:
We'll get right to the point: When,
exactly, did Bob Somerby become such a blundering idiot?
There was a time when Somerby provided a useful corrective to the
media's tendency to distort and recycle conservative propaganda about
Democrats, particularly Al Gore, Somerby's old college
roommate. But now Somerby's off in la-la land, his
rants increasingly bizarre and nonsensical, and so consumed by his
obsessive-paranoid worldview that he attacks people who basically
agree with him. Case in point: Us.
In a new
post, Somerby links to this
Tapped post on Trent Lott, where we agreed with InstaPundit
and Andrew Sullivan that one reason
(one!) the Lott story almost died
was that Washington is in many ways a very small town --
that is, a place where reporters, politicians and lobbyists are both
friends and adversaries; where a strong
"don't rock the boat" ethic sometimes prevails;
and where the big division is often the gap between the permanent
establishment and everyone else. In other words, one
can imagine that Tom Daschle finds it hard to publicly attack Trent
Lott when he has to work with Lott every day. And one can
imagine, hypothetically, a reporter whose best friend works for a
Republican senator being reluctant to write a story flatly accusing
Lott of being a racist -- until everyone else piles on, at
which point the reporter can write stories about "questions
mounting." This kind of thing is not uncommon. It's just the way
Washington works. And Tapped thinks it played a part in the
Lott coverage, as
did the press' pack behavior.
To be honest, this wasn't a very original thought on
our part. It's a time-honored trope of
Beltway culture. (And it's usually a liberal complaint, not
a conservative one.) Imagine, then, our surprise when Somerby attacked
us as sops to the right:
Why did the corps go slow on Lott? TAPPED endorses
Instapundit, who says it shows that everyone is too buddy-buddy
inside Washington. Amazingly, it doesn’t even occur to TAPPED that
the press tends to bow to conservative power, especially when
"dirty secret" segregation groups are involved. Does
TAPPED’S buddy-buddy theory make sense? For example, did the corps
ignore the Georgia flag flap because it was just so chummy with
Peach State participants? Plainly, that story did not involve an
insider class -- but the pundit corps punted there, too. Pathetic,
isn’t it? In citing Insta, TAPPED recites Andrew Sullivan’s line
(Insta voiced it first)...Sully says that “DC socialization”
explains the pundit corps’ lazy response. Thank goodness! This
way, he doesn’t have to voice an unwelcome thought. He doesn’t
have to say that Washington’s pundits may not be so liberal after
all. This view makes perfect sense -- from Sullivan. But TAPPED buys
it hook, line and sinker. Readers, where oh where is liberal bias?
We suffer from such a brainwashed insider clique that even liberals
can’t seem to imagine that the pundit corps bows to con power.
This is such a mush of
twisted logic and impenetrable non sequiturs that we're not sure where
to begin. If Somerby really thinks that the press sat on
the Lott story to "bow to conservative power" -- whatever
the heck that means -- or out of some kind of sympathy for
neo-Confederates, fine. He's entitled to his
own opinions, however deranged. But please, man, leave us out of it.
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OUR
COMMENTS:
While we certainly don't want to bash TAPPED (which is a site we love
and visit every day), we can't but help notice that TAPPED thoroughly
made themselves look like an unthinking lot with their response to the
Daily Howler. Here are the main reasons why:
1. First, TAPPED claims they said the incestuousness of
Washington politics and media is just "one
reason (one!)" for the Press Corps' feet dragging on
Trent Lott. Their original statement contradicts this claim. They
clearly said: "incestuousness...largely
to blame..." To a casual reader, it is crystal
clear that they bought InstaPundit's "theory" hook, line
and sinker as Daily Howler said.
2. Second, TAPPED, responds to Howler's theory more by
restating their original point than by analyzing in depth, situations
which their theory does not explain (one example was provided by Daily
Howler). True, TAPPED does provide more explanation through what we
will refer to (for brevity's sake) as the "reporter's
best-friend-and-stuff (RBS) theory". However, Daily Howler's
point (as far as we can tell) is that the RBS theory may in part
explain feet dragging on Trent Lott but RBS becomes less than crisp
when trying to extend it to (one of many) other controversial issues
that require anti-Conservative or anti-right-wing stances.
Indeed, without additional qualifications, the RBS
postulate cannot easily explain how
so-called liberal media falsely flagellate and vilify pro-liberal
groups or individuals with such ease, and to such a massive
degree, often over much more inconsequential issues in
comparison. The additional qualification
which would bring some merit to the RBS
theory? If we were to postulate
that the best friends of reporters tend to be Republicans or
Conservatives more than Democrats or Liberals. This would
explain the schism between fact and reality in press coverage ably,
and prove Daily Howler's hypothesis that the big guns of the media are
not really liberal, but rather [fill in the blanks!].
Does this mean we believe in this qualified
RBS theory? We don't know at
this point. But, it is a good companion theory to the other one
that we think should also be looked into: media
that focuses on the financial bottomline rather than facts will report
whatever it takes to increase the bottomline, and not necessarily what
it takes to convey the facts. Especially if a dedicated
pursuit of facts will turn the wide world of conservative watchdogs
and popular false media (Faux News, Rush etc.) against them and
potentially take customers ($$$) away. Thus, in the Lott case, much of
the media seemed to have lapped on to the story only after a while,
because Conservative watchdogs themselves expressed outrage, making it
easier for the likes of CNN and MSNBC to become more fixated on real
problems rather than on someone's hair, wardrobe or beard.
3. Third, TAPPED responds in a manner that we are more
accustomed to seeing Conservatives doing. They trash the personality
or character of their critic, using words like "blundering
idiot", "off in la-la land", "rants...bizarre and
nonsensical", "obsessive-paranoid worldview",
"opinions...deranged". We hope TAPPED will realize what they
have done and correct it. Mr. Somerby is no Michael Kelly. Disagree on
the points - but don't unfairly vilify folks!
4. Fourth, TAPPED claims "he
[Daily Howler] attacks people who basically agree with him. Case in
point: Us". Sorry TAPPED. Mr. Somerby's point was exactly that
TAPPED's views are not in agreement with his. And TAPPED proved his
assertion lucidly with their attempted defense.
Folks, get over the myths being still spun by your erstwhile
colleagues on the other side of the ideological spectrum! This
is a conservative media, with many (not ALL) reporters and journalists
either being conservatives themselves or (if liberal) afraid to report
against Conservatives ("bow to conservative power") for fear
of upsetting the right-wing media machines and by extension their own financial bottomline. That's life.
This repeats over and over and fully explains why Trent Lott survived
this long.
There are a couple of ways to deal with this reality. One way is to build an alternative
media (foundation laid by today's blogosphere) and we have some ideas
in this respect that we are mulling over. We can start with the Internet, something we should all be thankful to
Al Gore for (really).
Another way is to rally the groups affected by each issue and make
them campaign in full public view (ideally all over the country) - a
good example of how this helps is the case of the 9/11 Victims'
Families coalition and how they have (with difficulty) succeeded in
effectively getting Kissinger to resign.
Update on 1/13/03: Daily Howler and TAPPED
had another round of exchanges. See here
and here.
We end with Howler's piece.
II. The
myth of liberal media bias
For detailed eRiposte evidence that shreds the so-called
liberal media bias myth, go to our Media
Bias home page.
3/13/03
Media deference to President Bush, especially on Iraq
Click
here for details.
3/7/03
The "liberal media" (initially) buying Colin Powell and Bush
on Iraq
Daily Howler covers (here
and here)
how some of the "liberal" pundits bought the
"evidence" against Iraq from Colin Powell without bothering
to do any due diligence on independently establishing its veracity,
and then expressed buyer's remorse.
| 02/24/03
AND BILL MAKES THREE:
Incredibly, William Raspberry has become the third Post pundit
to do a flip on Colin Powell. Here’s the start of this
morning’s column:
RASPBERRY: This is hard. So
soon after very nearly swooning over Colin Powell’s report
to the United Nations Security Council, I find myself thinking
the once unthinkable: I don’t believe him.
Like Mary McGrory and Richard
Cohen (see THE
DAILY HOWLER, 2/14/03), Raspberry stampeded in praise of
Powell’s report before he took the time to review it. Now,
like McGrory and Cohen before him, the pundit retracts his high
praise.
Why has Raspberry changed his
mind? Try to believe that our major pundits behave in so
careless a manner:
RASPBERRY: Whence my change of
heart? For one thing, I’ve had time to digest that tour de
force performance of earlier this month. For another, I’ve
been listening and reading (particularly Dilip Hiro’s book
“Iraq: In the Eye of the Storm”). And finally, I’ve
found it impossible to see how Powell’s allegations and
speculation—even if they are all true—lead so ineluctably
to war.
In short, Raspberry wrote his
earlier column—which helped form a consensus about this
crucial matter—before he “had time to digest” it. To state
the obvious, the concerns he now cites had been widely debated for
months before Powell’s big speech.
It’s almost impossible to
describe the worthlessness of the Post’s op-ed “liberals.”
Indeed, how wed is this tribe to Conventional Wisdom? Even now,
when Raspberry says that Powell’s speech “comes to the same
thing” as lying, the pundit still feels that he has to
call the presentation a “tour de force.”
Let’s review. A defining war
is on the table. Despite that, The Post Three stampeded in
praise of Powell without even taking the time for reflection.
Now, they’ve started to read and to think. Who else is ever
this careless?
03/06/03
COOLIN’ ON COLIN:
In this morning’s Washington Post, Mary McGrory begs
and pleads about her February 6 column. In that piece,
McGrory joined a stampede of pundits; they simply couldn’t run
fast enough to praise Colin Powell’s U.N. presentation (see THE
DAILY HOWLER, 2/14/03, 2/24/03).
But as we learn in her column today, McGrory’s readers were
none too pleased by her pander to Powell. Today, she tries to
talk her way out of the piece that has readers so hugely
kerflubbled.
McGrory is clearly right on
one point. The headline on the offending column—“I’m
Persuaded”—overstated its contents. It implied that McGrory
was ready for war, which wasn’t quite what she had said. But
McGrory fails to come to terms with the foolishness of her
column on Colin. At one point today, she wriggles away, penning
this hopeless excuse:
MCGRORY: What impressed me
about Powell’s presentation, besides his magisterial
presence and impeccable prose, were the poisons he showed and
the malice behind them. I did not have the benefit of the
informed criticism that followed. The Post’s Walter
Pincus wrote a summation of the weakest link in Powell’s
speech, the al Qaeda connection. Lately, the coming conflict
is presented seamlessly as “a war against Iraq and
terrorism.”
And that’s right. McGrory didn’t
“have the benefit of the informed criticism that
followed”—because she rushed into print the very next
day, insisting that Powell was perfect. In fact, she had no
way of judging what the general had said, but she—like other
pandering pundits—simply ran as fast as she could to praise
Powell’s work to the skies. And even now, she understates the
problems with Powell’s presentation. She panders to Post
insider Pincus, saying that he found a glitch. But she fails to
acknowledge the other problems that have turned up—the fact
that Powell used worthless material cut-and-pasted from a
12-year-old grad school paper, for example, or the fact that
Gilbert Cranberg wrote a piece challenging Powell’s
translation (see THE
DAILY HOWLER, 2/25/03). Even now, McGrory shades the truth.
Or maybe she hasn’t yet had the chance to look through that
“informed criticism.”
But then, are you really surprised by this lazy scribe’s work?
Here’s the passage in which she explains her general judgment
of Powell:
MCGRORY: I have thought well of
Colin Powell since I heard him say that the most important
lesson to teach the young is that they should do whatever job
is assigned and do it well. As a teenager he mopped the floors
at a soft-drink bottling factory so well he was promoted to
the bottling line. His role in the Iran-contra scandal as an
aide to Caspar Weinberger was not glorious, but I was ready to
vote for him for president if he ran in 1996.
Mary McGrory thinks highly of
Powell because he said that kids should do their jobs well, and
because he mopped the floor when he was a teen. The
mopping outweighs Iran-contra. And oh yes. As we see in the
first passage quoted above, McGrory assumed that Powell’s
report was OK “because of his magisterial presence.”
How vacuous is the Washington “press corps?” Read through
McGrory’s column. |
2/18/03
Editors
often write what the owner wants, especially if the owner is a true
blue right-winger
If one needs evidence for
how the owners of big media influence news coverage and opinions, look
no further than Mr. Rupert Murdoch. As Roy Greenslade points out in The
Guardian:
Rupert
Murdoch argued strongly for a war with Iraq in an interview this
week. Which might explain why his 175 editors around the world
are backing it too, writes Roy Greenslade
Monday February 17, 2003
The Guardian
(W)hat a guy! You have got to admit that Rupert Murdoch is one
canny press tycoon because he has an unerring ability to choose
editors across the world who think just like him. How else can
we explain the extraordinary unity of thought in his newspaper
empire about the need to make war on Iraq? After an exhaustive
survey of the highest-selling and most influential papers across
the world owned by Murdoch's News Corporation, it is clear that
all are singing from the same hymn sheet. Some are bellicose
baritone soloists who relish the fight. Some prefer a less
strident, if more subtle, role in the chorus. But none, whether
fortissimo or pianissimo, has dared to croon the anti-war tune.
Their master's voice has never been questioned.
Murdoch
is chairman and chief executive of News Corp which owns more
than 175 titles on three continents, publishes 40 million papers
a week and dominates the newspaper markets in Britain, Australia
and New Zealand. His television reach is greater still, but
broadcasting - even when less regulated than in Britain - is not
so plainly partisan. It is newspapers which set the agenda.
It
isn't always clear exactly what Murdoch believes on any given
issue, but this time we know for certain, courtesy of an
interview in the Australian magazine, the Bulletin (which, by
the way, he doesn't own). To cite the report of that interview
in Murdoch's own Sydney Daily Telegraph, the "media
magnate...has backed President Bush's stance against Iraqi
leader Saddam Hussein". Indeed, his quotes are specific.
"We can't back down now, where you hand over the whole of
the Middle East to Saddam...I think Bush is acting very morally,
very correctly, and I think he is going to go on with it".
Then came words of praise for Tony Blair. "I think Tony is
being extraordinarily courageous and strong... It's not easy to
do that living in a party which is largely composed of people
who have a knee-jerk anti-Americanism and are sort of pacifist.
But he's shown great guts as he did, I think, in Kosovo and
various problems in the old Yugoslavia."
Most
revealing of all was Murdoch's reference to the rationale for
going to war, blatantly using the o-word. Politicians in the
United States and Britain have strenuously denied the
significance of oil, but Murdoch wasn't so reticent. He believes
that deposing the Iraqi leader would lead to cheaper oil.
"The greatest thing to come out of this for the world
economy...would be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any
tax cut in any country.".... |
1/13/03
American
Press have become the President's men, says Matthew Engel
We quote (bold text is our emphasis):
"...It
is more than 30 years ago now, though it seems like yesterday. A
Republican president, much derided by liberals, was in the White House
and his opponents were being lashed by the rightwing attack dogs, led
then by the vice-president, Spiro Agnew. The
elite East Coast press, exemplified by the New York Times and the
Washington Post, were the special targets of his scorn:
"pointy-headed liberals," he called them, and "the
nattering nabobs of negativism". But the press laughed last and
longest. Agnew resigned in disgrace, to be followed by his president,
Richard Nixon - forced out by the investigations of two Post
reporters, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, whose doggedness revealed
Nixon's role in covering up the Watergate break-in and sundry other
crimes. It remains one of the greatest - maybe the greatest - moment
in the history of American journalism.
Now there is
a new Republican president, elected even more controversially and
pursuing a far more divisive agenda. Where are the pointy-head
liberals now? The change can be summed up in Woodward's own career.
As the Watergate investigator, he not merely protected his sources, he
glamorised them. Now, still on the Post staff, he functions as a
semi-official court stenographer to the Bush White House. And it is
notable that those who talk to him - such as the president himself -
always play the heroic role in his stories. The worldwide turmoil
caused by President Bush's policies goes not exactly unreported, but
entirely de-emphasised....
...Indeed,
there is hardly any such thing as the liberal press. Since
Watergate, the Post has acquired a virtual monopoly over the
Washington newspaper market, grown fat and - frankly -
journalistically flabby. Its op-ed page is notable for its turgid
prose, its conservative slant, and the apologetic tone of its more
liberal contributors. The rival page in the New York Times has far
more spark, and - in the unfortunate absence of political opposition -
has provided the only forum for serious national debate over the Iraq
issue. But the Times' own editorials over Iraq, possibly reflecting
internal tensions, have been uncertain. And the paper feels itself a
little beleaguered, even marginalised, by the strategies employed by
the Bush White House....Day after day, rightwing radio talk hosts
dominate the airwaves, deriding opponents and cutting off callers who
argue. Indeed, to emphasise the turnaround, one of the most
ferocious is run by G Gordon Liddy, who was jailed for his role in
Watergate. ("There are no second acts in American lives" -
Scott Fitzgerald. Wrong.) The doyen of them, Rush Limbaugh, reaches an
estimated 20 million listeners a week....
...And
political courage is especially rare. reporters in Washington are kept
in line by the standard threat: annoy us, and your stories dry up....
In the face
of this, only one White House reporter, Dana Milbank of the Post,
regularly employs scepticism and irreverence in his coverage of the
Bush administration- he is said to dodge the threats because he is
regarded as an especially engaging character. It is more mysterious
that only the tiniest handful of liberal commentators ever manage to
irritate anyone in the government: there is Paul Krugman in the New
York Times, Molly Ivins down in Texas and, after that, you have to
scratch your head.
To some
extent, journalists have felt obliged to tone down criticisms because
of the sense of shared national purpose after September 11. Even
that cannot explain how the papers cravenly ignored the Trent Lott
story. Lott, the veteran senator from Mississippi, made his pro-
segregation statement on a Thursday, in full earshot of the Washington
press corps. The Times and Post both failed to mention it. Indeed, it
was almost totally ignored until the following Tuesday, kept alive
until then only by a handful of bloggers. If there is a Watergate
scandal lurking in this administration, it is unlikely to be Woodward
or his colleagues who will tell us about it. If it emerges, it will
probably come out on the web. That is a devastating indictment of the
state of American newspapers.
1/3/03
The
media's labeling of Nancy Pelosi vs. their labeling of Tom DeLay
1/1/03
New
York Times acknowledges that Democrats are outflanked by right-wing in
media wars
"...Should the organizers succeed at
starting a foundation, it would not have anywhere near the number of
prominent, outright partisan media voices that its conservative
counterparts do. Democrats can point to a scant few. Their most
prominent television advocates, James Carville and Paul Begala on 'Crossfire'
and Bill Press on CNN's 'Buchanan and Press,' square off each day
against conservative counterparts. Mr. Donahue stands alone on MSNBC,
but his program has struggled some against the far more watched Bill
O'Reilly on Fox and Connie Chung on CNN. Conservatives
have Mr. Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Reagan and Neal Boortz, who
collectively draw an audience of at least 30 million people per week
with a strictly conservative message. They are led, of course, by Mr.
Limbaugh, with an estimated audience of up to 20 million people a
week, and Mr. Hannity, with nearly 10 million. Democrats, most
recently Al Gore, have also complained that the Fox News Channel,
overseen by the former Republican strategist Roger E. Ailes, slants
its coverage against Democrats, a charge Mr. Ailes denies. Its average
nightly audience of about 1.3 million people is the largest in cable
news. In one of the more ambitious of the ideas circulating, a group
of wealthy Democratic supporters is toying with the idea of starting a
liberal cable network. That endeavor would cost in the hundreds of
millions and require the backing of a media company with enough
leverage to force it onto the major cable systems..."
Blogger Skippy examines
this further, pointing out why even successful liberal talk show
hosts are having trouble getting airtime.
12/25/02
The alarming right-wing orientation of talk radio in
America
Wayne Madsen writes for Knight Ridder
highlighting the need to change the telecommunications laws to bring
back balance to talk radio in America (bold text is our emphasis). A
more creative exposure of the myth of liberal media comes from BartCop.
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It is
high time for the Federal Communications Commission to re-institute
its traditional Fairness Doctrine and guarantee equal access for all
points of view over the public — that is — our airwaves.
The
Fairness Doctrine was scrapped by the FCC in 1987 during a time when
Ronald Reagan was out to get the government out of practically every
facet of our lives. But the deregulation by the FCC of radio
only ensured that mega-media corporations were able to gobble up more
and more independently owned stations and then offer up zealots like
Rush Limbaugh and what Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., calls Rush wannabes
on hundreds of radio stations across the country.
Soon, both local and nationally
syndicated Rush wannabes began offering a daily concoction of
right-wing politics to a public that largely ignored their local
newspapers and relied upon the radio rants for their news.
In
some cases, the vitriol came directly from the fax machines of the
Republican National Committee. In other cases, the propaganda echoed
that written in the Washington Times or on right-wing Internet sites
like the Drudge Report, World Net Daily and News Max.
Liberal
alternatives cannot be found on the public commercial airwaves. A few
liberals, like Jim Hightower, found an outlet on a few public radio
stations, but their reach to the general public is worse than Radio
Free Europe's during the days of Soviet radio jamming....With
Gore, Daschle and Durbin all finally aware of the misuse of the public
commercial airwaves by the Republican Party and its rightist allies,
the FCC's commissioners must revisit the Fairness Doctrine.
However,
time is of the essence because the FCC, under the leadership of
Michael Powell, the son of Secretary of State Colin Powell, is
considering scrapping even more FCC regulations over OUR airwaves.
|
12/20/02
Debunking Bernard Goldberg's woeful "Bias"
Geoffrey Nunberg of The American Prospect
has done what we believe is one of the most complete and thorough
refuting of the liberal bias myth perpetrated by the Right and my some
in the mainstream media. His series is available in these links. Part
I, Part
II, Part
III. They are a bit too detailed to summarize in brief, but the
bottomline is that he clearly shows that if we label media based on
their subjective or objective assignment of liberal/left-leaning
or conservative/ right-leaning terminologies to describe people or
groups, then the evidence shows the media has a conservative bias.
Another detailed study from 1998, perhaps more
thorough than Nunberg's, is the work
by FAIR. Their conclusions? We quote (bold text is our emphasis):
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- On select issues from corporate power and
trade to Social Security and Medicare to health care and taxes,
journalists are actually more conservative than the general public.
- Journalists are mostly centrist in their political
orientation.
- The minority of journalists who do
not identify with the "center" are more likely to identify
with the "right" when it comes to economic issues and to
identify with the "left" when it comes to social issues.
- Journalists report that
"business-oriented news outlets" and "major daily
newspapers" provide the highest quality coverage of
economic policy issues, while "broadcast network TV news"
and "cable news services" provide the worst.
|
In a separate
note in Buzz Flash, at least some Conservatives cited there agree
that the liberal media bias tag is false.
12/19/02
The incomparable Bob Somerby at the Daily
Howler further shreds Mr. Kelly's recent B.S.
|
Direct
quote of Daily Howler [brown
colored and bold text is our emphasis]:
“In 17 years of news content analysis,
especially of network evening news broadcasts, [Robert] Lichter’s
Center for Media and Public Affairs has consistently found evidence of
liberal bias,” Kelly claims, “and this has not changed in the past
few years.” But then Kelly gives “[s]ome recent findings from
content analyses of the nightly network newscasts”—and the
evidence doesn’t support his claim in any way, shape or form. Why
on earth does the Washington Post keep putting such work into
print?
Do Lichter’s studies show “liberal bias…in the past few
years?” Simply put, the claim is fiction. Kelly cites data from
four recent studies. But three of the studies don’t even begin to
support his much-ballyhooed thesis. Here is Kelly’s first example,
concerning the 2000 White House race:
KELLY: In the 2000 presidential election, both
candidates received mostly negative press, and largely to the same
degree: George W. Bush received only 37 percent positive coverage;
Al Gore, only 40 percent.
More on that study a bit later. Here is Kelly’s
second example, concerning Bush and Clinton’s first 100 days (he
quotes a Lichter study):
KELLY: “Only 43 percent of all on-air evaluations
of George W. Bush were favorable” in Bush’s first 100 days in
office (compared with a similarly negative 40 percent for Clinton in
his first 100).
According to these data, Bush got slightly better
coverage than Clinton during his first 100 days in office. And Gore
got slightly better coverage than Bush during the 2000 campaign.
In each case, the numbers are so close that it would be absurd to
claim a significant difference; Kelly himself says that Bush and
Clinton got “similarly negative” coverage. So how are these
studies supposed to show continuing “liberal bias?” We leave
that to the reader’s imagination—the only organ equipped to
interpret Kelly’s work. And believe it or not, here’s example 3.
Try to believe that he wrote it:
KELLY: Bush did get a terrific bounce from the
rallying effect of Sept. 11. From that day through Nov. 19, 2001,
Bush “received the most positive coverage ever measured for a
president over an extended period of time”—64 percent positive
to 36 percent negative. But Bush’s high of 77 percent positive
that September was down to 59 percent within two months.
Only in the world of Kelly!
Only there is 59 percent positive coverage for Bush a sign of
continuing liberal bias! Only there does “the most positive coverage
ever measured for a president” seem to show that the press won’t
play fair.
But this, of course, is vintage Kelly—ballyhooed
evidence which in no way supports the claim being loudly
brayed. Can anyone answer the obvious
question: Why in the world does the Washington Post keep putting such
work into print? Regarding this latest column, were editors really
unable to see the ludicrous nature of the evidence? Or is this work in
the Post for political correctness, as a servile bow to conservative
power—put there so the Post can defend itself against claims
of “liberal bias?” Whatever the answer, we’ve long
told you this: Your press corps is fundamentally lacking in purpose.
They don’t seem to care about their work. It
would be odd to see a high school paper put work so inept into
print.
Meanwhile, a few remarks about the CMPA study on
Campaign 2000. The study only covers evening network news
broadcasts—one of the most pared-down parts of American news—and
it only covers the period from 9/4/00 to
11/7/00. This includes the single period in the twenty-month race when
the press corps clearly turned on Bush—the (roughly) three-week
period after Gore jumped ahead in the polls in the aftermath of the
Democratic Convention. This was
the period of the subliminal RATS ad and the
major-league asshole—the
single period in the two-year campaign when Gore got better treatment
than Bush.
At other points, the coverage was different. For
example, Lichter’s study of the primary season shows Gore getting
substantially worse coverage. According to the study, which Kelly
ignored, the primaries broke down like this:
Bush: 53 percent positive coverage
Gore: 40 percent positive coverage
Lichter’s studies can only provide a crude measure. But
those numbers tend to reflect a basic fact. Except for that three-week
period through mid-September, Bush got better coverage than Gore at
every point in the twenty-month race. (In June 1999, for
example, Paul Gigot called Bush’s coverage “adoring.”) And
remember: Lichter’s studies only involve
nightly newscasts by the three nets—a small slice of the media pie.
Another Lichter study shows that election coverage on these broadcasts
fell almost 40 percent as compared to the ’92 race. |
12/18/02
Although there is a lot more we will be saying on this
over the next few months, we'll kick off this segment with the most
recent lunacy of Michael Kelly, who is a "two-part series" (1,
2)
in the Washington Post asserts as usual how the national media
has "liberal bias." Joe Conason's response
in Salon appropriately addresses Mr. Kelly's flight of
fancy.
|
Direct
quote of response from Joe Conason (Salon) [brown
colored and bold text is our emphasis]:
Kelly relies entirely on data and quotes from
the Center for Media and Public Affairs and its president, S. Robert
Lichter. The data, much of which is quite dated, purports to show that
reporters for the mainstream media are mostly liberal Democrats. It
also purports to show that network newscasts have been slanted in
favor of Clinton, against Bush and war on Iraq, and so on.
Kelly's own slant begins with his description of
Lichter's organization as "independent" -- a term that
falsely suggests absence of ideological bias. Had the columnist
bothered with minimal research concerning Lichter and the Center, he
might have discovered that they are and always have been terribly
dependent on right-wing foundations. According to
MediaTransparency.org -- which tracks nonprofit funding from IRS 990
forms -- the Center has
received $2.3 million from the Scaife, Olin, Bradley and Smith
Richardson foundations, the big four of the far right. That
figure includes $275,000 in 2001 and $200,000 in 2000 alone.
So when Lichter tells Kelly that journalists can't
help reflecting bias in their work, he might as well be talking about
himself. There is nothing "scientific" about his research
into bias, since all of his organization's judgments about favorable
or unfavorable coverage on newscasts are inevitably subjective. At
an even more basic level of dishonesty, it's ridiculous to assume that
newspapers or newscasts reflect the supposed Democratic bias of
reporters, the lowest-ranking figures in the media. Why
wouldn't they instead reflect the bias of editors, publishers,
directors and management, all of which tend to be Republican and
conservative? Editor & Publisher polled the nation's
newspaper executives just before the 2000 election, and found an overwhelming
preference for George W. Bush.
We also know that Jack Welch, former
chief of NBC (and GE) is an ardent Republican. So was Larry
Tisch when he owned CBS. So are
Richard Parsons and Steve Case of CNN (and Time Warner AOL). Michael
Eisner (Disney ABC) gave to Bill Bradley and Al Gore, but he gave more
to Bush and McCain -- and he supported Rick Lazio for the Senate
against Hillary Clinton. Rupert Murdoch and John Malone are big
Republican supporters of the Cato Institute. So why isn't
anybody complaining about the "conservative bias" of media
executives? |
12/11/02
Al
Gore-Naomi Wolf blather
Quoting Daily Howler:
| Let’s
go back to November 1999. At that time, the Washington press
corps was thoroughly shocked about Gore’s controversial
adviser. According to Time, New York writer Naomi
Wolf was serving as an adviser to Gore. Wolf was a thoroughly
mainstream figure. A former Rhodes Scholar, she had written
three international best-sellers; her first book, The Beauty
Myth, had been picked by the New York Times as one of the
seventy most influential books of the century. Nor was Wolf a
stranger to party politics; she had been a regular adviser to
the 1996 Clinton campaign, and her husband, David Shipley, was a
Clinton speech-writer. And how had Wolf first become so controversial?
By arguing from the feminist center against certain views of the
feminist left! Needless to say, pundits routinely hid this fact
in their gimmicked-up, month-long Wolf flap.
Wolf was a mainstream figure.
But the pundit world went into shock at the news that Wolf was
advising Gore. And they flogged the amazing amount she was
earning—$15,000 per month!!! In the November 1
Washington Post, Ceci Connolly put the sum right in her very
first sentence:
CONNOLLY: Vice President Gore
acknowledged yesterday that he hired controversial feminist
Naomi Wolf for a $15,000-a-month consulting fee, saying
the author and columnist is a “valued adviser” who has
helped him target younger voters.
The pundit corps mocked Wolf for
a month. She was even compared to Monica Lewinsky by smutty,
thigh-rubbing national pundits like Jim Pinkerton, Maggie
Gallagher, Kathleen Parker, Chris Matthews. And pundits were in
a state of shock at Wolf’s astonishing salary! In the
Post, Richard Cohen called it “astounding.” The next day,
Maureen Dowd chipped in with her musings. “You’ve got to
respect a woman who gets a vice president to pay her a salary
higher than his own,” the scribe purred. (Any guesses on how
much Dowd gets paid?) Soon, Scripted Pundits were all aghast at
the wild salary Gore had been paying. For example, here’s Tish
Durkin on the November 5 Hardball. By the way, Durkin was
Hardball’s idea of a “liberal.” Incredibly, she was
on the show this evening to balance off anti-Gore views:
DURKIN: I think that the, the
single most disturbing thing about the Naomi Wolf story is
that he was paying her $15,000 a month. Money to burn? I
mean, is that—she’s not running the campaign…Then what
are you paying her $15,000 a month for?
Discussions like this went on for
a month. No one could believe that Gore would pay a controversial
adviser $15,000.
And then, on February 8, it
happened. Breaking all rules of Pundit Comity, USA Today’s
Drinkard went and mentioned Richard Quinn’s salary! Unlike
Wolf, Quinn was actually out of the mainstream. And Quinn
was being paid $20,000—one third more than Wolf. Since
the press corps had been so deeply disturbed by the salary Gore
paid his controversial adviser, surely the pundit class
shouted long and loud about the big bucks John McCain paid his
race man.
Please. In fact, the press
corps was in the bag for McCain—and they’d been running a
gimmicked-up War Against Gore since March 1999. So they did the
thing your pundits do best—they simply spun you blue. How did
they treat this pair of controversial advisers? In the
month after Wolf’s salary first became known, Nexis records
324 media references to her $15,000 haul. And in the month after
Drinkard revealed Quinn’s salary? Nexis records sixteen
references to his salary! Sixteen. That’s less than
three hundred.
Naomi Wolf was a mainstream
figure. There was nothing odd about her campaign role. There was
nothing odd about her salary. (And no—no one ever presented
evidence that she told Gore to wear earth tones.) But Wolf’s
role was reported in Month 8 of the press corps’ twenty-month
War Against Gore, so they gimmicked up a set of wild claims. To
what extent will they lie in your face? Fakers and frauds, they
even pretended to be deeply disturbed by Wolf’s salary.
Meanwhile, McCain’s race man
went largely unmentioned. Columns about his controversial
views were few and far between. And how about his astonishing
salary? Remember those numbers: 324 to 16! Readers, what
ever happened to liberal bias? What ever happened to liberal
bias when a mainstream figure like Wolf is flogged, and the
GOP’s race men get airbrushed?
Senator Lott has supporters
like Quinn, and others whose views are more extreme. But the
press corps hates to discuss these dudes, and major scribes are
now scratching their head about why Lott hasn’t praised
desegregation. Readers! What ever happened to liberal bias when
the most likely answer isn’t clear? |
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