Posted on 09/03/2003 11:05:06 PM PDT by kattracks
Walter Cronkite, once called America's most trusted man, once disagreed with me when I called most journalists "liberal." "If by liberal," he told me, "you mean open-minded, then, yes. This is true."
Cronkite, no longer constrained by the journalistic creed of non-partisanship, now writes a weekly column. About liberal reporters, he now pleads guilty: "I believe that most of us reporters are liberal, but not because we consciously have chosen that particular color in the political spectrum. More likely it is because most of us served our journalistic apprenticeships as reporters covering the seamier sides of our cities -- the crimes, the tenement fires, the homeless and the hungry, the underclothed and undereducated."
Last week, I interviewed Mr. Cronkite and questioned him about his rationale behind journalists' liberalism. If, I asked, journalists become liberal because they see the underbelly, the downtrodden, the miscast, how do you explain the conservatism of police officers, who, after all, see exactly the same things? Cronkite, apparently uncomfortable with the question, simply said, "Why should I?"
Liberal bias matters.
This bias affects consumers of "news" in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Here are some recent examples:
C-SPAN, last week, listed with voice-over the top best-selling non-fiction books: "'Living History,' the memoir by Hillary Rodham Clinton is first on the list. It is followed by 'Treason,' conservative pundit Ann Coulter's book. . . . Barbara Ehrenreich looks at the unskilled labor market in No. 3, 'Nickel and Dimed.'" Hold the phone. As to Hillary Clinton, C-SPAN neither called her "liberal," nor "extremely liberal," nor "leftist," nor even "progressive." Barbara Ehrenreich writes for a number of publications, including one of the country's most liberal periodicals, The Nation. Indeed, Ehrenreich is honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. Yet while C-SPAN correctly identified Ann Coulter as "conservative," Ehrenreich just got the good ol' Barbara Ehrenreich -- no adjective necessary -- treatment. But it gets worse. C-SPAN also said, "Author and filmmaker Michael Moore comes in at No. 6 . . . " Moore just received funding for his newest documentary, "Fahrenheit 911," its apparent premise that the Bush family and the Osama bin Laden family, both in the oil business, combined somehow to create September 11! Moore, of course, castigated the Bush administration when he won Best Documentary Oscar for his liberal, anti-Second Amendment, anti-American documentary "Bowling for Columbine." Yet C-SPAN simply called him "author and filmmaker" Michael Moore.
Here's another one. The Los Angeles Times and Investor's Business Daily recently reported on increasingly good economic news. However, both papers spun the news in dramatically different ways. Both listed comments from three economists. But in the case of the Los Angeles Times, the paper managed to find pessimistic economists who downplayed the news, and added a big "but." One said, "But we'll have to wait and see about jobs," and another said, "But in 2004 . . . that's going to fade." One found no such qualifying "buts" from the economists quoted in the Investor's article.
Californians, of course, face a gubernatorial recall election on Oct. 7. The Los Angeles Times recently ran the following headline: "(Lt. Governor) Bustamante Has Big Lead on Schwarzenegger." Yet, only weeks earlier, the L.A. Times reported, deep in the article, that Schwarzenegger enjoyed a 45 to 22 percent lead over his nearest rival. The headline? "Davis Calls Recall an 'Insult' to His Supporters." Similarly, on Aug. 13, 2003, the L.A. Times also noted that Arnold Schwarzenegger enjoyed a 20-point lead over his nearest rival. The headline? "The Recall Campaign: Pollsters Groping for Questions; A complex campaign and a crowded field a hard one for those who weigh public opinion." So, in the L.A. Times, Cruz Bustamante enjoys a "big lead," amounting to 13 percent. Yet, the same newspaper's headlines neglect Schwarzenegger's even "bigger" lead of 20 points.
Want more? The "Today" show's Katie Couric questioned California gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger's father's Nazi past. Yet, Democratic lieutenant governor and gubernatorial candidate Cruz Bustamante once belonged to an organization called MEChA, with the following goal: Reclaiming Aztlan -- which they roughly define as the "stolen" Southwestern states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado and Utah -- for the Chicano (or indigenous) population. Their own literature states, "We are free and sovereign to determine those tasks which are justly called for by our house, our land, the sweat of our brows, and by our hearts. Aztlan belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops, and not to the foreign Europeans. We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the bronze continent."
Yet the media showed more interest in a 26-year-old article in which Schwarzenegger discussed his raunchy sexual behavior and use of drugs. But Bustamante's membership in an organization that contemptuously calls whites "gringos" and "gabachos," and has the stated goal of apparent military "reconquest" of the Southwest, drew comparatively less attention.
But, as Cronkite says, these examples no doubt simply reflect journalists' "open-mindedness."
©2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
| Professor's Study Shows Liberal Bias in News Media | ||||||
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Great Debate#9 Break up Microsoft?...Then how about the media "Big Six"? [ ... -Poll confirms Ivy League liberal tilt--
A poll by the Center for the Study of Social and Political Change in 1992, eighty-three percent of film and television writers, directors and producers voted for Bill Clinton. Eighty-three percent. The vote that Clinton received in the country at large, forty-three percent.
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No, Walter-we mean liberal-as in:
useless, irrational, hysterical, incapable-of-logical-thought-process.
If you want the best examples of where media bias does extreme damage, just look at the Iraq war, and Al Jeezera. Media coverage influences world wide perception. Remember those exiled Iraqi's boarding busses in Jordan to go to back Iraq and fight for Saddam? They were stirred into a frenzy by Al Jeezera's slanted coverage of the war- they ended up being toast.
The morale of our troops is directly effected by media bias too. All this "quagmire" coverage and continous negativity in all reports from Iraq. It makes the military's job harder to do. It's tough on their families as well. (The welcome exception is Fox News-They try to include positive stories and they have done some good work in telling people about how difficult it was to rebuild Europe after WW II.)
Imagine if all jouranlists and networks applied Fair and Balanced to how they did their news. There'd be less problems in the world,-I think.
Ummmmm , have no idea what you're talking about or what it has to do with my post/opinion about media bias and how it can hurt. Did you fall out of bed this morning and hit your head real hard ? Not worth arguing anyway-a-Dios.
That was an excellent well-written piece by Mr. Elder. I've researched this issue for the last several years and have written numerous letters to the editor on this subject. In fact Brent Bozell just wrote another well-written peice about how journaists continue to hide behind bogus claim of objectivity while serving as lapdogs for the Demorats and attack dogs against Republicians.
This issue does indeed matter because what is at stake here is our rights as conservatives and chrstians to address issues of public importance in public arenas like this one without the fear of retribution or retalation. There are those who look at us as a public health risk to our own communities simply because of what we stand for and the ideas we promote. These people are seeking to criminialize our expression and have us sent to concentrtation and reeducation camps.
How it hurts is because a lot of these people are posing as journalists and hiding behind bogus and false claims of objectivity. These people clearly have malicious and harmful intentions towards us christians and conservatives. These people are not our friends, they are our enemies and if you're going to take up for these sorry bastards, then you're not going to be treated very nicely in conservative or christian circles.
Liberal and progressives points of view DO NOT REPRESENT NEUTRALITY and any news ornganiztion that inisists on presenting the news this way is very highly suspect. If you're going to blow kisses to these news organizations, you go do so on DU, NOT here at FR. As somone once said, the friends of our enemies are our enemies and these news organizations, CNN and the big three are our enemies.
Regards.
Many people think that they understand politics as well as anyone else, without actually knowing what conservatives think--or even that conservatives do think.Consider the fact that journalists routinely label Republican presidential candidates "dumb" and Democratic ones "smart." Do they do it because
a) It's true.They did it with Reagan, and it turns out that the man was a genius--as indicated not only by the fact that he has the largest body of writing in his own hand of just about any president, but by the fact that he got the country going again, whipped inflation, ended the energy crisis, and transcended Communism.b) it's false.
c) they are Democrats and they are preaching to the choir, or
d) they are Democrats and they are hoping to gull the naive into believing it.
And they did it with GWB, notwithstanding that he has a Harvard MBA and his opponent had only a BA degree.
As a libertarian you will understand that the First Amendment gives you the right to be wrong at the top of your voice without legal consequence; as an FR poster/lurker you can scarcely be ignorant of the consistent anticonservative tendency of journalism. That tendency inheres in so-called "objective" journalism as a genre of nonfiction and--so far as journalism is co-extensive with "the press"--is immune from government intervention if not from public criticism.
As a libertarian you will however understand that the prosecution of violations of the regulations of the FCC constitutes pure-and-simple unconstitutional censorship. The implication of which is that the FCC is in the business of determining what so-called "speech" is "in the public interest"--and the simple fact is that the FCC allows patent--and politically significant--falsehood to be broadcast by its licensees without consequence. The misleading "Gore Wins Florida" message contrasts with the spirit of secret-ballot restrictions on undue influence on voters in areas where the polls were still open. That spirit would indeed suggest that there should be no reporting of election results from unofficial sources, so that we-the-people, nationwide, would vote for the electors of our states without undue influence of the opinions, right or wrong, as to what decisions the voters of Eastern Time Zone states may (or may not) have made.
But FCC licensees, apparently for excellent cause, evince no concern that the FCC might sanction them for such blatant efforts to influence the voters on election day. Instead of playing only neutral classical music when the people are expressing their sovereignty on election day--as the media of the USSR did when the dictator had died and a new dictator was not yet in charge--FCC licensees declare states for the Democratic candidate in unseemly haste, and declare states for the Republican candidate in stately dignity, reluctantly. And while doing so they explicitly claim that the difference between the relative speed of their announcements for the two candidates reflects the relative strength of those candidates. That would be questionable on secret-ballot undue-influence grounds even if the perpetrators did not depend on government licenses for the capability to broadcast those claims. In short,
Broadcast Journalism is Unnecessary and Illegitimate
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