High Bias: "Mainstream" reporters aren't just liberal – they're fanatical.

The Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal ^ | July 12, 2004 | Orson Scott Card

[quidnunc]

When Fox News Channel was founded by Rupert Murdoch, the consensus was that no startup all-news cable channel could possibly compete with CNN, and if any startup had a chance, it was MSNBC, which had the combined clout of NBC's esteemed news division and Microsoft, which in those days was believed to own the future.

Now, almost a decade later, Fox News Channel has left both CNN and MSNBC in the dust. There's no guarantee that this is permanent, of course. But it certainly has the left in a panic. They hated it that American conservatism had any voice at all, back when it was confined to a few radio talk shows — remember how everybody wanted to blame Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talk-radio hosts for the Oklahoma City bombing?

Now, though, to have Fox News Channel be the source for the largest portion of America's TV news junkies just sticks in their craw. How could such a thing happen? Scott Collins, author of "Crazy Like a Fox: The Inside Story of How Fox News Beat CNN," thinks he has the answer.

It's not what Fox claims — that the American news media have a pronounced and painful liberal bias, so that huge numbers of Americans had given up on TV news, only to return in droves when Fox News offered them a balanced, trustworthy source of information. No, it's that a large number of Americans believed that the news was biased. How they got this idea is that they were … hmmm … idiots? But no matter. Mr. Collins repeatedly states that the perception is what mattered, and by homing in on the audience dumb enough to think the media was biased, Fox News won the ratings race (but not, of course, the race for quality news coverage).

I'm painting Mr. Collins's book far too negatively, and I'm doing it deliberately. In fact, you can finish "Crazy Like a Fox" and think you have received a balanced story. Nowhere does Mr. Collins actually say that Fox News viewers are idiots. But Mr. Collins is a product of the liberal American news media, which are deeply offended at any accusation of bias. They don't twist the news — they inform their readers of the truth. And when they see Fox News trumpeting slogans like "we report, you decide" and "fair and balanced," they see red. They take it for granted that those slogans are true of every news outlet except Fox News.

So when Mr. Collins sets out to write a fair and balanced account of Fox News's triumph, he does not realize that his own reporting is biased, too. He scrupulously avoids demonizing the folks at Fox News.

But the bias is there. It is simply taken for granted that Fox distorts the news, that Fox is unusual for taking sides, while all of the allegations about liberal bias are refuted so that one could close this book believing that liberal bias in the vast majority of the American news media is a delusion shared only by dimwitted conservatives who don't like it that the world has passed them by — and blame the messenger.

-snip-

[GOPJ]

They've deluded themselves into believing prizes are the equal of respectful readers. Fools.

The Stone Age press is the only business in America that believes it can insult 60% of it's customers.

[Tamzee]

I do not believe the usual rhetoric that the media doesn't know it is biased that I have heard so many times. They freaking well know they are and are doing all they can to destroy this President and his administration. No question about it, they have an evil agenda and they know exactly what they are doing.

Bump to that :-)

[nopardons]

bttt

[ForGod'sSake]

I'd say he gets it.

FGS

[Bonaparte]

Excellent! Thanks for posting this, quidnunc. I don't know what happened to Mr. Card in recent years, but I love it. The man is on fire!

[Sonny M]

The left sure is pulling all the stops out in this election year. If they lose the election, I expect riots in Beverly Hills and Greenich Village.

I can guarantee riots and suicides, and also leftist acts of terror.

These people are so emotionally invested in this, that anything else but Kerry winning would short circuit them.

Some of them are starting to feel like Bush could win, so they are compensating themselves to the false rumor or fairy tale that the machines will be rigged so the republicans can win, this is just so they can have a fall back.

For gods sake, I was talking to a girl in a bar, she couldn't even concieve the possibility Bush will win (she also thinks he'll lose in a landslide), when I got her to just imagine for one second, a what if bush wins scenario, she started to cry hysterically.

[GeronL]

All the crying will be fun to watch

[lainde]

bttt

[lainde]

Thanks for the ping!

[jmstein7]

BUMP!

[hang 'em]

For gods sake, I was talking to a girl in a bar, she couldn't even concieve the possibility Bush will win (she also thinks he'll lose in a landslide), when I got her to just imagine for one second, a what if bush wins scenario, she started to cry hysterically.

Hey, Wo Wo... Now that's the time to move in baby, YEAH!!!! You know what I'm say'n. Yeah baby, Yeah!!!!! She need help. Stick it to her!!!! SHe beggin fo'it. Liberal babes need serious attention.

[MeekOneGOP]

FOX NEWS, FOX NEWS...WAAAAAAAAHHH

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

What makes the liberal bias in the mainstream media so pernicious is that they deny that they're biased and insist that their twisted version of events is "reality," and anyone who disagrees with them is either mentally or morally suspect. In other words, they're fanatics. And, like all good fanatics, they're utterly convinced that they're in sole possession of virtue and truth.

The "mainstream media" convey the perspective that they do because that perspective - "the sky is falling!" - attracts attention. If that perspective is untrue, there really is no need for "mainstream journalism" at all, you can just walk past the newsstand without buying the paper.

And the "mainstream media" are "mainstream" because among themselves they do not compete on the basis of perspective but only in how they present the perspective that "the sky is falling." They do compete, most vigorously, with conservatives on the basis of perspective. They claim the turf of "objectivity" - more or less the same thing as wisdom - exclusively to their own cabal. A cabal which coalesced naturally around the perspective which was most profitable for journalism to project, irrespective of its relation to truth in historical context.

[Tolik]

Wall Street Journal reprints Orson Scott Card article  [please freepmail me if you want or don't want to be pinged to Orson Scott Card political articles]

Links to the previous FR discussions of this article: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1149080/posts and http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1150103/posts

 

[PGalt]

Thanks for the ping! Outstanding comments bump!

[IamConservative]

Making up a bunch of lies about Bush and calling it a documentary made Moore many millions, this guy is probably thinking; Why not?

It is clear most people will be drawn to what they believe and see that as the truth.

When it comes to news involving anything political, very few people think about and view things objectively. Politics is art, not science.

[Judith Anne]

Thanks for the ping.

[Valin]

I do not believe the usual rhetoric that the media doesn't know it is biased that I have heard so many times.

At least according to Bernard Goldberg they really don't think they're biased in reporting the news. Strange as it sounds they really don't see themselves as all that leftist. They live in a bubble where everyone they know thinks the way they do.

Think of it this way, where you live and work 98% of the people you associate with think the same way you do, after a while you start to see your views as moderate, centrist, mainstream.

I read a poll a while ago saying that conservatives get their news from a broad spectrum of sources(Mainstream papers, news mags., talk radio, the net) liberals don't.

[Valin]

There really needs to be another term for the "mainstream media".

What gets me and saddens me is (like all freepers) I'm a news junkie, but it's getting to the point where I can't watch/read it.

[HamiltonJay]

Last time I took an IQ test, I was well in the "Genius" category.... but if calling CNN a biased bunch of claptrap makes me ignorant... then I guess I am ignorant.