Posted on 12/13/2003 12:14:04 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Several weeks ago, Time magazine ran a cover story about how split the country is in its opinion of President Bush. The theme of the story was that with this president, there appears to be little or no middle ground in the electorate. You either love him or hate him.
The reaction to the discussion within this space last week about the newspaper's coverage of the president's surprise Thanksgiving Day trip to visit the troops in Baghdad was typical of the bipolar feelings Time found going into the 2004 election year.
Of the three or four dozen e-mails I received about the column, only a small number tracked a middle ground, attempting to discuss the news judgment process on stories such as these. One or two actually thought the column explained why news editors made the decision to put the story where they did on the front page, even if the readers disagreed with the decision. (The Christmas cards for these readers are in the mail.)
The rest fell into the love-him or hate-him category, with most of those who love him also claiming the newspaper's liberal bias renders us incapable of fair coverage of George W. Bush.
A couple of points need to be made.
First, I didn't apologize for the decision to play the story the way we did, as many of the Bush detractors seem to think. I simply thought the coverage needed an explanation and offered my own view that I would have provided the presidential trip more real estate on the front page.
Second, the knee-jerk "you guys will never admit your liberal bias" response to everything in the newspaper is making it increasingly difficult to have a meaningful discussion of coverage issues.
I realize this response, in and of itself, puts me in the "he doesn't get it" category at best, and at worst makes me an active co-conspirator. But, really, how should we respond to such a charge?
Is this liberal bias tantamount to an original sin that only some form of baptism will overcome? Do we need a 12-step program to drive the devil from our souls and allow us to be fair and balanced? If so, by what definition of those terms? Should it be whatever the majority view thinks it should be?
That's what we had a century or so ago with a partisan press that wore its politics proudly on its sleeve and trumpeted truth to a readership made up almost exclusively of people who agreed with it.
I don't want to go back to that. I don't think most readers -- conservative, like those who dominate the big Atlanta market, or liberal, also like much of the Atlanta market -- want us to go back there either.
But I'll be the first to admit that we miss the fairness mark and make dumb decisions from time to time. Is it because we can be out of touch with how a lot of people live their lives and view the world differently than we do? Again, yes.
I think that's what we did with the president's trip -- we lacked the sense of surprise and amazement many Americans had about it. Instead, we saw it through a narrower prism of politics.
But that shortcoming can cut several ways.
What agenda were we following when we decided not to run a Washington Post story late last week about the "fake" turkey the president was holding in the photo most newspapers used on their front pages to represent the visit?
Liberal readers who dislike Bush said we wanted to protect the image-conscious White House from embarrassment for staging a photo as phony as the president's trip. Conservative readers who consider the president a hero said the story about the turkey in question (a tabletop decoration, not the turkey being served up for the troops) was irrelevant. The real story was about the commander in chief's bold, secret trip to be with his fighting men and women.
As the 2004 presidential campaign begins in earnest, the charges from both sides of unfair coverage are sure to increase. This job exists to help explain some of those decisions.
It would be helpful if the explanation is seen as simply that and for minds to remain open between now and the time we all go to vote next November.
Hmm...Guess I must have missed that one.
Like, duh?
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A twelve step program wouldn't work. Even a lobotomy wouldn't work, although it might reduce your activity level.
They don't get it do they? The networks are falling behind Fox News for this very reason.
It just can't sink into their brains that the viewers (and readers) see their LIBERAL bias.
Some news is clear and the spin can't change its truth.
I'll never forget how I jumped, cheering from my seat with the soldiers in Bagdad when the Commander-in-Chief suddenly appeared to rally the troops in Iraq.
Unfortunately when Bush said Islamists worship the same God as Christians and Jews, my heart sank.
That was big news, bad news, for our country.
Just the FACT that most likely less than 5% of (the purposefully-kept-in-the-dark) Americans know much about that memo, says exactly what the media's stance is on Bush. It's that simple!
Democrats are protected and promoted by the lamestream, and Bush/Republicans have to continually fight through the left-media filter. It sucks, and because of the Mainstream Media Owners, this country is going down the tubes! The mainstream media still have too much control over the thoughts and perceptions of American voters, even though a small fraction of folks are enlightened by places such as this!!! The media is killing this country.
And, as an afterthought, look at the deafening silence by the lamestream media and consequently the American people, after this abomination of the CFR/Supreme Court decision. How disgusting. People should be storming Washington D.C.
The people are sleeping and the mainstream media is the sleeping pill.
I'm on your side, but get real. FoxNews has about one and a half million peoople watching their evening news. ABC, CBS, and NBC have around 34 million. Most Americans are still influenced by the mainstream liars! Don't kid yourself.
That's for you, and all the others who may be sleeping or uninformed on this. Not to be harsh. I'm just tired. ;)
Pentagon Memo
I think this is a reference to the fact that every major market had at least one big "Republican" paper and one "Democratic" one, and everybody knew which was which. Any "exclusiveness" about the readership of each was entirely due to the readers' own choice.
That old bygone era was followed by a sort of journalistic Dark Age in which only one viewpoint was permitted in serious print. ("And that's the WAY IT IS." Full stop.)
This fellow doesn't seem to realize there is no better way to see your own bias than to be confronted with the other guy's. Conversely, if you never see anybody seriously argue the "other side", you might grow up thinking there is no other side, as he has seemingly done.
I would commend to him the benefits of diversity of THOUGHT, the only "diversity" that matters. Dangerous, but potentially salubrious.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1030930/posts
Bump!
... why no story in the AJC about the Weekly Standard report on the leaked memo? I don't know for certain because I haven't consulted with the national desk, but my GUESS is (based on reading the New York Times story on the issue, which is what was available to them for publication) they felt the story about the memo amounted to an elaboration from Sec. Feith on his public testimony last summer that there was raw intelligence that linked Al Qaeda with Saddam. Unlike the Democratic staffer's memo that was leaked two weeks ago, this one had not risen up to a debate on the Senate floor or sparked much controversy among committee members themselves — other than calls for an investigation of who leaked a classified memo. So aside from some commentators (like William Safire in our newspaper yesterday and the Weekly Standard analysis) no one in the administration or Congress is claiming this is a major new development in the investigation of prewar intelligence regarding Al Qaeda and Iraq. Hope this answers your question. Mike King
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