Assignment America:Tales from the newsroom

UPI ^ | July 8, 2002 | John Bloom

[gcruse]

Assignment America:Tales from the newsroom

By John Bloom

From the

Life & Mind Desk

Published 7/8/2002 11:16 AM

NEW YORK, July 8 (UPI) -- This new book "Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism" (Encounter Books, 278 pages, $25.95) will break your heart.

I've worked in journalism all my life, and I had no idea any of this was going on. All through the 1990s, every time Rush Limbaugh would accuse the media of a liberal bias, I would just chuckle it away as the usual sort of right-wing paranoia we've been dealing with since the Nixon administration. But William McGowan has written a carefully researched analysis of news coverage in the '90s, showing that ... it's TRUE.

It's even worse than liberal bias.

He describes newsrooms full of little Bolsheviks-in-training, who have party lines on all sorts of issues, from affirmative action to crime to AIDS, and who consciously manipulate stories, fail to cover stories, and belittle stories that run counter to their political views. After reading this book, it's difficult to take seriously The New York Times, Washington Post, Miami Herald or Los Angeles Times, just to name the more egregious examples.

Newspapers have always been bent in one ideological direction or another, usually by their publishers. The Pulitzer Prize, after all, is named after one of the foremost practitioners of partisan bias. What's intriguing about this new era of yellow journalism is that it's apparently engineered from below, at the reporter and managing editor level, by zealots who think the concept of "objectivity" is a tool of the Old Guard.

Some of the doctrinaire journalists don't even try to hide it. One of the most chilling moments in the book comes when a Washington Post reporter successfully convinces the paper to soft-pedal trial testimony that former Mayor Marion Barry had raped several women. She argues that the paper should use the word "coerce" instead of "rape," and when they agree with her, she says, "No use of the 'R' word. Now that's spin control!"

Reporters at a serious paper practicing "spin control"?

By the time I got to the end of the book I was all but convinced it WAS a conspiracy, just like Limbaugh said --only to read McGowan's curious assertion that he did NOT believe it was a conspiracy at all. After spending some 250 pages outlining actions that should have gotten reporters and editors fired, or at least disciplined, he kind of forgives the business as a whole by saying that "the notion of die-hard liberals standing around in the corners of newsrooms plotting to infuse news reporting with left-wing bias is a caricature." He describes, rather, a climate in the newsroom that is at odds with "free and open exchange."

I don't see much difference between a pro-active conspiracy and a climate that discourages honest reporting -- it's the classic way that corporate presidents censor and control with a wink and a nudge -- but since McGowan is such an excellent reporter and obviously spent years on this book, I'll take his word for it.

I should point out, though, that this book is nothing like the two other media-bias books that are getting as much or more attention this year. In fact, the worst thing that could happen to this book is to get lumped in with its pale look-alike versions. Bernard Goldberg's "Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News" is full of anecdotes that are far from scientific, and he seems to have a grudge against his old boss Dan Rather. Ann Coulter's "Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right" is mostly witty invective that trots out outdated ideas of what constitutes right and left in this country. It's an argument, not a work of scholarship, and it's not even that current. As the success of Fox News proves, there's plenty of room on the TV dial for conservative opinions.

McGowan's book is the real deal, though. He has scrupulously and meticulously gone through the reporting on several dozen "hot topic" news stories over the past ten years, supplemented that with interviews with reporters and editors involved in the coverage, and written an expose that's as shocking in its way as "The Green Felt Jungle," the stunning 1964 book that first revealed in detail how most of the state of Nevada was controlled by the mob.

In this case there's no Lucky Luciano or Frank Costello pulling the strings from behind a magic curtain -- although McGowan DOES make an argument that New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. is a partisan fanatic on certain issues and not above throwing his weight around -- but there are strange organizations, meetings, conventions and corporate "diversity" policies that are specifically designed to distort what a reporter would otherwise do.

For example, if you work at the Gannett chain, which owns USA Today, you'll be evaluated according to how many minority sources are used in your stories and how many pictures of minorities appear on the news pages. If you don't use enough, you may not get promoted. Of course, having your picture in the paper is a double-edged sword, and some papers have policies encouraging the use of black and Hispanic photos if the article is positive, and DISCOURAGING their use if the article is negative. In 1990 five Buffalo police officers were arrested for narcotics trafficking. All five had been hired as part of an affirmative action plan. Editor Murray Light decided not to use their pictures at all -- apparently because he didn't want his readers to know they were black!

I don't know when or why it ended -- McGowan doesn't go into it -- but the era of the journalist as a cynical loner who doesn't join any organizations is obviously over. McGowan attends a convention called UNITY '99 at which the Black, Latino, Asian-American and Native American Journalists Associations all came together for a job fair and seminars on news coverage. (What? No Islamic Journalists Association? No Catholic Journalists to handle spin control on abusive priests?) I'd heard of these organizations, but had no idea they thought of themselves as insider "watchdogs" that are supposed to police the newsrooms of America in support of a concept called "diversity." (Remember the subtitle of the book is "How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism.")

Their received mythology involves seeing all big media organizations as historically racist, white-dominated oppressors and exclusionists, and their various agendas involve destroying that bias. This is why I called them Bolsheviks. It's an almost classic political science case study -- using historical victimization to justify taking any measures necessary, including polite lies, in the present. They also have a Soviet-style tendency to rewrite history in such a way that the original bogeyman -- white middle class America -- remains strong, vicious and worthy of ceaseless warfare.

If you're wondering why the managing editors don't just weed these people out and say, "You can join the Black Journalists Association, but don't expect to be assigned to any black issues if you do," it's because the managing editors are either members themselves or supporters of the same organizations. In a way this is more frightening than the idea that a lot of young reporters are carried away by various enthusiasms. (Kara Briggs, president of the Native American Journalists Association, says without apology, "I was born into a tribe, not a newspaper.") In other words, Lou Grant has left the building.

I remember a story years ago about Gene Roberts, the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who was asked why he had to fire a young woman reporter for sleeping with someone she was writing about. "I don't care if my reporters sleep with elephants," he said, "as long as the elephant is not one of their sources."

But some of these stories from the 1990s indicate that reporters are not only sleeping with their sources, they're staying for breakfast and buying them expensive gifts.

During the Elian Gonzalez affair in 1999 and 2000, for example, several Cuban journalists on the staff of the Miami Herald openly sided with the anti-Castro families trying to keep the boy in America, and one Herald columnist was photographed in a prayer circle with the Gonzalez family. Rather than simply taking her off the story, the paper had special meetings between the publisher and the paper's Cuban-American reporters to discuss their complaints about coverage of the story.

McGowan doesn't just have a few of these examples. He has dozens. He uncovers stories of newsroom petitions circulated by reporters trying to get colleagues fired for not towing this or that party line. He describes reporting on issues like Washington's Initiative 200, a measure to ban race preferences, as being so ludicrously one-sided that it would be funny if it weren't so irresponsible. He even finds stories that are made to vanish entirely -- the black anti-Semitism in Brooklyn's Crown Heights riots of 1991, overwhelming statistical evidence that AIDS had remained primarily a gay disease long after it was politically positioned as a disease likely to strike anyone with equal probability, the cover up of the actual crimes that led to the court martial of Air Force Lt. Kelly Flinn so that the public would believe she was being punished for adultery only.

All of this is related in an unemotional straightforward style, piling fact upon fact upon example upon example, until it seems like the major newspapers and TV networks are existing in some kind of parallel universe that the average American would scarcely recognize. After a point you can't help but wonder WHY and HOW our fiercely independent press could become so clumsy and compromised. This is the same press, after all, that spends much of its time detailing the slightest hypocrisy in our elected leaders -- a $100 campaign contribution from a special interest group, saying one thing and doing another, refusal to speak in plain English, disguising intentions, using code words, ignoring inconvenient evidence, manipulating statistics -- while apparently doing all the same things itself.

To his credit, McGowan wrestles with the "why" question, but to my mind doesn't really answer it. After telling a horrific story about a writer fired from the Burlington, Vt., Free Press for political incorrectness, he first gives the industry's hollow excuses -- pressure of daily deadlines, staff stretched thin, inability to get a quote from the opposition, absence of a "peg" for an unpopular story -- and then says that reporters went astray when they sought to change a business that had been overwhelmingly white and male prior to the 1980s. This is the disease that apparently motivated their fanaticism.

But I worked for many of those managing editors who would have been considered part of the Old Boys network, and I remember them differently. Most of them didn't go to college, so they had no real connection to any elite, much less the rarefied world of the Ivy League elite. Few of them belonged to any organizations at all. They despised political parties of all stripes, much less special interest groups. And to regard them as people who hated minorities and gays and inflicted some kind of white male worldview on the public is to rewrite history. In fact, many of them went to the mat for the most unpopular causes of their day, infuriating their own publishers and the local establishment alike.

In the South, where I'm from, they were often the ONLY guys hammering the civil-rights story, but they didn't do it out of any alliance with blacks or liberals. They did it because their instincts always favored the underdog. They didn't even particularly LIKE the underdog; they just thought he should get a fair break. The truth is, they tended to have a low opinion of human nature. They valued irony, hated hypocrisy, and thought every human being was at least partly a liar. You could call them misanthropists, but you couldn't call them partisans.

I miss them.

--

(John Bloom writes a number of columns for UPI and may be contacted at joebob@upi.com or through his Web site at joebobbriggs.com. Snail mail: P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, Texas, 75221.)

Copyright © 2002 United Press International
 

[eureka!]

Bump for a great find...

[Wright is right!]

The author of this review doesn't get into some of the OTHER things that contribute to the coloration and bias of the news reporting - and, as Bernie Goldberg points out in HIS book, it's not that the various newspapers/radio/TV organizations "conspire daily" to slant the news...but that these organizations are composed of people who are hired because of their similar worldview. They are, to each other, "normal."

What other factors are there? We could start with elitism. Reporters and editors are assiduously courted by politicians, and the Democrats have historically been better at it than Republicans. The GOP thinks it should prevail on the strength of its ideas. The Democrats need a cozy press in order to win and preserve their fragile coalition of society's "takers." So the Democrats have cultivated the notion that the press is ELITE - a fourth branch of government, a group to be lavished with food and wine and as many favors as possible...the so-called "A-List Cocktail Party Circuit." To write a story that would anger this coterie of society is unthinkable. And it would endanger all the perks and privileges that newsers think they're entitled to.

Add to this group The Do-Gooders and Activists. Colleges and universities have largely created this subgroup of reporters in the last 30 years or so. Some start out with the idealism of youth and a bent to "change the world." Others are molded by disaffected communists or other left-wingers who, excluded from mainstream thought, find their way into the classroom and somehow gain tenure. If you take a Do-Gooder or an Activist reporter and give him/her Elitism, then you've got one very powerful propogandist - one that will ignore all inconvenient truth in order to press a viewpoint.

A third subgroup are those with the Politics Of Convenience. A loose-moraled lothario likes abortion as a convenient way out of an unwanted pregnancy. The Democrats like abortion, so this reporter leans Democrat. There is a huge number of "if-it-feels-good-do-it" generational members in the press corps today - and Democratic policies appeal to them more than personal responsibility. At that age, I fell for it, too. Then I grew up. And although a great many of the feel-good-do-it generation HAVE, in fact, grown up to a degree, the fact is that they still like permissive societal attitudes, and that makes them Convenient Democrats. Not to mention the fact that if they ever somehow commit some infraction against the law, it's a lot easier to get away with it (in most cases) if you're a Democrat.

And then, to top it all off, you have the ignorant and intellectually lazy. These are people who are only curious about PEOPLE and EMOTIONS - and feel that FACTS often get in the way of a good story. They do not wish to learn how things work. They, instead, prefer to concentrate on how PEOPLE FEEL about things. You'll find them committing grievous errors in their reporting on aviation, electronics, monetary matters(and anything to do even remotely with math), the sciences, history - to bluntly lump it, anything technical or anything requiring a degree of factual precision. Add to this a propensity this group has for a startling lack of attention to perspective - i.e., what a story MEANS - and you've got the recipe for journalistic disaster. Oh, they've been taught that this approach "makes good TV," but if it does, it only succeeds on the Jerry-Springer level.

Not even touched is the business angle news organizations must face. They are, after all, businesses that are expected to make a profit. To make a profit, you must take in more revenue than you spend, and that revenue is solely in the form of cash paid by advertisers. To attract advertisers, you need readers and viewers. The more of each you have, the more you can charge for your advertisements. So the economic pressure is severe to make as many people watch and read as possible. This pressure then invades the realm of news judgement - and stories selected for air (and their treatment, often) are functions of what the management feels will attract the most desireable audience.

This inevitably leads to the lurid and sensationalistic, an emphasis on crime stories (even though all stats say crime in this country is DOWN), and pieces designed to evince a visceral reaction. In so doing, many times only part of a story is told - that part which the editors feel will get the most attention.

I'm hoping that the book this author has reviewed will have touched more upon these other pressures, as they all influence what is covered and how it's covered. I'll buy a copy and find out. If it is as comprehensive as I hope it is, I'll forward it to a particular TV news director who is sorely in need of a little awakening.

Michael

[wardaddy]

It's not an easy book to find. It's often sold-out because most bookstores are run by these same types of folks who loathe stocking large numbers of "conservative" books. I've had more than one argument with the staff at Davis-Kidd Booksellers here in Nashville when trying to buy a copy of one of Horowitz's books. Bookstores seem to be run primarily by "Pat" looking Lesbians or Pasty looking Vegans. I've found Barnes and Noble to be relatively ok in this light around here.

[ventana]

So, Michael, liberalism is a substitute religion, in essence. V's wife.

[RAT Patrol]

Thomas Sowell gave Coloring the News high marks. I am going to read it this week. I think it focuses more on print than broadcast news but I am not 100% sure. I've read Bias, which is more about broadcast news, and I've read Slander, what can I say, Ann Coulter is the BEST!

[flamefront]

Bump -
mentioned on Rush Limbaugh today (again).

newsrooms full of little Bolsheviks-in-training, who have party lines on all sorts of issues, from affirmative action to crime to AIDS, and who consciously manipulate stories, fail to cover stories, and belittle stories that run counter to their political views

!!!

Bush: "they are either with us or with the enemy" -- applies here, especially.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Another look at the media sociopaths. No top-down journalism conspiracy, eh? Perhaps a look at the DNC would clear that question up, hmmm?

[KansasGirl]

Excellent!

[maica]

j-school grads who ... truly believe their job is to shape the readers' beliefs and opinions, rather than report the who, what, when, where, why and how of a story.

This is evident at any Presidential press conference. The foreign reporters usually ask a who, what, when, where or why and how question. It is refreshingly noticed because of its rarity.

[gcruse]

 I've found Barnes and Noble to be relatively ok in this light around here.

I deliberately buy books over the internet.  I want the
internet to stay around and it won't if we don't support
it.  Also, we are much less at the mercy of the leftists
buyers on chain stores.

[browardchad]

run by these same types of folks who loathe stocking large numbers of "conservative" books

I have a friend who regularly visits bookstores on her lunch hour and surreptitiously rearranges the conservative books from the bottom to the top shelves of the display. If a current book is not on the shelves, she asks the particular "Pat" about it -- hey, we all do what we can!

I just checked the reviews of McGowan's book on Amazon, and out of 22 reader reviews, there were only 2 negatives -- and those were the obligatory liberal trashers. Of the 20 positive reviews, all gave it four or five stars. Impressive. (I just ordered it).

[FreedomFarmer]

... friends in the Propaganda Ministry.

Doubleplus ungood.

Ministry of Truth is important to Oceania, Winston Smith.

[wardaddy]

Bless your friend. I am going to make it a point to get this book. I don't read as much as I used to. I do a lot of reference scanning on the net and obviously FR is a wonderful amalgamation of news and links. The last book I read was Hackworth's Nam book I bought at a signing a few weeks ago. I keep telling myself to buy at least one book per week.

Regards

[wardaddy]

I will try. I hate credit and debit cards. I use them almost exclusively for reservations and cigars.

[ForGod'sSake]

You have made many thought provoking points; some of which I would like to elaborate on and solicit additional comment.

...these organizations are composed of people who are hired because of their similar worldview.

Taking it a step further, the ones that are best at expressing this worldview thrive in this environment and end up in the anchor and editor desks of their respective organizations. It doesn't take a PHD for the underlings to figure out what it takes to rise to the top.

Reporters and editors are assiduously courted by politicians, and the Democrats have historically been better at it than Republicans.

Well, IMO, primarily because they just happen to be reading from the same playbook. I would submit that the media "elite"; not the politicos, are in a position to set the political and social agenda because of their unique ability to reach the masses. Politicians that don't follow the game plan set by the media are offered up as lepers to the unwashed by various and sundry methods. Hence, pols that want the good face time follow the media's lead. i.e., the pols need the media more than the media need the pols. Our constitution all but guarantees the survival of the "free press" regardless of their politics or social agenda.

...it would endanger all the perks and privileges that newsers think they're entitled to.

They ARE entitled. The Dims owe their very existence to the media. So, just who is running the show here anyway??????

Democratic policies appeal to them more than personal responsibility. At that age, I fell for it, too. Then I grew up.

Sounds like you nailed 'em here bub. "Teenagers In Suits" one and all. At some point in the growth process, idealism gets tempered with reality and, you're right, some never make it. And, these people are driving the pace car. God help us.

So the economic pressure is severe to make as many people watch and read as possible.

...stories selected for air (and their treatment, often) are functions of what the management feels will attract the most desireable audience.

Two very different statements. If the first one is true, why do they constantly risk alienation of over half their potential audience by playing to, well, socialism? I suspect that, in fact, many conservatives watch and read this drivel for their own reasons; not suspecting they are really supporting something diametrically opposed to their basic values. Too many conservatives don't have a clue. Their guts tell them something is wrong, but they can't quite put their finger on it. They need to be checked for nose rings.

I'm more inclined to believe, based on a study by some foundation whose name I can't recall, that the (broadcast)media actually targets a particular demographic; that is the 18 - 40ish female; the "buyer" in the houselold. A demographic that is "predominately" liberal and given to emotionalism and impulsiveness(I would actually like to see someone refute this). What kind of "news" would you design for this group, assuming you had no other agenda?

This inevitably leads to the lurid and sensationalistic, an emphasis on crime stories...

SOME crime stories. You and I both know there are many sensational crime stories that hardly see the light of day; buried below the fold or given short shrift on the evening news. What's with that??????? Rhetorical; don't bother ; )

All in all, it seems we're stuck with this bunch of closet(?) socialists for the time being. Would that I could wave a magic wand and be rid of 'em, but there's that reality once again. Given that these organizations surreptitiously,(or NOT so surreptitiously) are inadvertantly(?) advocating actual change in our system of government, why can't we bring enough pressure to bear to call them on the carpet?

Cheers,

FGS

[ForGod'sSake]

Ministry of Truth is important to Oceania, Winston Smith.

Yes indeedy. I would say it's a critical "Ministry" for the socialist wannabes... How long before they get their hands on the internet? Or have they already???????

FGS

[Behind Liberal Lines]

To see how this is applied at the local level, check out Ithaca Journal reporter Kandea Mosley. The Ithaca Journal is a Gannett newspaper Ms. Mosley recently (mis)quoted an actual U.S. soldier as saying war crimes were committed; that US soldiers were told to kill women and children in Afghanistan. As noted by another poster on another thread:

To save you the googlification: Kandea Mosley graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1993, making her, I'd guess, about 27 now. She then went to UCLA, where she became the chairwoman of the African Student Union in 1996-7, and then ran for student president as the Students First! candidate, which opposed Nike on campus and the ending of affirmative action in California (Proposition 209), and won. The protests in her year as president took various forms: she was quoted as saying:

Our opposition to Prop. 209 ... is not a result of a skewed perception of affirmative action as a cure-all for all of our communities and the racist, classist violence perpetuated on our people daily. Rather, the reasons behind raising a political struggle in this university is created out of our understanding that organized struggle ... is necessary on every level.

At the inauguration of the new UCLA chancellor that spring, a web report notes:

Inside USA president Kandea Mosley delivered a speech decrying the end of affirmative action and then sat down on the stage for several minutes, her fist raised in protest.

Graduating in 1998, Mosley then returned to New York, covering the Green Party for the Village Voice (!!) during the 2000 elections. And now for the last few months, she's been upstate, working as a beat reporter at the Ithaca Journal.

I'm sorry, but I just can't believe someone with those credentials is going to come to [any political issue] capable of clear-headed judgment.

(To order "Ithaca is the City of Evil" merchandise, courtesy of FREEPER "the," Click Here).

(And to order "Ithaca is the City of Evil" bumper stickers [and support Free Republic],Click Here and enter "Evil" as a your keyword.)

[Fixit]

[WaterDragon]

Bloom's article is wonderful. His statement that many Southerners supported Civil Rights just because it was the right thing to do, not for any ideological reasons, is so very, very true!

For more on "Coloring the News", check HERE

[TiaS]

Thanks for posting the article and thanks to Mr. Bloom for the caring and the courage to tell it like it is.