Jack's Essay: Media Bias - 11/11/05

  There’s a scene in Good Night and Good Luck, the superb new movie about Edward R. Murrow, that gets to the core of the media bias question.  “I simply can’t accept that there are two equal sides to every story,” the great newsman says.

Aha! That proves it, you might say! The media has an agenda. They think they are little tin gods, who know what the truth is.
We knew it all along!

Well, not so fast. What would you say if I wrote a story saying “The little girl was brutally traumatized, but the rapist said he had a pretty good time.” You would think that was sick and wrong.

And you would be right. There are not two equal sides to every story, and good reporting is more than just stenography. Neither is anybody “objective.”

What most reporters and editors try to do is make a principled effort to be fair. I think most reporters -- including me -- are more or less liberal in outlook. But they bend over backwards to try to be fair, both to individuals and to ideas. When they fall short of fairness, it is usually not because they are biased against ideas, but because they find a particular person phony or obnoxious.

Richard Nixon charged that the media was biased against him when he was running against John F. Kennedy. He was probably right, but that was because he was so personally unlikable. However, a non-partisan study of media coverage forty years later found the coverage of Al Gore far more unfavorable than that of George W. Bush. The reason why?
Bush was warm and friendly to the press; Gore was cold and aloof. Simple as that. 
 
As far as media institutions go, Eric Alterman said it all a couple years ago in his book, “What Media Bias?“

  He presents convincing evidence that there are two kinds of media in this nation: Big corporate media, biased towards their own bottom line, and media openly biased towards the right, like Fox News.

  Yes, I know there are some liberals ranting away on low-wattage Air America stations. But even I don‘t listen much.

  There’s a lot wrong with the media in this country. But ideological bias isn’t the problem. We are biased -- in favor of the sensational and trashy. We pay too much attention to stains on a dress and too little to the collapse of the auto industry. And if you aren’t worried about that …

  You should be.

Comments

[Ken Ozanich]

I caught your commentary today. You mention a couple of things I take issue with. First, Eric Alterman's book is in the view of many, NOT well-documented nor reliable. He's a liberal (as I suspect you are). His book seems to be conconcted to dispell the notion of liberal bias; it doesn't do the job. Second, the reason there are liberals "ranting away on low-wattage radio stations" is because they can't get on the big stations, liberals don't much listen to Air America because they already have NPR. Even my liberal friends admit that NPR is very, very liberal.

How many conservatives are employed at WUOM? Any? One? Two? Is that, in your judgment diversity? Or is diversity having liberals of both genders and different colors reading the news? You must be aware that this is a problem, at least of perception or you wouldn't be trying to allieviate that perception. When is your radio station going to get serious and hire a few Republicans? I'm sure there must be one or two in Ann Arbor.

Sincerely,
Ken Ozanich

[Kathy Christensen]

Wow, I did not know that diversity now needed to include Democrats and Republicans. I thought that diversity was looking at all things equally, without noticing differences. Personally, this is what I enjoy about NPR, their ability to shed light on an issue without any bias at all. It is the main reason that I listen to Michigan Radio faithfully. I am glad that Michigan Radio is serious in their dedication to providing the listener with information that is not influenced by commercial media. Keep up the good work, and I am enjoying your show Jack!

Regards,
Kathy Christensen

[Jack Lessenberry, Michigan Radio]

I have no idea how many Republicans work at NPR. I suspect most folks here are independents. We aren't asked.

Jack

[Steve Paeschke]

Jack, you don't have to be asked your political leanings, because you pretty well make it self-evident through your show and your writings.

As to the bias, I can point immediately to one of your shows this very week, the animal rights show, which was heavily slanted. You had three people with basically the same view of the subject, one of whom was a supporter of ALF, which if not exactly a terrorist organization, treads the line mighty closely.

Even in your closing arguments you made it evident that you basically agreed with your guest's sentiments. Where's the balance there?

[Derek DeVries]

While surveys show that most journalists are nominally left-leaning, a great many people (including myself) believe this is because idealistic left-leaning folks are more likely to go into a comparatively lower-paying field like journalism. Conservatives, generally-speaking, tend to be more interested in compensation and as such - gravitate to public relations. Anecdotally, I've certainly found this to be true in my employment in the public relations profession.

The focus of today's episode seemed to be on the way the news is treated once it's in the hands of the media, which leaves out a substantial portion of the equation; chiefly, how the news comes to be in the hands of reporters.

When you consider that right-leaning public relations practitioners outnumber journalists almost two to one or more, and that corporate America has quietly turned the news from a public service into a profit-driven enterprise over the past several decades - it rather upends the contention that the news is "liberal".

As Edward R. Murrow articulated so prophetically; good, critical news isn't good for business - it's expensive to produce, and tends to drive away political allies and advertisers. This fact should trouble us all.

[Susan Demas]

Let's get off the conservative talking points about the big bad liberal media. Please point to one credible study that shows that NPR has a liberal bias.
A $14,000 study secretly commissioned by Kenneth Tomlinson, the former Republican head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, showed scant evidence and had serious methodological flaws. Which is one reason he recently resigned. Tomlinson and his Republican comrades openly called for reshaping public broadcasting in a conservative mold- which sounds like bias to me.
But even if NPR should be renamed the People's Republic of Radio, there seems to be no dearth of right-wing outlets; AM radio is stacked with Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Hannity and plenty of local wannabees.
I do, however, believe that liberals should have to reveal their identity before being employed at NPR, other media outlets or anywhere else for that matter. Perhaps there could be a little red hammer and sickle sticker on those cute national ID cards the Homeland Security folks want to issue. That way, they can be easily rounded up, er, identified.
As for the host, I believe he prefers to be known as a raging moderate. So I've read.

[Cathy Tartaglia]

One call-in speaker mentioned the problem that the media leaves out alot of information which the public needs to know in order to make informed decisions.
I believe its a sign of a bias favoring corporations that many environmental regulations have quietly been removed without public debate, resulting in harmful contamination of the air, land and water that all Americans depend on. If there was a liberal media, there would be a continuous stream front page stories about the immense power we have handed over to irresponsible mining, chemical, agribusiness, and energy companies . A person has to seek out information on issues that affect the health of all of us and God's creation. Dangerous misuse of our land and water is allowed to procede without the media informing us. Why are they so timid about challenging the conservative establishment?