The Right State

The news media is liberal.  Today that statement is pretty much accepted as a fact, but why are they so negative?  According to Thomas Patterson from George Mason University’s History News Network, the relationship between politicians and reporters shifted in the 1960s due largely to the Vietnam War and Watergate.  This shift resulted in a new type of reporting from a descriptive style of reporting to an interpretive style of reporting.

In the 1960s, this style began to supplant the older descriptive style where the journalist’s main goal was the straightforward reporting of the facts of events. Since the facts were often based on what newsmakers had said or done, they had considerable control over the coverage they received. Much of the “good press” that Kennedy and Nixon received in 1960 came from what they themselves said about their candidacies. On the other hand, interpretive journalism thrusts the reporter into the role of analyst and judge. The journalist gives meaning to a news event by supplying the analytical context. The journalist is thus positioned to give shape to the news in a way that the descriptive style did not allow. The power of the journalists to construct the news is apparent from the extent to which their voices now dominate the coverage. Whereas reporters were once the passive voice behind the news, they now get more time than the newsmakers they cover. On the nightly newscasts, the journalists covering Bush and Gore in 2000 spoke six minutes for every minute the candidates spoke. The shift in the style of reporting from a descriptive to an interpretive form began in the 1960s when the television networks launched their 30-minute evening newscasts and expanded their reporting staffs in order to deliver picture-based news. The networks quickly discovered that descriptive reporting was too flat for the television medium and that viewers did not have to be told things they could see with their own eyes. Gradually, the networks developed a narrative style of reporting built around interpretive themes that gave their news stories a clear beginning, middle, and an end. Several years later, the daily newspapers followed suit. To add value to stories that their readers had already heard on the newscasts, newspapers developed an analytical style of coverage that focused on the “why” as well as the “what” of news events. Interpretive reporting has unleashed the skepticism traditional in American journalism. This style requires reporters to give shape to the news, and they tend naturally to shape it around their perspective on politics. (emphasis added by TRS)

The media is performing a tremendous disservice to the American people by portraying themselves as neutral and unbiased.  How can reporters be unbiased when they shaped the news around their perspectives?  They can’t.  While the major news anchors claim they are unbiased, the evidence points to the opposite.

But study after study shows that Rather, Jennings and Brokaw are wrong: the newsrooms of major media outlets are not filled with non-ideological “common sense moderates,” nor do they reflect a diverse range of ideological viewpoints. Surveys over the past 25 years have consistently found journalists are much more liberal than rest of America. Their voting habits are disproportionately Democratic, their views on issues such as abortion and gay rights are well to the left of most Americans and they are less likely to attend church or synagogue. When it comes to the free market, journalists have become increasingly pro-regulation over the past 20 years, with majorities endorsing activist government efforts to guarantee everyone a job and to reduce the income gap between rich and poor Americans.

The disparity between average Americans and the media is most evident in how they vote for President.  In election after election a majority of reporters from the major networks and newspapers voted overwhelmingly Democratic, they hold liberal values and support liberal agendas.  The way reporters tell the news is a good example of the negative type of reporting.

When Howard Kurtz of CNN was reporting on Arnold Schwarzenegger trying to unseat Governor Gray Davis in a recall election, he had this to say:

KURTZ: By Friday, he was making the morning talk show rounds. Six programs in all. But when the anchors pressed for specifics, Schwarzenegger stuck to his vague stalking points about leadership and cleaning house in Sacramento. (emphasis added by TRS)

Again, this is a reporter engaging in interpretative style of news coverage rather than descriptive.  Think about it.  The only time we hear about the police is when one of them dies, or they are beating someone senseless, a la Rodney King.  Victims can not be questioned.  Gun toting hunters are bad, while gun toting thugs are victims.  Global warming is pure science while anything to the contrary is science fiction.  Politicians are always corrupt or their motives are suspect.  The rich are always stealing from the poor and are not paying their fair share in taxes.  Dictators who kill and oppress their people are good, while newly formed struggling Democracies are bad.  Republicans are bad, Democrats are better, and an indicted Clinton is better than a Bush anytime.  How did this country survive if we are this bad?

The Media Research Center has much more of this interpretive style of reporting.

The headline in U.S. News & World Report on state ballot initiatives on the minimum wage: “Vote Democratic, Earn More.”

MSNBC screamer Keith Olbermann feeling so angry that Fox’s Chris Wallace supposedly put Bill Clinton through the wringer that he insulted him as “a monkey posing as a newscaster.”

Dan Rather once again saying he believes in the phony Bush National Guard memo story “absolutely.” (Here insert pained Al Gore sigh – or Dean scream.)

Bryant Gumbel trashing the Winter Olympics for being too white, so devoid of blacks that “the Winter Games look like a GOP convention.”

ABC’s Terry Moran getting so enraptured by his man-crush on Barack Obama that he actually reported from Iowa, “they’re even naming babies after him!”

Katie Couric (at CBS) spreading the conspiracy theory that lower gas prices might be “an election-year present from President Bush to fellow Republicans.”

CNN’s Jack Cafferty proclaiming that liberal Sen. Arlen Specter was “all that’s standing between us and a full-blown [Bush] dictatorship in this country.”

It is almost as if the news media think the American people are too stupid to understand the news if it is only descriptive.  I truly wish the media could appreciate this one simple fact: we do not want to hear their opinions.  It is that simple.  We want the news.

Others have seen this trend in the American media to portray everything American is bad.

Over the last few years the media has become irresponsible. It wasn’t so long ago that the press created success stories, not only in sports, but in politics, business, science, and other areas. Now it gives the impression that anything or anyone that’s the least bit prosperous must somehow be corrupt, antisocial, or a violator of the environment, human rights, animal rights, women’s rights or whatever.

It also seems that the media is trying to convince people that anything American is bad while anything foreign is good. Writers have become like gunslingers of the Old West. If they can knock off someone who’s successful, they get to put another notch on their typewriters.

It is time for the major news outlets to let the people decide on what they want to hear: opinion or fact.  I may be wrong, but I think most Americans would want to hear the unedited, unvarnished truth.  Thank God for other media outlets like blogs, talk radio and Fox News.  Without them, we would not hear any good news.

Tags: Bias, Culture //