PressThink: Editor and Publisher Wants Answers: Are Newsrooms Too Liberal? Very Tricky Question.

Editor and Publisher Wants Answers: Are Newsrooms Too Liberal? Very Tricky Question.

Major trade journal enters the bias battle looking for answers. It wants to know: how liberal are the nation's newsrooms, really? "Liberal journalist" does not automatically mean that the news has a liberal slant. But if the goal is to gain ground in the bias wars, it's the opposite. Then liberal journalist does mean "news biased toward liberalism." Automatically so.

“The recent Pew survey raises more questions than it answers,” announced Editor and Publisher’s Greg Mitchell last week, “and we intend to answer them.” In the world of press think, this counts as news: Major trade journal enters the bias wars looking for answers:

How “liberal” are the nation’s newsrooms? What does “liberal” mean, anyway? Should editors embark on an ideological affirmative action program?

Certainly those are explosive—and important—questions. The Pew Research Center survey that Mitchell mentioned was released on May 23. It contains, as any such survey would, findings of particular interest in the bias wars, which I define as the permanently politicized discourse we have about fairness and equal treatment in the press. There are institutions dedicated to continuing it. As with any war sustained over time, supply lines have been established. From the Pew study:

The percentage identifying themselves as liberal has increased from 1995: 34% of national journalists describe themselves as liberals, compared with 22% nine years ago. The trend among local journalists has been similar 23% say they are liberals, up from 14% in 1995. More striking is the relatively small minority of journalists who think of themselves as politically conservative (7% national, 12% local). As was the case a decade ago, the journalists as a group are much less conservative than the general public (33% conservative).

Nearer the frontlines, The Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog group, headlined its summary of the Pew Report this way: “Five Times More Journalists Are Liberal Than Conservative.” And with that another shell got lobbed. It was a simple device (and common in journalism): the artificially explosive headline. In fact, a majority of journalists, by the same study, said they were neither liberal nor conservative. “In terms of their overall ideological outlook, majorities of national (54%) and local journalists (61%) continue to describe themselves as moderates.”

“Five times more”— that’s war materiel. “Majority say they’re moderate”— that’s not. To show how far this war reaches, Jeffrey Dvorkin, ombudsman for NPR, actually misstated the results in a column that tried to be critical of the study: “It found that a majority of American journalists say they are liberals” (which is false). He said this finding “is likely to follow news organizations around for the rest of the political year like Marley’s ghost” (which is probably true.)

But as Dvorkin also pointed out, knowing how many journalists are liberals does not tell you very much about their performance in crafting the news. “Liberal journalist” does not automatically mean “news account inflected with liberalism.” (Although it might.) But if the goal is to gain some ground in the battle over bias, an opposite logic applies. Then liberal journalist does mean “news biased toward liberalism,” and it does automatically. In a war zone thinking has to become automatic; that’s one of the costs of war.

Some of the Pew study’s other key findings have little directly to do with the bias conflict. But each strikes a note of alarm. (Based on surveys of 547 journalists and news media executives by telephone and online, March 10, 2004 through April 20. Rest of the study design here.)

A “continuing rise in the percentage of journalists believing that news reports are full of factual errors. In the national media, this view increased from 30% in 1995 to 40% in 1999 to 45% in the current survey.”
“Roughly half of journalists at national media outlets (51%), and about as many from local media (46%), believe that journalism is going in the wrong direction.”
“Significant majorities of journalists have come to believe that increased bottom line pressure is ‘seriously hurting’ the quality of news coverage. This is the view of 66% of national news people and 57% of the local journalists questioned in this survey.”
An “almost universal agreement among those who worry about growing financial pressure that the media is paying too little attention to complex stories.”

If the numbers are accurate that’s a worried profession.

In Mitchell’s announcement, there are three kinds of questions Editor & Publisher plans to ask. The first examines whether the Pew survey is, in fact, reliable. What do other studies show? The second inquires into the term “moderate.” When 61 percent of local journalists describe themselves that way, “I’m not liberal, or conservative, I’m moderate,” what does that actually mean?

The third kind of question accepts the Pew findings as accurate, and goes on from there:

“Why are there so many more liberals than conservatives in newsrooms? Is it due to a certain do-gooder impulse among journalists in general? Or, as some charge, a bias in hiring: liberals won’t hire conservatives? Is there a certain amount of ‘right flight’ after conservatives fail to advance or feel uncomfortable among their peers?”
“If conservatives were made to feel more welcome, would it make any difference? What if very few of that political persuasion want to become grubby, underpaid, widely dissed reporters? What exactly is the conservative hiring pool out there?”
Journalism schools: “Are they overwhelmingly liberal already, or does the faculty indoctrinate them, or perhaps the liberal ones feed into newsrooms while the conservatives drift to other forms of journalism or related areas?”
If only 15 percent of journalists think “you have to believe in God to be a ‘truly moral’ person, while 60% of the public feels that way,” is that a problem? “Or is the ability to be non-judgmental actually a quality that should be encouraged in newsrooms?”
Finally: “Forget about Peter Jennings and Dan Rather in New York. What’s going on in Peoria?”

Reporting that raises questions is much easier than promising to get answers. (Safer too for a trade journal.) I salute what Mitchell is doing, and look forward with interest to the results, which will be published in the August issue. Impressed as I am with some of the questions, I wanted to know more about how Editor and Publisher was going to pull this off, and why Mitchell, as writer and editor, decided to enter a discourse that is a war zone.

So I sent him some questions. He said he got a flood of e-mail after announcing his intentions. “I think a lot of people really want an open-minded look at this and we will do our best to respond.” The focus will be not on the “liberal bias” charge generally but “the newsoom composition issue,” meaning the mix of liberals and conservatives at a newspaper, how that affects the news, and what might be done about it— if we buy the proposition. The E & P report, he said, will not be “yet another commentary on liberal bias in national coverage, yes or no.” Instead:

Our small “team” of reporters will first look deeply at the Pew numbers and methodology, and try to find every other survey in recent years on make-up of newsrooms and beliefs. We will also see what’s out there in surveys of j-school students, their poltiics—and what happens to them afterward. There’s a theory that the liberal types go into newspapers, the non-ideological to TV and radio, and the conservatives mainly to publicity and other business-oriented fields. True? Maybe not.
We will also look at j-school faculty, what is their political orientation, what do they teach about “objectivity,” and what do they think of all this. Then we will interview dozens of editors at papers big and small about what they think of the make-up of their newsrooms, do they see many conservatives applicants, what questions do they ask of applicants, what do they think of bias at their papers, etc. Then we will ask them, and some outside observers, whether there needs to be an ideological “affirmative action” program at newspapers. And there are many other issues as well….

Greg Mitchell has been writing some biting commentary lately, and he has an interesting background. For eight years (1971 to 1979) he was executive editor of the famed counterculture and music magazine, Crawdaddy. During the 1980s, the height of the nuclear freeze campaign, he was the editor of Nuclear Times, kind of a trade journal for that movement. He also co-wrote with Robert Jay Lifton a book about (and against) capital punishment.

More recently, and of relevance to the bias study, Mitchell has published two works of political history that examine the media’s role. Campaign of the Century (1992) is about Upton Sinclair’s 1934 race for governor of California (as a socialist) and “the birth of media politics.” Mitchell saw that race as a laboratory for the kind of campagn where driving up an opponent’s negatives is the strategy. Six years ago he published a book on Richard Nixon’s 1950 Senate race against Helen Gahagan Douglas, “widely remembered as one of the dirtiest ever,” as his publisher, Random House, put it.

I asked Mitchell how much of his interest in media bias was connected with his books on attack politics. “Every one of my recent books,” he said, “have had major themes of ‘biased’ media coverage, so you might say this is one of my passions.” That’s true for readers of PressThink, too, where the comments section—attracting both liberals and conservatives, plus others, including journalists—frequently becomes a skirmishing field.

There is no question that this is one of the passions of the day. Media bias discussions (including dismissals of the bias charge) are a popular way of participating in the news— and of intervening in journalism as it rolls along. They are an entry point into a news system that is without a lot of good entry points. And so I pay close attention to the bias discourse. I try to understand how it works, why it’s so popular, what it’s really about.

But media bias is not one of my passions. Nemesis is more like it. For in my line of work—discovering press think, and then getting people to reflect on it—bias is what all discussion threatens to become. Despite this black hole effect, some important things are said, done and thought about as the war drags on. Here’s some of what I mean:

First Complication: Attack Politics. Mitchell’s interest in attack machines, or what Hillary Clinton called “the politics of personal destruction,” is not unrelated to the bias wars. In fact, the connection has been explicitly drawn by John Caroll, editor of the Los Angeles Times, in his Ruhl Lecture on Ethics delivered at The University of Oregon and published in the Times May 6th.

Carroll talks there about charges from the right that the Times interfered in the California recall election last year, and that it wanted to sink Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger by reporting on his habit of groping women in a front-page story published just five days before the election. Rejecting the charge outright, Carroll points to an “effort to discredit the newspaper” after it published the allegations. He didn’t mention that 10,000 subscribers were angry enough to quit the Times after the groping stories. (See his column explaining the decision here and PressThink on it here and here.)

“Never has falsehood in America had such a large megaphone,” he added in ranging over that incident, the rise of Fox News and its star, Bill O’Reilly (who joined in the outrage over the Schwarzenegger stories), and the talk show climate of instant accusation. “Pseudo-journalism,” he called it, almost indistinguishable from propaganda. “The propaganda technique that has invaded journalism is of a particular breed,” spoke Carroll. “It springs not from journalistic roots but from modern politics — specifically, that woeful subset known as attack politics.”

In attack politics, the idea is to “define” one’s rival in the eyes of the public. This means repeating derogatory information so often that the rival’s reputation is ruined. Sometimes the information is true; sometimes it is misleading; sometimes it is simply false…It is the netherworld of attack politics that gave us Roger Ailes, the architect of Fox News.

Let’s underline what Carroll is saying, in a speech he worked carefully on and clearly saw as his statement: The bias wars are—at least in part—the eruption into the press of the “attack” style in politics, but instead of defeating a candidate, the goal is to drive up the negatives of news organizations like the Los Angeles Times.

Fox News Channel, in Carroll’s view, is a dangerous hybrid: a news and propaganda organization, with some of the codes of entertainment thrown in. Its president, Roger Ailes, is a man accustomed to “smearing politicians.” He has changed industries, “but his bag of tricks remains the same.” Fox gains, of course, every time the mainstream media is successfully smeared. And pseudo-journalism gains every time people choose to believe it.

There is defiant tone in Carrol’s remarks, a willingness to draw lines separating real journalism from its counterfeits. “All across America,” he said, “there are offices that resemble newsrooms, and in those offices there are people who resemble journalists, but they are not engaged in journalism. It is not journalism because it does not regard the reader—or, in the case of broadcasting, the listener, or the viewer—as a master to be served.”

Instead, politics is the master, and manipulation the desired end. Crying bias is just a tactic. From this angle, what appears to be a conflict between “liberal” and “conservative” leanings in the newsroom is actually a struggle between real newsrooms and propaganda shops. What appears to be a complaint about a disservice to readers because of liberal bias is actually an instance of attack politics, where bias is the wedge issue.

Those who play the attack game will always find material with which to batter an opponent, the Carroll story says. He mentions in a tone of pity the “talk-show fans who know the Los Angeles Times only for its ethical outrages.” People who see the newspaper this way have had the Los Angeles Times defined for them by the propaganda machine, in roughly the same way that Michael Dukakis was defined by the Willie Horton ads run against him in 1988.

Opponents are trying to drive up our negatives. So Carroll took the platform to drive home some of Fox’s negatives, as if to say: you’re trying to define me? Well, I’m going to define you…. as “pseudo-journalism.” That’s an editor (whose newspaper won five Pulitizer Prizes this year) fighting back with blunt words and named names. Ailes, who likes to mix it up with journalists in his public statements, replied in the Wall Street Journal opinion pages, June 2.

Carroll’s “pathetic attempt to smear Fox News Channel will only drive his paper’s circulation down, as it should,” he wrote. Ailes then demanded an apology from the editor for “insulting comments.” When I say bias “wars,” it’s this kind of exchange I have in mind. Of course, it’s a war of words—and statistics!—with a highly ritualized quality. Dvorkin of NPR caught some of this:

So if there is tough reporting around the Bush campaign, critics will say it must be because of the inherent liberal bias as cited in the Pew poll. If the media is tough on the Kerry campaign it may be viewed as an overcompensation to show that the media isn’t as liberal as the Pew poll indicated.

In a follow-up column published today, Mitchell included reactions from readers. Jerry Carroll, of Hot Springs Village, Arizona, was already on a war footing: “Having somebody like you in charge of investigating liberal bias in the media is like, oh, putting Reynard the Fox on the case of the chicken house break-in.”

Complication Number Two: The Other Pew Study. How seriously we take Carroll’s perspective may be affected by a later Pew Center report on the credibility ratings of major American news organizations. It was released June 8th.

This was an audience study. It got much less publicity, but that’s odd because the results were even more troubling for the press. “News Audiences Increasingly Politicized,” said the headline. The survey showed one thing clearly: Fox is having a deep effect. First, it’s still gaining viewers. “Since 2000, the number of Americans who regularly watch Fox News has increased by nearly half from 17% to 25% while audiences for other cable outlets have been flat at best.” But it’s more than that.

John Carroll’s suggestion was that Fox can be understood on the model of a political campaign, which also makes marketplace sense. It’s attack politics aimed at a vulnerable opponent: the “liberal media.” According to Pew, it’s not only working for Fox’s ratings. It’s changing CNN into a “Democratic” network— whether or not the bosses have any such intention. “CNN’s once dominant credibility ratings have slumped in recent years, mostly among Republicans and independents. By comparison, the Fox News Channel’s believability ratings have remained steady both overall and within partisan groups.”

In other words, Fox has been able to drive up CNN’s negatives (or is the beneficiary of others in that line of work) without adding at all to its own. The wedge effect is starting to show: “Fox ranks as the most trusted news source among Republicans but is among the least trusted by Democrats.” As every student of politics knows, a wedge maneuver is not supposed to make you wildly popular. It’s supposed to divide the electorate to your side’s advantage. Republicans and conservatives are thus leaving the likes of CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS (although they still watch them, just as Democrats watch Fox).

They are also changing their opinion of the traditional news powers. In 2000, according to Pew, 27 percent of Republicans “believed all or most” of what they heard from CBS News. By April of 2004, only 15 percent did. In 2000, 29 pecent of Republicans believed NBC News. In 2004, it was down to 16. CNN fell from 33 to 26 with Republicans. But Fox rose from 26 to 29. “Political polarization is increasingly reflected in the public’s news viewing habits,” says Pew. And for the first time, “The overall audience for cable TV news exceeds that for network television news by a narrow margin.”

But the effect is wider than just TV News. The Wall Street Journal’s believability among Republicans fell from 46 to 23. What explains that? NPR slipped from 20 to 15. Are you listening? Trust in C-SPAN declined from 32 to 23 among Republicans. Among Democrats on the same measure—trusting all or most of what is heard as news—CNN came in at 48 in 2000 and 45 in 2004. CBS News went from 36 to 34. NPR from 36 to 33. C-SPAN: 38 to 36. Not the same dynamic there.

Thus the news climate is becoming more polarized, more like the political climate overall. And what does it say to the high church in journalism when only 14 percent of Republicans believe the bulk of what they read in the New York Times, while 31 percent of Democrats do? It’s not possible, I think, to answer hard questions about the political affiliations of journalists, (“where are all the conservatives?”) without reckoning with the shifting affiliations of the news audience— and the possible success of the wedge.

The rule in attack politics is define the other guy or be defined by him. CNN is slowly getting defined as news for Democrats whether CNN likes it or not. If that is indeed happening, then one of Mitchell’s questions, “Should editors embark on an ideological affirmative action program?” looks entirely different. A righteous journalist may warn against politicizing the news, and that is an important thing to do. But if the audience is being polarized this is not entirely on point.

Ask Michael Dukakis. It’s hard to know what to do when your negatives are going up. It’s not easy to know why it’s happening, either. (C-SPAN took a hit?) Of course one explanation is obvious: If half the press corps believes that journalism is “going in the wrong direction,” maybe they’re right. In a situation like that, the old time newsroom religion sometimes gains force, precisely because in new times nobody knows where things are headed. To me, the whole picture is unstable, like a television set that’s about to lose its vertical hold.

For instance, there’s nothing to stop Fox from “coming out” as the conservative network and sharpening the conflict even more, a rhetorical step that campaign manager Ailes has so far refused to take— for tactical reasons, I think. Fox’s friends all know, so why not be open? But the pressure is equally real for CNN and MSNBC. If their viewer base continues to skew Democratic, how long before someone makes the argument: let’s come out of the closet and claim our market? That’s when the old picture begins to break apart. All this lies in the background of the Editor and Publisher’s project, but not very far in the background.

Complication Number Three: Those Moderates. When 54 precent of national journalists and 61 percent of local journalists decline the labels “liberal” and “conservative” and identify instead as moderates, what are they really saying? It’s possible, I suppose, that they’re all Joe Lieberman Democrats or Arlen Specter Republicans (the political reporter’s definition of a moderate) but it seems more likely this is a statement refuting the relevance of labels like liberal or conservative.

It’s not so much that newsroom moderates stand in the middle, ideologically, as that they stand to one side of the premise that their personal ideology even matters. Perhaps they don’t want to dignify the idea by discussing it. “We don’t think in those terms.” Many journalists treasure their apolitical interest in politics, and a good number have a “pox on both their houses” attitude (sometimes called cynicism).

This is not a liberal, or conservative, or moderate outlook. There’s an ideology to it, but not one that appears on the standard political spectrum. It’s a professional ideology—newsroom religion, if you will—and it has no single name. Objectivity is one way of putting it, detachment another, professionalism a third. “News judgment” is part of the ideology. This is what journalists have in place of all those political judgments that, according to belief, they prevent themselves from making because their professional codes of neutrality and factuality prohibit such.

The Reader is our only master is an ideological statement because it seeks to describe journalism as pure, “cured” of politics in a way that outside critics can never be. Or take this one: “If the left says we’re in bed with the authorities, and the right says we’re in league with the liberals, it’s because we play it straight down the middle, and don’t please either camp.” That’s an ideology, too, and may be part of what journalists mean by moderate: Put me in neither camp, I’m a professional news person. Without investigating this belief system, Mitchell and team will have a hard time grappling with liberals and conservatives in the newsroom.

This is one of the problems with relying on self-identification, an issue raised by one of Mitchell’s readers, Bill Steigerwald, columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: “Asking them to identify themselves is worthless,” he wrote, “because most of the liberals I know barely realize they are liberal, mainly because they never meet nonliberals, rarely read conservative magazines or columnists or authors and think that the New York Times editorial page and the New Yorker (all they read) are moderate.”

Complication Four: The Newsroom Diversity Dodge. Mitchell turns to the obvious solution when he asks: “Should editors embark on an ideological affirmative action program?” John Leo, columnist for US News and World Report, told Mitchell: “We all know that conferences changed the day the first black attended. And it was a very good thing…I don’t care how many Democrats or liberals there are in the newsroom, so long as we do something to change the one-note newsroom culture.”

That’s a good point. But efforts to diversify the work force in mainstream journalism almost never confront a big contradiction at the heart of that project. Diversity says: we need a better mix of perspectives, more members of under-represented groups. But “represent your group” is exactly what you are not supposed to do according to codes of the newsroom.

The whole logic of hiring more African-Americans or working class people or god-fearing conservatives is that they bring their own experiences, priorities and perspectives to the news— a different politics, we might say. Indeed, if they didn’t look at the world differently, why would it be an urgent matter to hire and keep them?

But once hired, these recruits join a newsroom culture intended to flatten out, or make irrelevant, the very differences that are allegedly so valuable to the operation. Compared to the headache of changing that, which would mean an overhaul in in newsroom doctrine and practice, the hiring of new faces from different places is easy. And in general that is what journalism has done: the easier thing.

This takes its toll on the recruits, who have to live every day in the contradiction their bosses tend not to acknowledge even once a year. The results show up in minority retention and morale (poor), the tenacity of a “one note” decision-making culture, and the simple fact that the news hasn’t changed composition much even with all the diversity hiring.

The problem, I regret to report, is a philosophical one. It is political too. It is ethical, and also practical. There is no reason to think that adding “endangered conservatives” to the affirmative action list would change any of this. I do not deny that there are marginal benefits, such as John Leo mentions. Major benefits await major action to revise the standard newsroom creed. You can’t add new voices and expect much benefit if work routines and professional acceptance depend on the journalist de-voicing herself. Ultimately that problem must be faced. In the meantime, denial works well enough. At least it did until the Internet.

Finally, an observation about Editor and Publisher itself. This was once a sleepy trade journal. But it is reviving itself after taking a hard decision in January to cease weekly publication, go to monthly in print, and put more into daily content and commentary on the website.

“The Internet demands voice,” wrote Washington Post columnist Dan Froomkin in a recent Online Journalism Review essay. E & P is allowing the logic of this demand to work itself out, and the result is a more exciting publication. It’s a sign of how major change may one day come to the traditional press. First, you say the Internet demands voice, and you permit more of it to those working for the online edition. They’re Internet journalists, you decide; different rules apply. Then one day you declare, because it’s true, “we’re all Net Journalists now.” Presto: everyone gains voice. This might improve journalism, but it would not reduce bias. (And which of those is more important?)

“I’ve simply tried to make E & P more responsive to current events and related issues, in the magazine itself and especially on the web site,” Mitchell told me. “This has taken us into more ‘political’ areas but E & P is not a political magazine.” He reports that traffic to the web site has tripled since February to 2.3 million page views last month and half a million unique users. “This is simply not the ‘old’ E & P and clearly our coverage of topical issues has a lot to do with it.”

I say the Web is working its magic, and Editor and Publisher is one to be watched, especially its August issue.

After Matter: Notes, reactions & links….

Pew Center study: Bottom-Line Pressures Now Hurting Coverage, Say Journalists. (May 23, 2004) Later Pew study: News Audiences Increasingly Politicized. (June 8, 2004)

Eric Alterman of The Nation and MSNBC on the Pew study: “True, 34 percent calling themselves ‘liberal’ is a bit more than the national average, but if I’m not mistaken, these same right-wingers have been crowing endlessly that the entire media was controlled by liberals. If the number is only a third — with 54 percent calling themselves moderates, then just what’s the problem?”

John Leo of US News and World Report writes:

In response to the survey, some argue that personal social and political views make no difference if a reporter plays the story straight. Well, yes. But nearly half of those polled told Pew that journalists too often let their ideological views color their work. This is a devastating admission, something like an umpire’s union reporting that half its membership likes to favor the home team. Even apart from loaded reporting, the selection and framing of news stories have a way of reflecting the opinions of editors. That’s why the steady march toward a more liberal newsroom is so puzzling. The news media have to cope with a declining readership and viewership and intense scrutiny of their wayward practices by right-wing outlets and relentlessly critical bloggers. Yet the mainstream media have only those few in-house conservatives who might warn their bosses when news reports are skewing left.

Geneva Overholser, former editor of the Des Moines Register, former ombudsman at the Washington Post: “I am hopeful that we are now arriving at a closely related yet broader awareness: That the old “‘liberal media’ charge is largely hooey, and dangerous hooey at that.”

For those with a deep interest in the subject, see Andrew Cline’s patient and detailed framework for understanding media bias. From Rhetorica:

Is the news media biased toward liberals? Yes. Is the news media biased toward conservatives? Yes. These questions and answers are uninteresting because it is possible to find evidence—anecdotal and otherwise—to “prove” media bias of one stripe or another. Far more interesting and instructive is studying the inherent, or structural, biases of journalism as a professional practice.

Robert J. Samuelson of Newsweek echoes this post: “The latest Pew survey confirms—with lots of numbers—something disturbing that we all sense: people are increasingly picking their media on the basis of partisanship.” (June 28 issue)

Columnist Vincent Carroll in the Rocky Mountain News (June 19):

Yes, that’s just what we need: an in-depth investigation to determine whether liberals outnumber conservatives in the media. Perhaps Editor & Publisher can then turn its attention to solving such equally elusive mysteries as the location of the Statue of Liberty and the fate of the Titanic….
For professional reasons, many journalists are reluctant to classify themselves at all, so “moderate” becomes a handy way to signal their lack of bias. Some also dub themselves moderate in comparison with the people around them. In my experience, however, many of these moderates are center-left and presumably vote Democratic…

“Should editors embark on an ideological affirmative action program?” No. There’s too much gender and ethnic bean-counting in hiring decisions already. Don’t lard on another category. Why should a mediocre conservative reporter get a leg up on a liberal with a first-rate portfolio of clippings?

Posted by Jay Rosen at June 17, 2004 9:10 PM Print

There is a lot to comment on – perhaps a bit too much. I’ll break up my comment into pieces. In case a reader hasn’t detected it by now, I am a social conservative (no label is ever precise, of course), with views probably closest to those of The National Review (with some important differences, of course), and am an engineer in electronics and software areas..

I have a strong opinion, based on decades of observation, that the MSM is biased towards certain viewpoints, and growing more so. Although the left/right axis is overly simplistic, the MSM would fall somewhere to the left of center by that metric. At the same time, FOX News would fall somewhere to the right, as would the Washington Times. Conservative Talk Radio is not a news source in any traditional sense, but by definition is on the right.

Here is an anecdote hinting at how world view affects journalism. A neighbor of mine is a liberal columnist for the Arizona Republic. At one point, I found myself with him and other journalists from the Republic, and I mentioned that I felt the paper had moved too strongly in the feminist direction. They were shocked and denied it. I asked (not knowing ahead of time) how many of their superiors were women. It turned out that all of them were. Coincidence? Certainly not proof – it is an anecdote – but I offer it for thought.

A few comments – I agree that the Pew survey of newsrooms is likely to be wrong. Self identification of political beliefs will almost certainly be skewed toward “independent” or “moderate.” It matters very much how the survey was conducted, but I doubt that there was a methodology immune to this sort of error.

It is human nature to view oneself as a moderate, as representative of the middle or the majority, as not an ideologue or out on the fringe. It is even more human nature to present that self-identification to others. This is not true for everyone, but for many, and I think especially for journalists (ignoring editorialists) who have a “religion” of objectivity.

Rather than asking people if they are liberals or conservatives, why not give them a set of statements to agree or disagree with? That is much more likely to elicit truthful answers. I would be shocked if more than 10% of the women in the MSM are pro-life. Does anyone know?

The answer to the question of what it means to have political beliefs in journalism is easy: political beliefs tend to follow personal world views, which are significantly affected by personal experiences and interactions with others – perhaps especially information from important others, such as respected members of your profession, superiors, etc. Furthermore, various selection processes act to produce a relative uniformity of political leanings within journalism and some other fields. For example, the prevalence of libertarianism among members of my primary profession – software engineering.- is very high – especially if you label libertines as libertarians. Anyone can sample this by visiting the discussion boards at Slashdot – News for Nerds.

Practices such as Anna’s “The Clinton Test” can help reduce problems resulting from group-think and bias, but that level of intellectual honesty is hard to produce and harder to sustain, especially in a group with consistent world views, and with real-world demands for timely product. Certainly I would expect that journalism schools attempt to teach critical thinking skills and procedures to improve objectivity. But clearly this is not enough, as the “leftish” bias of the MSM’s product is easy to discern (and not just by dishonest methodologies like cherry-picking facts).

One practice I see in MSM stories is a balancing procedure that fails to produce balance – see my previously referenced article and thought experiment challenge about the coverage of the Swift Boat Sailor’s press conference. The practice is to get information from one side of a dispute, and “balance” it with information from the other side. Not being a journalist, I would still guess that this is one procedure taught (or required by editors) to improve balance – i.e. reduce bias. Unfortunately, too many times, if appropriate context and critical thinking is not applied, the bias will show through in any case – one side’s strength will be shown against another side’s weaknesses, for example. The claims of both sides will be given equal merit, without investigation to see if they are valid.

Getting more to the core question – are newsrooms too liberal – YES, if you judge them by their output. Yes if you judge them by some surveys. No if the pressrooms are at outlets that do not hide (or imagine the nonexistence of) their liberal slant.

I don’t believe that bias can be removed by any set of procedures. The history of human behavior shows that partisanship is a deeply ingrained characteristic

How do we find a newsman? Does she have to have a college degree in Journalism? Isn’t this likely to start a commonality of personal experience? Are journalism majors self selected as part of a political world view or canonical set of world views? Of course! Do journalism professors largely share a consistent world view, tilting to the left, and passing on that bias to others? Again, of course! Does this guarantee a consistency of views? No, but it greatly increases it.

The Media Research Center’s headline strikes me as quite typical of too many MSM headlines – artificially explosive. In the same way that one can clearly see a bias (and deduce motive) with MRC, to many Americans, the bias is just as clear in the MSM. The early warning signs (not early anymore) indicate this: the success of right wing talk radio, the low credibility numbers in the survey, the dropping subscription and viewership numbers of the MSM, the growing cynicism of the public.

As to the question: “Liberal journalist means…” – It means that the journalist will create stories with a liberal slant. How could it not, unless liberal journalists are immune to the bias associated with any world view – in this case, presumably a liberal world view. Again, although the MSM pretends to be objective, I think we all agree that it cannot be.

Especially in areas where facts are questionable and their importance even more so, having liberal reporters (unless balanced by what? Conservative editors?) will result in a liberal slant to the news. Too many subjective judgments are required.

In a hard science like physics, bias exists but is self correcting. Mother nature cares not about the opinions of scientists. Even so, there are often long standing acrimonious debates and stand-offs over important questions. Bias exists in science, but over time the methodology corrects it. Journalism cannot afford to wait, and deals in many areas where the scientific method cannot be used in any case.

A side note:

One incorrect impression from the information about Fox News: O’Reilly is not a conservative and not acting as a journalist. His show, in a newspaper sense, is an editorial or op-ed piece with his views, which are not representative of Fox.. He is hard to label – my favorite is “arrogant, ignorant, opinionated contrarian blowhard. The O’Reilly show is a huge commercial success, for reasons I don’t understand and which might be enlightening, but it ain’t news (in any traditional sense) and it doesn’t represent the news side of Fox.

Posted by: John Moore (Useful Fools) at June 18, 2004 12:52 AM | Permalink

Regarding charges of bias as an “attack” style in politics, much of the discussion is surrealistic. It would also appear to be off the main topic, which was “are news rooms too liberal?”

“Crying bias is just a tactic” is a convenient dodge for one who is biased and has been called on it. That the Los Angeles Times is liberally biased shouldn’t be a question – it is obvious. That many people dislike that bias is shown in various ways, including the drop in readership. That “crying bias” has been used as a tactic, and will be used again is of course true. Both sides use it.

But, to deduce that all bias crying is a tactic is illogical. People complain about bias for other reasons – the most important being that they believe the bias exists and they don’t like it. It is one thing when a politico cries bias, and another when the public does so, but even the politico may be correct, although from that source the accusation is obviously less credible.

I would offer myself as an example in the "bias wars" - obviously not an influential one, since my megaphone is more of a nanophone, and it has been 10 years since I was a nationally syndicated radio co-host where I could occasionally toss out an opinion that a lot of people heard.

I have been upset with leftist media bias since the Vietnam War. When Walter Cronkite later admitted that Tet '68 convinced him that the war was lost, and he decided to use his position as "the most trusted man in America" to end it, I was shocked. The media got the story wrong from the start, and continued with a false narrative about that offensive that many people believe to this day.

So I have long been suspicious of the MSM, and as an observer of comparative propaganda, applied those overservations to the MSM.

Today when I accuse the MSM of leftist (or more precisely, AnybodyButBush) bias, I do so as a citizen who dislikes having this major force allied against my positions and the political party I support. I have done so with little effect for a long time. The ordinary citizen has little ability to penetrate that Iron Curtain.

This year I am also an activist. I am specifically acting as a Vietnam Veteran opposed to John Kerry. This means I have an activist's interest in the media, not just a citizen's interest.

Does this mean I am using "press bias" as a tactic? Not yet, because it won't get me anywhere. If it did, would it be dishonest? No, because I believe it to be true - way too true. Am I hoping that my arguments here will help my cause? Yes. Do I expect that they will? No. Do I argue here because I am an activist. Absolutely not - I do it because for once there appears to be a faint chance of my observations having some slight impact - an effect of bloggery. If John Kerry were not running, I would not be an activist this year, but I would still be commenting on this blog.

Carroll has been used to his monopolist’s world – where there is no significant challenge to what he has to say, no rich marketplace of ideas. The megaphone he complains about was in his hands until O'Reilly came along with another one. Many in LA had smaller megaphone, but that didn’t bother Carroll – it was when a megaphone big enough to be heard criticized him that he reacted.

His comments are ironic – O’Reilly went after him when his newspaper once again used its longstanding monopoly to attempt to skew the views of voters. I would like to see more of this. Let’s get diversity on the soapboxes with megaphones. Is it surprising that a long unchallenged, powerful media organization would develop bias that affects its reportage? The specific incident that O’Reilly attacked may not have been timed purely by bias – the LA Times may be correct in their defense that the information was published when it was ready to be published, not on a date chosen for maximum negative impact on the Governator. I don’t believe that, given the LA Times history, but it’s irrelevant anyway when one considers LAT's history.

Another suggestion is that since Roger Ailes is a former Republican political operator who runs Fox, Fox is a political machine (implicitly a Republican political machine). But if one watches Fox a lot (and I do – it’s the video/audio wallpaper of my office much of the time), one sees a much more complex operation. O’Reilly is a loose cannon – he can help the Republicans one day and slam them the next. He certainly isn’t a conservative or Republican operative. Anyone who would call Geraldo Rivera a republican operative should elicit laughter – yes, he’s really gotten into supporting the troops, but watch him on other subjects and the old liberal Geraldo is still there. Hannity and Colmes seems to be a reasonable show for that format – except this conservative likes liberal Colmes better than conservative Hannity – Colmes is smarter and more likeable.

Equally Ironic is Carroll’s view that Fox News is a news and propaganda organization. This is the pot calling the kettle black. I would extend that generalization from the LA Times to almost the totality of the mainstream media. If you have lexisnexis, look up the transcript of CBS’s report on the Swift Boat May 17 press conference. It is blatant propaganda.

“Opponents are trying to drive up our negatives.” That is an interesting and revealing way to phrase it. How is Fox News an opponent of the Los Angeles Times? Competitor? Yes, but in an alternate media. Opponent? If you don’t have a political agenda, you don’t have an opponent! Critic? Sure. But Opponent?

I would agree, by the way, with Jerry Carroll to some extent. Having liberal media critics investigate liberal bias in the media is not the best way to get the truth, although I suspect more will be found than Jerry Carroll expects.

Paul Moll’s comment on not having ideological affirmative action in Newsrooms is priceless, given the rigid affirmative action practices (with regard to race, gender, sexual preference?) at the New York Times. If you have a nice mix of races, genders and whatever, and they are all liberal, then you have a liberal newsroom. Affirmative action for conservatives would be silly and Paul Moll’s reasoning (heck, they’re liberal, they’ve got liberal customers, don’t sweat it) would be fine if the New York Times wasn’t so important in setting the news priorities for the MSM in general, and if there were a corresponding, important, conservative newspaper of the quality of the NYT – but I am not aware of one that even comes close anywhere in the United States.

Main stream journalism ignores or discredits the cries of "bias" at their own and the Nation's expense. The bias exists, is consistent, and has caused the public to not trust anyone for their source of news. The result is an open field for looney movements, left, right, environmental terrorists, black helicopter survivalists - the whole range of madness. It is aking to the situation in Iraq under Saddam, where rumor, many outrageous, was the only source of news, because the main stream media was distrusted. I have encountered too many individuals this year who don't trust the MSM, but somehow have collected a dangerous collection of bizarre ideas.

Posted by: John Moore (Useful Fools) at June 18, 2004 2:05 AM | Permalink

John Lynch best describes the way “Big Lie” techniques work from the standpoint of the deceived. The MSM today is engaging in these techniques, whether by design (in a few cases) or out of their inability to compensate for the influence of the “left” environment all around them, one that they tend to agree with. In fact, one might consider the following:

The very same effect that John Lynch describes is likely at work in the MSM. Not, of course, a conscious skillful propaganda technique aimed at journalists (although those exist and there is big money in it), but the accidental equivalent – an emergent phenomenon related to various selection and group-think tendencies.

In answer to the general question of how to deal with this bias, perhaps one could find a way to break this strong positive feedback loop. How, I don’t know. Certainly if we took leftist reporters and stuck them in an isolated workshop, and simply fed them contradictory information over a significant period of time, some of them would come to believe it, or at least question their own beliefs. But how one could actually do something like this, and pay for it, and keep it on track, and not turn it into Fred’s Conservative Brainwashing Clinic are all serious obstacles. So I don’t have an answer. Perhaps intergenerational differences (don’t trust anyone over 30) may lead to new journalists with different worldviews.

John Lynch raises a point that I think gets lost (a loss which politicians do their best to take advantage of):. In essence, it is that spin is not necessarily content free or wrong. It is merely one side that needs to be investigated. Beyond that, media critics, whatever their goals, should be listened to.

I have been very open here with my background and my viewpoint. Does the fact that I am a conservative without journalism training, and even worse, an activist in the anti-Kerry movement, automatically make my statements wrong? I would hope not. I would hope that critical thinking ( a skill missing in way too many areas ) and investigation would be applied to my statements and views at the same level as they would be applied to a pro-Kerry activist. Furthermore, although I have an up-front agenda: get our story out to the press, I am neither the press officer of any organization, nor solely motivated by that in this discussion (I don’t get paid for this, I have long participated in this kind of discussion and it is only change that I stumbled onto this blog at the same time I am politically active).

David Ehrenstien’s link points to a good example of poorly done amateur leftist propaganda – true hate speech. This sort of thing is all over the web. It doesn’t address the issue at question here, it merely attacks a conservative journalist. On another blog, I would shred it. Here, I just want to label it.

Ormasnd’s reference to the Groseclose and Milyo study of media bias highlights the danger of the “balancing” technique in removing bias (or more cynically, in an attempt to show fairness):

…depending on the issue, a media outlet could give equal treatment to both sides, yet still be biased because of the issues it select (page 15, first paragraph of Discussion section). They show two examples – one gives a rightward bias and the other a leftward, both using the same technique and without regard to the ideological views of the reporter. An inappropriate us of this balancing technique showed up with many of the stories about the Swift Vote veterans which I analyzed for “The Clinton Experiment” discussion.

William A. Dorman quotes my recitation of my memory: “When Walter Cronkite later admitted that Tet '68 convinced him that the war was lost, and he decided to use his position as 'the most trusted man in America' to end it, I was shocked.”

It is entirely possible, even likely that this this is a false memory. It may be that Cronkite did not admit this. I have a memory of hearing it many, many years ago, while in California, and on matters of that importance, those memories are usually right. But in this case, unable to offer proof, I will concede the point that Cronkite may very well have never made that admission. Something triggered my awareness of and interested in leftist bias in the News, long before I was a conservative (“He who is not a libertarian when young: :-)

However, I offer a report (by Arnaud de Borchgrave) of a different Cronkite statement, made before the one cited. Now perhaps he is also suffering from ideologically slanted memory, but I doubt it. The allegation is different – not that Cronkite admitted to using his position, but that he declared the war lost in a somewhat dishonest way. However, since my mention of this was an aside as to how I came to my interest in bias in journalism, the only relevance to this discussion is that it shows my memory is not perfect (and, probably, biased towards my own beliefs). In that sense, I am subject to the same natural process of bias as reporters, which is hardly surprising since we are all human beings. We could go back to post-Tet 1968 and examine the coverage, but that would be a diversion. However, for those who have memory of the period, let me offer some assertions, not to be argued here, stealing the thread, but to let people see if their view is accurate (people on this blog are likely to have good ways to verify facts) or a result of misleading reporting: Tet-1968 was a tactical catastrophe for the Viet Cong (and hence, the North Vietnamese); there were three VC offensives planned for that year (including Tet) - all were catastrophes for the VC and after the last one, the VC was effectively eliminated as a fighting force; after the Tet disaster, the North Vietnamese concluded that they should sue for peace, until they saw the news reports and reactions within the United States; because Tet was such a disaster, General Giap was quietly demoted - he no longer was allowed to control the war - although the word "demoted" itself does not appear in any history I have read; the PRG with whom John Kerry met was a puppet government-in-waiting, created and totally controlled by the North Vietnamese to provide an artifical "southern" alternative government.

I do feel like I have brought a knife to a gunfight. Academics who can spend entire careers studying and publishing on specialized issues are obviously at a dramatic advantage in knowing the literature and conclusions of their field. I am trying to introduce views that may be at odds, but I may introduce some “brilliant” idea that is old hat. On the other hand, I have the advantage of having watched the times through a different filter, focusing on different facts (i.e. having a conservative bias/leaning leads me to likely have information, with all appropriate caveats, that those who lean left may not have). I also have, of course, my personal experiences and acquaintances which are especially relevant to this issue both because of the Kerry/Vietnam controversies, and the Bush/TANG controversies.

Dornman’s use of studies is interesting, because he asserts that widely shared cultural bias is significant. I would suggest that we live today in a society widely divided on just the issues where press bias charges are made. In those areas there is no “dominant” system of ideas – there are at least two which are antithetical. Which side influences the press in this situation? I would suggest (and refer to the Groseclose study as indirect corroboration) that it is the leftist/liberal/pro-choice/ side.

I assume that Terry Krepel is correct in pointing out that three internet-only conservative news organizations did not question the facts at the press conference (I only read the WND account). These are not major news outlets with pretension of balance or non-bias – they are news organizations with declared or well understood political positions. WND has surprisingly high ratings for a web-only service (and has some interesting business approaches also - which might be worth a topic some day - they mix ads and news articles - not infomercials - but in any case, they are an odd duck, and a quite successful one).

I of course agree that any good reporter ought to be suspect of motives (facts offered, also, of course). The MSM swallowing Republican spin about Gore merely informs us that the MSM is so careless or lazy as to allow such things. We could play the game of whose spin won in the MSM forever – I am pretty sure that Republican spin (at least post-Reagan) would be the serious loser.

My complaint about the Swift Boat coverage is twofold: (1) The story was more important than the coverage given.(2) While the press was very suspicious of the Swift Boat veterans, it showed no suspicion of the Kerry counter-spin. The latter may have, in the liberal minds of the reporters, caused them to discount the importance of the story. The failure to actually understand the organization and its members, but rather to allow guilt by past association to be presented without investigation, and worse, to influence the definition of importance, is lousy journalism – whether one considers it bias or not.

----------

Why the hell do we live in a society where news is determined by whose spin is presented and how is a question we should be asking? What happened to investigations? Why do leaks by people that clearly have agendas play such a big part in national news, while the motives of those people are not themselves an important part of the story?

I want a skeptical (but not cynical) press. I want one that (by whatever magic) avoids group bias, or compensates for it in some manner. I want one that has diversity of world-view and related ideology.

I can’t comment on exactly what the MRC’s agenda is. I know mine when my amateur activist hat is in place. I want the media to present, in a fair manner, some truths that I have solid information on (much more solid than 30 year old memories of Cronkite) and which I think are critical to those public debates. I have no objection to serious investigation of either our charges, our funding, our supposed ties to the Republican “attack machine” (my tie is simply as an inactive precinct committeeman, which I became to please a former boyfriend of my daughter). I have a significant objection to the media putting out our charges and Kerry’s responses, without investigating both.

Finally, for those who make rigid stereotypes, my previous work as an activist was a major coordination role in Hands Across America.

Posted by: John Moore (Useful Fools) at June 18, 2004 5:57 PM | Permalink

Wouldn't it be horrible if a proliferation of new voices was accompanied by the continued ideological commitment to balance within the particular organization? Especially accompanied by a commitment to diversity of viewpoints intended to appease commercial interests?

What I like about Fox is that Colmes is so ineffective. What I like about O'Reilly is that Elise is just window dressing. In fact, I wish they didn't exist.

Point\Counter-Point is the worst of both worlds.

Since the truth always takes sides, it's not enough to allow all particular voices to be expressed.

That Mitchell insists that E&P is not "political", is a defect in his vision.

Posted by: panopticon at June 17, 2004 9:30 PM | Permalink

Recent local political campaigns have been marred by candidates throwing chaff -- attacking media for bias as a weapon to galvanize its troops and confuse voters. By its nature such attacks sew fear, uncertainty and doubt and assume a certain gullibility of the reader. So far, the candidates who have played that card have gone down in flames.

It is peculiar for Pew to survey bias when surveys are blunt and bias is a vague, unsubstantiated (and probably unsubstantiatable) generality, whereas specifics in a story, the organization of a story, and its presentation lend themselves to exacting criticism. For instance, there is a masters thesis aching to be done on national radio and tv last lines.

Posted by: sbw at June 17, 2004 10:28 PM | Permalink

The problem is that the word "liberal" here in the USA really means "less conservative." Both the "liberals" of the Democratic Party AND the "conservatives" of the Republican Party are neoliberals.

Posted by: Cryofan at June 17, 2004 11:25 PM | Permalink

When 54 precent of national journalists and 61 percent of local journalists decline the labels "liberal" and "conservative" and identify instead as moderates, what are they really saying? It's possible, I suppose, that they're all Joe Lieberman Democrats or Arlen Specter Republicans (the political reporter's definition of a moderate) but it seems more likely this is a statement refuting the relevance of labels like liberal or conservative.

What they are saying is they don’t want to admit their personal viewpoints, or alternatively, that they have subscribed to the myth that their viewpoints don’t keep them from being “professional” and “objective,” or even that they actually are moderate (which I doubt is true for most who claim to be). Again, a measurement of person opinions issue by issue would be far more instructive – and with the magic of the internet, the raw data (identity protected) could be provided to allow anyone to analyze or classify.

While a simple linear scale – left/right or liberal conservative certainly is not sufficient to accurately describe anyone’s views, it turns out to be a relatively good predictor – in other words, if you know someone is to the left, you can usually predict their views on a large number of issues, and rarely be wrong. The same is true for the other side.

That left/right should form a useful dichotomy is not obvious and in fact is counter-intuitive. Humans are complex – how can a single scale rate them over a broad area of beliefs? The answer is: it works, just like IQ measurement works, over a surprising range of ideas/skills. We would prefer people to be more nuanced, but just as mother nature doesn’t care what the scientist wants to find, the polarization of left/right is, for whatever reasons, a good predictor for many people on a large number of issues.

If nothing else, when discussing political subjects, you don’t want to have to label each individual or group with their position in a 25 (or whatever) dimension space. But more important, if you actually put individual viewpoints into such a space, dramatic clustering occurs – the axes are not orthogonal – 25 is too many dimensions – one is good enough for much of political discussion.

Bill Steigerwald’s comments “…most of the liberals I know barely realize they are liberal…” is important. In my work, which is not political, when politics comes up, left and right are likely to be present. But this isn’t as likely in a news room..

I offer up another anecdote: When I first started storm chasing, I rode in the car of a strongly liberal couple –Matt and Betsy - both meteorologists. We had many political discussions and continue to do so 10 years later. But at one point, Matt commented that before he met me, he didn’t know there were conservatives who could make rational and even reasonable arguments. No, I didn’t turn him into a conservative, and he will vote for Kerry this year. But his observation was amazing – he had not encountered enough conservatives in his life to know anything about us, and he lives in a southern state.

When he spent time talking with me, he realized that a number of his beliefs (learned stereotypes) were incorrect. Not his core political beliefs, but many beliefs about conservatives. It is a tribute to his intellectual honesty that he was willing to both consider this possibility and state it.

Now imagine people in the highly selected world of the major media. How many conservatives do they meet? Do they believe that Joe Sixpack with his hunting rifle and perhaps racial bigotry is a typical conservative? Do they think that Randall Terry represents all religious conservatives? Was Tim McVeigh just a conservative who did what the rest want to do?

Why not, when they don’t have an opportunity for discussions with conservatives, except perhaps in highly charged confrontations where mutual understanding is not the goal.

I have an email friend who lives in Westchester. She used to be a solid Westchester Democrat, but has been turning against the Democratic Party. She can't find anyone in her social circle (which is large - New York City Intelligensia ) that has views anywhere close to hers (and she is still pretty liberal).

I have a habit of talking to servicepeople who come to my house or fix my car or whatever. Having grown up in a faculty-brat environment, I had little diversity of exposure until I joined the Navy. There I worked with and took orders from poorly educated and not highly intelligent blue collar people, and I grew to respect them. In my hobby of amateur radio, I also run into a wide diversity of people - especially after the CB craze drove many blue collar folks into the hobby - truck drivers, for example.

You can learn a lot by making a habit of talking to people who otherwise might be viewed as just objects in the infrastucture.

-------------------------------

Jay’s comments in Complication 4 (The Newsroom Diversity Dodge) are spot on. I can add nothing to them.

Posted by: John Moore (Useful Fools) at June 18, 2004 2:41 AM | Permalink

Jay,

Help me understand the ramifications of Pew's support of advocacy journalism (aka public journalism, civic journalism) and its support of surveys identifying bias in the newsroom.

The former puts the reporter in the scene and the latter suggests the reporter is in the scene.

The former risks diminishing the credibility of the reporter in the eyes of the reader and the latter suggest the reader might be correct to be concerned.

Posted by: sbw at June 18, 2004 9:37 AM | Permalink

"And what does it say to the high church in journalism when only 14 percent of Republicans believe the bulk of what they read in the New York Times, while 31 percent of Democrats do?"

What does it say when the bulk of people, Republicans and Democrats, don't believe the bulk of what they read in the New York Times?

That should be the distressing part. Not that twice as many Democrats believe the bulk of the NYT than Republicans. That means 84% of Republicans and 69% if Democrats aren't trusting the NYT...

Posted by: Keith_Indy at June 18, 2004 10:10 AM | Permalink

First Complication: Attack Politics. Is it attack politics, or a Borking? How does Carrol's attack politics analogy differ from Eric Alterman's "working the refs"? Do these nuances need to be addressed in E&P's survey framework directed at newsrooms and academia?

And why did you use Dukakis exclusively as your victim of "attack politics"? Couldn't think of a conservative victim? Bias!! ;-)

Complication Number Two: The Other Pew Study. So, where attack politics affect the newsrooms, it is also being used to affect the news consumers?

Therefore, the losses in subscriptions/viewers among liberal MSM is not just a spreading of the viewership given more choices, it is a polarization of consumers? And this polarization is following political polarities - with larger minorities of Democrats believing liberal MSM than Republicans, but losing credibility with independants as well.

This implies that viewers are being excited into higher states of partisanship, which causes them to be more sensitive, which means they are attracted and repeled by "objectivity" in their choices - or by bias from a news source?

And doesn't that lead back to the concern that the Pew surveys (and others) support the notion that the "one-note" newsrooms are playing left of middle-C?

(Although for some reason I think of the Left as more the melodious and feminine high notes right of middle-C and the Right the more harmonious and male notes left of middle-C. But that might just be me.)

Complication Number Three: Those Moderates. I definitely agree that Mitchell needs to distinguish the cynics, agnostics and cross-overs (Reagan Democrats?). But more difficult will be measuring their impact against an allegedly more populus but constrained liberal minority and endangered but emboldened conservative minority. Most moderates I've met don't want news absent the liberal or conservative spin, but that allows both to make their case. Of course, that leads back to Krugman's complaint: "The next time the administration insists that chocolate is vanilla, much of the media--fearing accusations of liberal bias, trying to create the appearance of 'balance'--won't report that the stuff is actually brown; at best they'll report that some Democrats claim that it's brown."

Complication Four: The Newsroom Diversity Dodge. Diversity says: we need a better mix of perspectives, more members of under-represented groups. But "represent your group" is exactly what you are not supposed to do according to codes of the newsroom.

This seems to parallel the whole David Horowitz Academic Freedom movement. Is it very different? Should the institutionalized philosophical, political, ethical, and practical processes in the newsroom direct that energy be spent objectifying and sanitizing (de-voicing) the journalist or in developing the journalist to compile and create symphonic and historically rich compositions? Does that require more instruments, or a new type of synthezier?

Posted by: Tim at June 18, 2004 12:08 PM | Permalink

I'm surprised that no one has thought to mention the study "A Measure of Media Bias" ttp://www.cbrss.harvard.edu/events/ppe/papers/Tim%20Groseclose%20Media%20Bias%20Paper.pdf

The attempt to find a way to measure bias in the news is certainly very interesting - although I am sure many will contest the conclusions:

"Our results show a very significant liberal bias. All of the news outlets except Fox News’ Special Report received a score to the left of the average member of Congress. Moreover, by one of our measures all but three of these media outlets (Special Report, the Drudge Report, and ABC’s World News Tonight) were closer to the average Democrat in Congress than to the median member of the House of Representatives. One of our measures found that the Drudge Report is the most centrist of all media outlets in our sample. Our other measure found that Fox News’ Special Report is the most centrist."

Posted by: Orman at June 18, 2004 1:33 PM | Permalink

I am an avid consumer of the news.

I read NYT, WSJ, and my local paper each day. I review the week with magazines. In the car, NPR has my attention. At home Fox News leads, but MSNBC and CNN have well-worn quick-tune buttons on my remote. At work, the BBC, CBS News, Chicago Tribune, CNN, Google, Yahoo!, NYT, USAToday, Washington Post, WSJ, and Le Monde are all bookmarked in my browser and visited when time allows.

I used to trust the news that I was reading, viewing, and hearing.

I was annoyed by the overblown headlines but I could forgive them as a means to draw attention – they were not necessarily damaging to the veracity of the report.

I was annoyed by the bias exposed in the report; but I could forgive that as an acceptance of multiple points of view necessary to get more than one side of the story. I could ''filter'' the bias and still get the story.

I was alarmed by the exaggeration of facts, or erroneous facts reported, but comforted by the fact that I caught it.

I was viscerally aware that bias might be affecting my understanding of the world: not through the reports I got, but through the selection of what I got. I was arrogant enough to think I could filter the bias out of what I consumed; but was aware that I might be consuming from a menu that neglected major staples while overloading on others. I still though I could correct my world view through something approaching ''Kentucky windage.''

Finally, I began to suspect that I was being misled. I occasionally saw events ''live.'' Not packaged, processed, canned for my consumption - but the real thing! The actual speaker presenting the rationale for war; the Palestinian boy being shot in a village square; the horror of collapsing towers in New York. With these sights and sounds clear in my mind, the press coverage of them alerted me to the facts: the press doesn’t have a clue!

I believe that the public forms opinions of world events through multiple sources. The occasional live events serve to show the press as the emperor with no clothes. The multiple sources of information now available to the public further exposes them to a rich set of points-of-view and allows them to come to their own conclusions -- not those spoon-fed by the mainstream press.

As a direct result, the MSM readership, viewer-ship, listener-ship is declining and the public trust is eroding.

Posted by: John Lynch at June 18, 2004 1:48 PM | Permalink

As someone who has followed the "liberal bias in the newsroom" debate since the 1960s, I've come to be convinced it is an intellectual Cul de Sac from which there is no escape. For one thing, those who propose that "liberals" dominate offer no convincing theory about how, for instance, Reagan could serve two terms, or 90 per cent-plus of the population could initially support the first and second wars with Iraq, not to mention Grenada and Panama, or why in a similar vein the early student, women's, and environmental movements had such tough going in the news, or why organized labor still does, or how it is that modern corporate ownership should permit serious challenge to the social order, and so on.

It's also the case that those who label the media "liberal" often depend more on ideologically skewed memory or anecdote or both. For instance, John Moore (Useful Fools) tells us that he has "been upset with leftist media bias since the Vietnam War. When Walter Cronkite later admitted that Tet '68 convinced him that the war was lost, and he decided to use his position as 'the most trusted man in America' to end it, I was shocked." Anyone who actually wants to know what Cronkite said might wish to read his remarks at http://www.richmond.edu/~ebolt/history398/Cronkite_1968.html and judge for themselves the degree to which his position was "leftist."

Finally, the discussion over liberals in the newsroom tends to ignore a rich academic literature examining the production of news that long ago concluded individual preferences in most news situations have little to do with setting the news agenda or in representing events. What does tend to have influence is widely shared cultural bias that is produced and reinforced by society's dominant system of ideas, a bias that is usually "invisible" to both news workers and consumers.

Posted by: William A. Dorman at June 18, 2004 1:50 PM | Permalink

Re: John Moore's citing of the Swift Boat Veterans press conference as an example of media bias: As I have previously detailed, the conservative media (in this case, NewsMax, WorldNetDaily and CNSNews.com) accepted what was said at the press conference without question. In fact, of the 63 paragraphs about it that WorldNetDaily and NewsMax wrote, only three of them involve responses to the allegations from the Kerry campaign.
Suggesting as Moore does that to mention the Swift Boat veterans' ties to Republican operatives or that the flip-flop of past evaluations of Kerry by some of them vs. current views is merely "Kerry spin" is disingenuous (though Moore admits he's pretty close to the issue). When a group such as this comes forward in a political cam, any good political reporter ought to be at least initially suspect of motives, regardless of political persuasion. Sure, it can be (and is) argued by conservatives that the mainstream media accepts more liberal political claims at face value than conservative ones, but as Bob Somerby continually details, the MSM swallowed the Republican-fed spin that Al Gore was a serial liar during the 2000 campaign when the facts show that wasn't the case.
It's stuff like that that makes the Media Research Center's newly announced initiative to "Force the Media to “TELL THE TRUTH!” somewhat hilarious since the MRC is much more interested in media-bashing and advancing conservative views than "the truth."

Posted by: Terry Krepel at June 18, 2004 2:16 PM | Permalink

Terry Krepel (above) shows us part of the problem. While it is true many of the so-called media watchdogs have a bias of their own, there is truth in what they say.

The fact is, it is getting harder and harder to find (as Mark York reminds us) -- Critical Thinking -- in the reporting of news.

The simple recital of the relevant facts in news reporting has given way to something called journalism.

Journalism was supposed to bring context and critical thinking to reporting. Instead it has brought unbalanced and often incorrect reports.

Why does it take a web-log to get point and counter point? Why is a consumer of the news required to verify facts, and to get the original text of a speaker or a commission to find out that the report is significantly off from the facts?

While I agree that most of the media are left-leaning (NYT, LAT, CBS, ABC, NPR) and some are right-leaning (Fox, talk-radio,) the real issue is that the bias is getting strong enough that the news itself is sacrificed.

Where is the critical reporting illustrated by the Woodward reporting of the 70s? Where the story was more important than whose ox was getting gored?

Now the story grinds one side of the ax for so long that the other side of the ax is gone!

Pursuing both sides of a story, reducing it episode after episode by eliminating the non-factual and arriving sooner-or-later at some version of the truth -- where is this kind of reporting?

Most of the news today is continual repetition of a given point-of-view. The public is left to get the other side. There is no elimination of extraneous spin but just a replay of entrenched positions.

Posted by: John Lynch at June 18, 2004 2:39 PM | Permalink

Spot on and intriquing at the same time. I'm reminded of my own experience working as a reporter in a small Ohio newspaper...

"But once hired, these recruits join a newsroom culture intended to flatten out, or make irrelevant, the very differences that are allegedly so valuable to the operation."

This is very true. The editor of the small newspaper that hired me used to say that he was thought by his Republican friends to be a Dem and vice versa. (To which he was real proud of that.) I was a the over-the-to bleeding heart liberal reporter fresh from Seattle's alternative weeklies. He told me he exactly WANTED to hire me because of my liberal perspectives and how I could bring them to this rather conservative farming community. (I recall one of my questions at the interview was did the paper run a story about the 20th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade?) Of course once there I had to stifle any of my politically leaning in the stories I wrote. This came to a head exactly twice. Once was when I was sent out to cover the Mayor's Prayer Breakfast. I wrote a brief perfunctory story with very few quote (It was along the lines of "this was read, this person spoke, this person said this.") My editor told me my story was boring and to jazz it up a bit. I then got into it with him about the newsworthiness of the story (it was a reoccuring event, of which the paper itself (and the editor) bought a table at the Prayer Breakfast). I told him I thought he only thought it was important because he was there, and it was borderline prostelizing in the paper. I asked if Muslims or Jews had run something similiar would the paper run as prominant a story and he said well he would except, of course, there were no Jews or Muslims in the county. See how nice that all worked out.

The second story I clashed with him was on the Pray-a-thon, which was when the bible was to be read out loud on the steps of the courthouse.

Did I object to these stories because I'm not Christian? Yes. Was the town mainly Christian? Yes. So did my wish to minimalize this stories means that I somehow wanted to direct the news of the town? Even to this day I'm not sure I know the answer to that, but I knew that I couldn't take writing these kinds of stories and I quit the paper shortly after.

Posted by: catrina at June 18, 2004 3:07 PM | Permalink

John MOore said:

"It is human nature to view oneself as a moderate, as representative of the middle or the majority, as not an ideologue or out on the fringe"

Yes, but what is omitted here is that "moderation" is ideology. In that moderation can be attributed to something called "human nature" is the very framework by which ideology is constructed, because ideology in order to work always needs to reference something beyond itself, something human, something symbolic that can't be reduced to the factual.

It is an ideological postition to view "ideologues" as out on the fringe. In fact, that IS ideology itself.

Posted by: panopticon at June 18, 2004 3:09 PM | Permalink

Certainly if a story has only one side, then another doesn't need to be created and reported.

However, if a story's thesis is that John Kerry is supported by veterans (for example) then it is appropriate to air the veterans (who appear more numerous) that do not support him.

If a story's thesis is that there is a uprising of the masses in violent protest to American presence throughout Iraq then it is appropriate to let us all know how many towns, villages, and cities this is occuring in, and how were are fairing against all 35M people who are now rising up in violence against us. Or, if it is not the masses, then perhaps a word or two from those who are not rising would serve as the "other side."

If the economy is in the dumper, as alleged, then perhaps providing the story in the context of accepted economic data would be appropriate.

The essence of critical thinking, and writing, is that there is a thesis, that the thesis is supported by evidence, and that counter arguments are considered and dealt with.

There are daily examples of news, not editorials, not columnists, but purported news, that serve to alarm or advocate, but not report. The facts are often incorrect, the provision of countervailing facts omitted, and the headline trumpeting.

I would hazard that this is a minority of news reporting, however, some outlets are more inclined to do this than others. And those that do, do so in a consistently left, or right, fashion.

Posted by: John Lynch at June 18, 2004 4:10 PM | Permalink

"I think it's fairly easy to see from the reporting that most veterans support John Kerry, but that a subset vehemently oppose him for his stand against the war after serving in country."

Although unfortunately I can't quote a URL I have seen at least 1 opinion survey showing a heavy split of veterans against Kerry. More directly and importantly it seems as if a very heavy preponderance of the people involved with the "swift boat" operation - something like 115 of them - are bitterly opposed to Kerry, while only a small number are supporting him. That story has not been conveyed.

Posted by: orman at June 18, 2004 5:59 PM | Permalink

Interesting controversy on press vs. Bush vs. 9/11 commission.

As a case study:

Deb Reichman asks: "Mr. President, why does the administration continue to insist that Saddam had a relationship with al Qaeda, when even you have denied any connection between Saddam and September 11th. And now the September 11th Commission says that there was no collaborative relationship at all."

She then writes:

Disputing the findings of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks, President Bush continues to insist there was a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida.

The Sept. 11 panel reported this week that while there were contacts between al-Qaida and Iraq they did not appear to have produced "a collaborative relationship."

Senior members of the commission seemed eager to minimize any disagreement with the White House.

"What we have found is, Were there contacts between al-Qaida and Iraq? Yes. Some of them were shadowy but they were there," said Tom Kean, the Republican former governor of New Jersey, who i0s chairman.

Like Bush, he said there was no evidence that Iraq aided in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Former Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana, the Democratic vice chairman of the panel, said media reports of a conflict between the administration and the commission were "not that apparent to me."

Although bin Laden asked for help from Iraq in the mid-1990s, Saddam's government never responded, according to a report by the commission staff based on interviews with government intelligence and law enforcement officials.

"There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida also occurred after bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship," the commission's report said. "Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al-Qaida and Iraq."

A reader complains.

MRC complains.

The money quotes from the reports:

Bin Ladin also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein's secular reime. Bin Ladin had in fact at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Sudanese, to protect their own ties with Iraq, reportedly persuaded Bin Ladin to cease this support and arranged for contacts between Irq and al Qaeda. A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting Bin Ladin in 1994. Bin Ladin is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded. There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after Bin Ladin had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship. Two senior Bin Ladin associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed betwen al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.

While Hanjour and Hazmi were settling in New J