The Media Drop

The National Review posts an excerpt today from L. Brent Bozell III’s new book, Weapons of Mass Distortion: The Coming Meltdown of the Liberal Media.

So we’re back to the bias issue, on which Bozell makes some very solid points that I wholeheartedly agree with. Some on the left do claim that there is a right-wing slant to media outlets, not one to the left. One example below:

How many times do we hear liberals cite Rush Limbaugh, William F. Buckley, Robert Novak, Cal Thomas, Sean Hannity, and so on, as evidence of the conservative “dominance” of the media? What these liberals know full well is that all of these conservatives are commentators, not reporters; their work appears in opinion columns and on TV or radio talk shows — not in news stories in our newspapers or on radio or television news programs. None reports news, but rather they all react to it analytically and, by necessity, with prejudice.

The people who make this claim with their backup being the number of conservative commentators are obviously misinformed. However, I do believe that there are so many right leaning talk show hosts - especially on the radio - that many people feel they don’t have the opportunity to hear what the left has to say. This tends to lead into people claiming “bias” - they are clearly confused as to what is news and what is commentary. But to say that while conservative talk show hosts outwardly claim they are conservative, while liberal news media people will never claim to be liberal is kind of an unfair comparison. While we may all feel that Dan Rather, Peter Jennings or whomever are personally liberal or conservative, isn’t the whole point that they aren’t supposed to claim one or the other?

I think the other unfortunate point that Bozell misses here is that the media is inherently liberal in a self-fulfilling prophecy sort of way. It’s not that there aren’t any reporters/anchors/newspeople that are conservative, but what about the possibility that conservatives just don’t make up as much of the future news media population in the first place, probably even pre J-school?

Back in May, I posted on this topic in response to something Daniel Drezner had been talking about in the blogosphere - i.e. the number of left vs. right bloggers of note. CableNewser’s Brian Stelter made a great point then, and I’m going to post his quote again. He said, “Journalists tend to lean liberal, which makes sense — journalists enter the biz hoping to change the world and make it better. That’s a liberal notion, eh?” I would stand behind this comment for a long time - or at least until someone could absolutely talk me down from the ledge. If you feel otherwise, please tell me - you don’t have to have chromosomal evidence to the contrary, but I think that it just happens to work out that way. Don’t the same things hold true in other industries? Unionized workers tend to lean one way, while stockbrokers may lean another. We could go on about this all day, but I think it’s a point that needs to be taken.

I also believe that if we’re going to have “media watchdog” groups, then they need to go in nonpartisan. I haven’t found one group yet that doesn’t go in targeting the other side of the party lines. They might report sometimes on the same side they’re on, but it’s not their focus. Bozell’s Media Research Center is clearly conservative (though it doesn’t pretend not to be) while David Brock’s Media Matters is definitely looking to debunk the right leaning portion of the media. So again - if you’re going to play this game, then go in clean.

Oh, wait - you’re having trouble doing that? Well, if you haven’t noticed, it’s because everyone has preconceived notions and thoughts that flow along party lines. You don’t even have to be a voter or be interested in politics to have them. If you landed on the planet in 1999, you might think that all Democratic Presidents sleep with interns and that Republican governors liked to execute people. You would also decide which of these things you dis/agreed with and which you identified with - or didn’t.

I just wish that people would stop spending so much time complaining about what the other side was doing and that they were biased (hell, start taking billboards out so we can all say “no, really?” while driving down the highway already), and do something about it. It’s like we’ve built a cottage industry for liberals to go after conservative media and conservatives to do the opposite. For all the statistics of times that Al Gore was mentioned as being “annoying” and that George Bush was looked at like an “idiot” by the media, something constructive should have been proposed that the media needs to do by now. Hell, get News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch, Tribune’s Dennis FitzSimons, Gannett’s Douglas McCorkindale and their contemporaries together in a room and say, “Look - the commentary is fine, but the overall tone of your news networks or newspapers needs to change. Op-ed is great - leave it. Chris Matthews - fine. Bill O’Reilly - fine. Just report the news as news. If someone complains that you skipped a story because they think you’re biased, state your case in rebuttal. But report the news. Make ‘Fair and Balanced’ an actual term of reality and not a joke.”

I firmly believe that if everyone would stop complaining and start acting, this “argument” would get a lot easier to stomach, rather than making people go “oh, another frigging bias book.”

[Thanks to Notorious MiG for the heads up on Bozell’s item]