Closing thoughts on the"Liberal Media"...
The final instalment of a series
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Even now with admitted self-censorship, three years of U.S. occupation, 13,190 wounded, 1,752 Americans dead, and no weapons of mass destruction, criticism is sharp on a media that fails to paint a happy picture of Iraq. In September of 2003, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough told viewers that "some of the most powerful media players in America don't want America to succeed in Iraq…. American soldiers have told me that the biggest morale challenge that they are facing is not Saddam and Osama's thugs, but, rather, it's dealing with the biased, slanted reports that they're getting from American news organizations." [i] [1]

In response to claims that reporters were overlooking “good” stories, Newsweek magazine noted that journalists who might actually try and cover what these critics deem the "good" news are discouraged from doing so. They write, "In Baghdad, official control over the news is getting tighter. Journalists used to walk freely into the city’s hospitals and the morgue to keep count of the day’s dead and wounded. Now the hospitals have been declared off-limits and morgue officials turn away reporters who aren’t accompanied by a Coalition escort."[ii]

FAIR points that that “while critics say journalists should be chastised for not reporting on hospitals, the occupation forces are making it more difficult for reporters to actually visit them”. Moreover FAIR suggests “whether they are based in Baghdad or in Washington, journalists are obliged to report the news on the ground, not as "good" or "bad" but as news, regardless of how it fits with the vision the administration would like Americans to see”.[iii]

It would seem that in the light of these situations that allegations of a pure and malicious news media bias are unfounded. With such a pivotal part of America society within its sphere of influence the charge of having no credibility is perplexing at best. The goal of an objective press should always be paramount. Brent Cunningham says “Objectivity has persisted for some valid reasons, the most important being that nothing better has replaced it. And plenty of good journalists believe in it, at least as a necessary goal. Objectivity, or the pursuit of it, separates us from the unbridled partisanship found in much of the European press.”

Why then is there this constant barrage of accusations? Michael Parenti in a Humanist article suggests “For one thing, attacks from the right help create a climate of opinion favorable to the right. Railing against the press's "liberalism" is a way of putting the press on the defensive, keeping it leaning rightward for its respectability, so that liberal opinion in this country is forever striving for credibility within a conservatively defined framework....Their goal is not partial control but perfect control, not an overbearing advantage (which they already have) but total dominance of the communication universe. Anything short of unanimous support for a rightist agenda is treated as evidence of liberal bias. Expecting the press corps to be a press chorus, the conservative ideologue, like any imperious maestro, reacts sharply to the occasionally discordant note.”[iv]

What then can be a solution to this perceived problem? Brent Cunningham suggests, “As we [journalists] descend into this new age of partisanship, our readers need, more than ever, reliable reporting that tells them what is true when that is knowable, and pushes as close to truth as possible when it is not.”

While it is impossible to separate the humanity from the journalist it should be fair to say that the intent of both as one is good. It is then important to examine the fruits of their labor and aim to hold them both up and accountable so that they can fully aid in the process of democracy. We live in important time with important decisions to make. We must be well informed if we are to make wise decisions. It is key to have a reliable source of information in the media to help us along the way.

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[1] One can only hope the biggest moral crasher is the media saying you living in a hellhole, never mind the reality of actually living in one with dieing service men, and little kids with grenades all around you. Damn you liberal media!

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[i] Is media bias filtering out good news from Iraq? (2003, October 23). Fair & Accuracy In Reporting. Retrieved April 25, 2005 from http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1840

[ii] Ibid

[iii] Ibid

[iv] Parenti, M. (1995 January). The myth of a liberal media. Humanist. 55, Issue 1, 7-10.

The"Liberal Media" and Iraq coverage...
some more for you to ponder
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The United States unilateral preemptive strike against Iraq is one of this budding decade’s biggest stories. Surely a liberal media would pounce on this opportunity to question and challenge a conservative administrations tactics. To the contrary, the media was not only lacking a liberal slant, but it failed in its duty to serve as a balance and fact checker to the Executive branch’s hawkish march to war. Once the actual invasion began the media still was limited in its objective coverage, instead serving as sounding board, repeating the Administrations message.

A study by Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) found that television newscasts largely excluded skeptics of the invasion of Iraq in the two weeks of coverage leading up to the event. In its study FAIR examined 393 on-camera sources in nightly news stories about Iraq. More than two-thirds of the guests featured were from the United States. Of the U.S. guests, 75% were either current or former government or military officials. Similarly, when both U.S. and non-U.S. guests were included, 76% were either current or retired officials. FAIR asserts that such a predominance of official sources virtually assures that independent and dissenting perspectives will be underrepresented.

Of all official sources, 75% were associated with either the U.S. or with governments that supported the Bush administration's position on Iraq. Only 2% of these sources were skeptics or opponents of war. Of the total on-camera sources only 68, or 17%, represented skeptical or critical positions on the U.S.'s war policy.[i]

Part of this lack of perspective could be due to the relativity little accountability demanded by America’s prominent newspapers.

Washington Post editors acknowledge that the President and other administration officials had no problem receiving prominent coverage in the paper, even when their warnings were repetitive. "We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power," said Karen DeYoung, a former assistant managing editor for the Post. "If the president stands up and says something, we report what the president said." And if contrary arguments are put "in the eighth paragraph, where they're not on the front page, a lot of people don't read that far."[ii]

In an October 2004 Post article, reporter Howard Kurtz states that “the front page is a newspaper's billboard, its way of making a statement about what is important, and stories trumpeted there are often picked up by other news outlets”. The troubling part of this is that the Post acknowledges that its coverage was self censored, moving questioning articles to the middle of the paper, away from front page prominence. “We did our job but we didn't do enough, and I blame myself mightily for not pushing harder," said Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward. “We should have warned readers we had information that the basis for this was shakier [than widely believed]...Those are exactly the kind of statements that should be published on the front page."[iii]

Across the country, "the voices raising questions about the war were lonely ones," said Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. "We didn't pay enough attention to the minority." The Post article also points to how some other news organizations have “cast a withering eye on their earlier work”. Specifically cited were The New York Times and The New Republic magazine[1] expressing regret for their prewar editorial arguments about the Iraq invasion.[iv]

Other forms of media also unduly practiced self-regulation. In a 2005 study reported by Editor& Publisher, it was found the many media outlets “self-censored their reporting on the Iraq invasion because of concerns about public reaction to graphic images and content”.[v]

This is a disturbing but not easily understood issue. “There is no single explanation for these holes in the coverage, but I would argue that our devotion to what we call "objectivity" played a role.” Writes Brent Cunningham, of the Columbia Journalism Review “It's true that the Bush administration is like a clenched fist with information, one that won't hesitate to hit back when pressed. And that reporting on the possible aftermath of a war before the war occurs, in particular, was a difficult and speculative story.”[vi]

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[1] These two news sources are often lambasted by the Right as being the bastions of the liberal media. If these strong hold of the press’s liberal slant were deferring to the right, how much more were “objective news sources" doing?

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[i] Rendall, S. & Broughel, T. (2003 May). Amplifying Officials, Squelching Dissent. Fair & Accuracy In Reporting. Retrieved April 25, 2005 from http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1145

[ii] Kurtz, H. (2004, August 12). The Post on WMDs: An inside story. The Washington Post. p. A01 Retrieved April 22, 2005 from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58127-2004Aug11.html

[iii] Ibid

[iv] Ibid

[v] Strupp, J. (2005, March 19). Study: Media self-censored some Iraq coverage. Editor & Publisher. Retrieved April 22, 2005 from http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000846234

[vi] Cunningham, B. (2003 April). Re-thinking Objectivity. Columbia Journalism Review. 456, 33-41.

A few examples of
"Liberal Media" coverage...
The saga continues
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Let’s now examine if there is a perceived bias in three different prominent news stories of the past year. First we will examine the coverage of the death of Ronald Reagan, then the 2005 Inauguration, and finally the media’s coverage of the United States actions Iraq.[1]

In June of 2004 Ronald Regan, the 40^th President of the United States and deity of the modern conservative movement passed away at age 93. Surely this figurehead of conservatism would be meticulously analyzed and critiqued in his death by a liberal media. But that was not the case. Instead there was an overflowing of warm memories and purely positive sentiment. Despite Reagan’s record of deficit spending, fiscal and tax policies leading to increased social inequality, considering Nelson Mandela a terrorist, completely ignoring the emerging AIDS epidemic, and the Iran-Contra scandal, he was remembered and praised as the sole conquer of communism, the Great Communicator, and the funny cowboy everyone loved. [i]

Columnist Scott Holleran in Capitalism Magazine puts it in perspective, “The American public's response to Ronald Reagan's death reflects the cheerful, American sense of life that Mr. Reagan brought to the White House...Ronald Reagan was as engaging as everyone says, as this writer had the pleasure of discovering first-hand while working on his presidential campaign in 1980”. While Holleran freely admits these memories are pleasant, they are “no substitute for an appraisal of Mr. Reagan's political philosophy. From the beginning of his presidency, Ronald Reagan was neither a true defender of capitalism nor a great commander in chief. Wrongly using religion as the moral defense of free markets and letting faith blind him to the dangers of America's enemies, Mr. Reagan laid the foundation for today's faith-based presidency.”

This accurate summary of Reagan’s politics was nowhere to be found in the month long media orgy over his death. Holleran surmises, “Americans ought to revere what is good about Ronald Reagan, but we must acknowledge reality first”.[ii]

In yet another distinguished ceremony of America’s civil religion, the 2005 Presidential inauguration served as an opportunity for a liberal media to show its true colors. With the incumbent President wining by one of the narrower margins in history and facing a daunting second term due to first term decisions, a liberal media would be sure to strike. But that was not the case. Salon’s Eric Boehlert states that the “notion that the television networks or 24-hour news channels would spend their inauguration coverage contrasting the scenes of wealthy corporate donors toasting the president while young soldiers and middle-aged Guardsmen battle in Iraq is wildly naive...The idea that broadcast journalists would use this celebration, of all things, as a time to press President Bush on Iraq simply does not reflect the modus operandi of today's mainstream media.”[iii]

Media Matters for America (MMFA), a self styled “progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media”[iv], documented that all the pundits or commentators who appeared on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC during the channels' January 20 inauguration coverage. Between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. EST, Republican and conservative guests outnumbered Democrats and progressives 19 to 7 on Fox News, 10 to 1 on CNN[2], and 13 to 2 on MSNBC. MMFA also noted that “the rare Democrat or progressive guest usually appeared opposite conservatives, whereas most Republican and conservative guests and commentators appeared solo or alongside fellow conservatives”.[v]

This trend continued through primetime inauguration coverage as well. MMFA found that Republican and conservative guests outnumbered Democrats and progressives 25 to 4 on Fox News, 7 to 1 on CNN[3], and 9 to 5 on MSNBC.[vi]

It comes as little surprise with this Republican/conservative slanted commentary then that the cable news networks downplayed and mocked inauguration protesters. MMFA documents how commentators on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News all “ridiculed inauguration protesters, downplayed their numbers and significance; and implied that they posed a security threat”.[vii] If this arm of the media was as liberally biased as it is claimed, then unquestionably they would have taken this chance to give liberal dissenters a national platform.

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[1] These three news stories represent to me a time and opportunity for the news media to really show what they are made of. The public will turn to them in these situations as part of a grand ritual of our common civil religion. How the media acts during these times should be a strong indicator to their typical coverage perspective. These events represent times of sadness, celebration, and conflict, the bias of any relationship.

[2] This does not including a Republican-skewed panel featuring Ohio voters.

[3] Again this does not including a Republican-skewed panel featuring Ohio voters

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[i]Ronald Regan: Wikipedia encyclopedia. Retrieved , April 21, 2005 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan

[ii] Holleran, S. ( 2004, June 14). America's Funeral: Ronald Reagan in Perspective. Capitalism Magazine. Retrieved , April 25, 2005, from http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3732

[iii]Boehlert, E. (2005, Jan. 20). Giving Bush a pass – again. Salon.com. Retrieved , April 25, 2005, from http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2005/01/20/media_on_inauguration/

[iv] Who we are. Media Matters for America Retrieved April 23, 2005, from http://mediamatters.org/etc/about.html

[v] No room for progressives on cable news inauguration coverage. (2005, January 20). Media Matters for America. Retrieved April 20, 2005 from http://mediamatters.org/items/200501210001

[vi] No room for progressives on primetime in inauguration coverage either. (2005, January 21). Media Matters for America. Retrieved April 20, 2005 from http://mediamatters.org/items/200501220001

[vii] Cable news dismissed and ridiculed inauguration protesters. (2005, January 21). Media Matters for America. Retrieved April 12, 2005 from http://mediamatters.org/items/200501210007

Another Serving of
"Liberal Media" ?...
Yet another part of a continueing series
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Leading the charge against the accusations of an overarching all inclusive liberal media bias is Eric Alterman, author of What Liberal Media?: The Truth About Bias and the News. Alterman is a Professor of English at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, a media columnist for The Nation, a blogger for MSNBC.com, a senor fellow at the Center for American Progress, and an author of five other books.

Alterman points out “Republicans of all stripes have done quite well for themselves during the past five decades fulminating about the liberal cabal/ progressive thought police who spin, supplant and sometimes suppress the news we all consume”. Alterman goes on to highlight the success of such a wide array of unarguably conservative news media from Fox News to The Weekly Standard and Limbaugh, stating “no sensible person can dispute the existence of a conservative media”. He also acknowledges there is also a liberal media saying “it is tiny and profoundly under funded compared with its conservative counterpart”.[i]

In the Nation article “After You, My Dear Alphonse” columnist Katha Pollitt asks “What's the matter with conservatives? They have the White House, both houses of Congress, the majority of governorships and more money than God. They rule talk-radio and the TV political chat shows, and they get plenty of space in the papers; for all the talk about the liberal media, nine out of the fourteen most widely syndicated columnists are conservatives. What I want to know is why can't they just admit it, throw a big party and dance on the table with lampshades on their heads? Why are they always claiming to be excluded and silenced because most English professors are Democrats?

She goes on to observe for conservatives it seems that “running the country turns out to be harder than it looked... [Bill Clinton] made it seem so easy! Now, unemployment is way up, the government's awash in red ink, Iraq is a mess. So, everything has to be someone else's fault... They can dish it out, but they sure can't take it”.[ii]

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[i] Alterman, E. (2003, February 24). What Liberal Media? Nation, 276, Issue 7.

[ii] Pollitt, K. (2003, October 20). After You, My Dear Alphonse. Nation, 277, Issue 12.