Media Bias

I'm just moving this out of LotusoftheHeart's personal journal, since it's off-topic.

Lynn said that conservative owners of media outlet temper the left-wing biases of the people who choose, write and report the news for those outlets.

There's one little problem with that theory...the news content itself.

If owners of media outlets really are that conservative (a supposition that I challenge), it's not trickling down.

A simple Lexus-Nexus search on the word "abortion" will reveal that much. We pro-life people are "abortion foes." "Pro-choice" people are "abortion-rights supporters." How about "human rights supporters"? I kinda like that label.

That's only one single issue. What about the off-the-cuff comments of news reporters and anchors? What about editorial choices determining what is worthy of above the front-page fold treatment and what gets buried on p. 18? I guarantee you when the "jobless" numbers are adjusted (after the election, of course) it won't get front page treatment on the NYT with an attached apology to the public (gee, it looks like we were wrong). Oh, they'll report it alright...in a three-paragraph story buried in the financial section.

Lynn, you and I both listen to NPR. Was there ever a more biased "news analyst" than Dan Schorr? That guy hated Bush long before the campaign ever started. I know; I listened to his campaign "analysis." Are we expected to believe that his Iraq War analysis is objective? You don't notice it because you agree with it. I notice it because as a conservative I'm on the receiving end of his endless barrage of criticism.

Last night, NPR ran a cute little feature on the viewpoints of a true curiosity among curiosities..."religious" people. Yes, we still exist, dinosaurs that we are. Surprise, surprise. We want our kids to be taught abstinence and not how to put condoms on bananas. But, surprise, surprise, black Christians are more liberal in their point of view. They want a backup if their kids do happen to misbehave. Well, pass me the smelling salts. This is a non-story except in terms of NPR's bias. Everybody knows that conservatives don't think the schools should be teaching sex ed. at all, but if they do, they shouldn't be teaching in opposition to parents' teachings. Everybody also knows that black Christians are practically lock-step Democrats as a voting bloc. They tend to subdivide religion and politics. The reason NPR did this feature was to make it appear that conservatives are a tiny minority on sex ed issues by equating them with *religious* conservatives. They also wanted to show that "religious" people (i.e. everybody who goes to church in America) are all over the map when it comes to social issues. No. 1 is misleading at best and No. 2 is a non-story. No 3., which I am inferring, would be "See? We're not biased. We talked to some of those religious folks over there in W. Va. We covered it." All the while conveying the impression that we are so out of the mainstream that we belong in a museum. They can't help it, though. It's who they are. Our viewpoints are indeed "inconceivable" to them.

A few weeks ago, NPR interviewed some ivory tower guy on "issue framing" in politics. This guy openly confessed to being liberal in his politics, and then, completely unchallenged by the interviewer, went on to say that the Republicans have best framed the issues of the day (he used "tax relief" as the example) and that Democrats need to learn to frame issues better if they want to win. However, neither he nor the interviewer pointed out examples like "choice" for abortion, or "saving jobs" for protectionism, or "workers," for the lower middle class (as if financially successful people steal all their money from the poor instead working for it). Or how about "tax cuts for the wealthy"? This is all language that the news media ape. Peter Jennings doesn't use terms like "tax relief." If he did, he would call it "so-called tax relief." Kinda like "so-called partial birth abortion." Or "the so-called morning-after drug."

My two examples (chosen out of many) are from PUBLICLY FUNDED radio, i.e., funded at least in part by the taxes of conservatives and liberals alike. The networks are egregiously worse. Watch ABC, NBC and CBS coverage during the upcoming Democratic and Republican conventions. You will be able to tell which way the news anchors are voting by the number of criticisms reported. Of course, they won't be criticizing outright, that would be too honest; they will be reporting the criticisms of Republican "opponents"...and ignoring the criticisms of Democratic "opponents."

Tolerance is an iffy word these days. (It usually means "shut up and tolerate me.") It can imply smoothly ignoring a legitimate point of view when it ought to be considered. All Things Considered does that almost nightly. I find myself gasping..."But what about...?" They are urbane, and reasoned, and esoteric, and they simply don't engage in catfighting on the air. 'Tis better to put ugly contention aside. Yes, that could be construed as tolerance, after a fashion.

Finally, the "owners of media outlets" own companies that own newspapers and other news outlets. I doubt they have time to micromanage the content of their editors and reporters. Anyhow, what upstart, anti-establishment Columbia graduate would put up with that? She'd report it immediately.

End of essay!