Gallup Polls discovers that a plurality (45%) of Americans still think the national media is too liberal rather than too conservative (18%). Republicans overwhelmingly (77%) feel this way, but so do a plurality (43%) of independents. Even more bizarre, a majority (58%) of Democrats think the media’s partisan balance is just about right.
The right has been railing about liberal bias in the media for forty years and it has clearly had an enduring effect on public perceptions. But the l’affair Lewinsky, the Bush Era, and the rise of the Blogosphere have exposed example after example of conservative bias. This has been captured in the Gallup poll…but barely.
The tendency on the part of Americans to perceive the news media as too liberal has been observed in each Gallup survey in which this question has been asked since 2001. Still, if there is a perceptible trend, it is the finding that the “too conservative” number has been climbing slightly throughout the decade — from 11% in 2001 to 19% and 18% over the last two years.
I suppose a near doubling in accurate perception is significant progress, but it is still depressing to see these numbers. There has been a major paradigm shift, at least for careful observers. In 2000, Joe Lieberman was the Democratic vice-presidential candidate…now he is an outcast. In 2000, columnists like Tom Friedman, Maureen Down, Joe Klein, David Broder, and Richard Cohen were perceived as left-leaning. Now they are considered laughing stocks and right-wing war apologists. Or, in Dowd’s case, as just ridiculous and irrelevant. In 2000, the Washington Post editorial board was lazily considered left-wing. Now they are considered as hapless warmongering lazy propagandists for a failed war and a failed presidency.
Perhaps the only truism in national media that has gone untouched is that the New York Times editorial board, led by Gail Collins, has remained solidly left-leaning in their outlook. But their print reporting has taken a beating with the fake news of Jayson Blair and the wardrumming of Michael Gordon and Judith Miller.
The Washington Post’s print reporting has been better, but in part that is because their worst reporters left to start The Politico, which is one of the more embarrassing and transparently right-wing rags to ever grace our Capitol.
The media consistently rolled over on war coverage. Too many of them took Scooter Libby’s side in the case of Valerie Plame Wilson. Everywhere we look (outside of Knight-Ridder/McClatchey) we see the fallout of a press that exhibited startling conservative bias.
And, another thing has come to light. Seeing how true conservatism works in action, we might ask ourselves if there is any such thing as conservative journalism? Is Jeff Gannon a journalist? Is William Safire? Charles Krauthammer? Michael Ledeen? Or are they just somewhat camouflaged flacks? What does the truth mean to these people?
What does it mean to David Broder or Joe Klein, for that matter?
To see the truth put on a pedestal you need to read the analysis of the blogosphere. You need that filter because the honesty comes through in the format of instant feedback and instant fact-checking. A dishonest blogger will have no audience, while a dishonest columnist will have a studio chair to amplify his or her lies all across the airwaves.
And, while it might be tempting to believe that the press has not so much been conservatively biased as they have been deferential to an administration at war, the whole experience of the Clinton years (Whitewater, Wen Ho Lee, Lewinsky) gives the lie to that analysis. The media, including especially the New York Times, went after Clinton like bulldogs. Bush? They’ve barely laid a finger on him.
Did I just write this whole piece without once mentioning Fox News?
Maybe this conservative bias is why we are getting still more Republican Lite from of the Clintons. The bias exists, of course, because the Fourth Estate has reinquished its critical role in democratic societies, and has been bought up by corporations, which fare better under conservative governments.
You touched on a major factor that influences the media, that of corporate commercialism. A big part of the media’s motivation is advertising. If you look at what they’re trying to sell, you can figure out who their target audience is. And it sure as hell isn’t the bloggers.
Not us certainly. But it does make the notion of a blogging citizen journalist all the more important. Still, I seriously doubt that blog journalism will ever really affect the MSM.
Sorry Booman. But at some point we all have to face reality.
The Daily Howler “http://www.dailyhowler.com“ is a great source for putting this into a long perspective. Every time I see a mention of Edwards’ haircut, I think of the sliming of Al Gore, and the sliming-to-come of Hillary Clinton.
What can be done to stop these false journalists? About 20 of them, accountable to no-one, will select our next president, if we don’t do something.
[With apologies for posting this comment in the wrong thread earlier.]
Thanks for the blog! Just a few observations. The real problem in current American politics is the imbalance between Republican National media strategy and the National Media Strategy of the Democratic Party. Simply put – the Republican Party builds its media message exclusively on propaganda while the Democratic party clings to the traditional 19th century political practice of building media messages exclusively on “Issues in the public interest”. Do you see the difference? Do you REALLY SEE the difference?
Just in case you don’t here it is in a nutshell. Booman said that for 40 years the Republicans have been constantly Preaching (paraphrasing here using my words) that all American media was too liberal and biased in their reporting. An ancient axiom states that if you publicize any story and tell it often enough and long enough the entire population will come to believe it whether it is true or not.
Long before Corporate America started buying into the major networks, the Republican right wing had achieved ownership of over a thousand AM Radio stations around the country. These stations are the main propaganda engine and distribution vehicle for the Republican political message. Since the demise of the fairness doctrine, these AM stations have grown to over two thousand.
An interesting byproduct of this incessant propaganda pollution has been its impact on the print media. It first started at the local level with local print editors being bombarded with overwhelming demands for more conservative opinion columnists and reporters, with these demands coming primarily from the local rabid boosters of AM conservative talk radio. Over time this contributed to the explosive growth of many nationally syndicated conservative columnists, and eventually brought the same kind of pressure to bear on the editorial departments of the established regional newspaper giants.
The brass-knuckled power for the Republican propaganda machine lies in these 2000 plus AM conservative talk radio stations, and they will fight tooth and nail to preserve these outlets. On the other hand, for any Democratic progressive agenda to succeed in America, the Republican AM Radio Propaganda machine must be dismantled. Not neutralized or disenfranchised but dismantled. An example of the awesome far-reaching power of this machine was recently demonstrated by the current national flap dominating TV, print, and Internet media concerning Rush Limbaugh’s comment about “Phony Soldiers”. And who is the leader of the AM conservative talk show pack, and from what media did his remark originate??