…the greatest myth in our political culture is the Rush-Limbaugh-generated complaint about the “liberal media.” Other than right-wing fanatics like Limbaugh and his followers (including those in the press), who can review this deliberately one-sided, government-worshipping record — and it is but a tiny fraction, much of it from the “journalists” like Klein assigned to play the “liberal” role — and maintain that “liberal media” myth with a straight face?
The issue of “why” the media behaves this way is complex and completely separate from demonstrating that they do.
The right-wing has been complaining about a liberal bias in the news for so long that it seems somehow dirty to make the same argument in reverse: the media has a conservative, or Republican, bias.
Some savvy observers of the press will readily acknowledge a Republican bias during the Bush years, but will immediately explain it away as a bias in favor of the government in power, and not based in any particular ideology. There are some reasons to believe this. No matter the ideology of a particular administration, the press will face the same challenges. How do they get the big interview, or the best insider sources? It’s only natural for an administration to lavish rewards on reporters that give them good press. Therefore, many reporters will trade objectivity for access and try to maintain as much balance as possible.
If we want to use a semi-hypothetical example, consider Joe Klein. Klein has a Republican source(s) on the House Intelligence Committee.
I may have made a mistake in my column this week about the FISA legislation passed by the House…Democrats say that I was wrong to report that the bill includes a FISA court review of individual foreign terrorist targets who might communicate with U.S. persons, although it does include an annual “basket” review of procedures used by U.S. intelligence agencies to target foreign suspects. The Republican Committee staff disagrees and says my reporting is correct.
This is a he said/she said situation, and Klein knows which side was lying to him.
I have to side with the Democrats. I reported as fact a provision of the bill that seems to be disputable, to say the least.
Having realized that he was provided bad information from the staff of the House Intelligence Committee, Klein has some choices. He is willing to say that he ‘sides’ with the Democrats, but he isn’t willing to go beyond that and say that he was lied to. It’s quite likely that Klein doesn’t want to say he was lied to because he doesn’t want to lose his source(s). It’s the wrong decision, but one can understand the conflict. Developing sources takes a lot of time and it’s painful to throw away all that work.
It’s obvious that Time‘s editors are even more solicitous of Klein’s sources than Klein himself. While Klein was quite clear that he sided with the Democrats, his editors were not willing to go that far.
In the original version of this story, Joe Klein wrote that the House Democratic version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would allow a court review of individual foreign surveillance targets. Republicans believe the bill can be interpreted that way, but Democrats don’t.
This non-correction correction is a perfect example of a major news organization siding with the Republicans in a dispute with the Democrats. But the question remains whether they are doing so to maintain sources with the party that controls the White House, or because they actively sympathize with the Republicans and want to help them.
We saw the New York Times hold James Risen’s wiretapping blockbuster until after the 2004 election. We saw Judith Miller go to jail rather than implicate Scooter Libby in the l’affair Plame. We saw Time protect Karl Rove, even to the point of posting denials they knew to be false. We’ve seen Fred Hiatt use the Washington Post to create confusion over something unconfusing…whether Valerie Wilson was a covert officer or a ‘desk jockey’.
Flashback to the Clinton administration. Did the New York Times publish knowingly false denials from the administration on Whitewater, or did they pursue that scandal with uncommon (and unjustifiable) zeal? Did they give the administration the benefit of the doubt in the Wen Ho Lee scandal, or during the campaign finance controversies? Did the press say that Lewsinsky scandal was no big deal, or a partisan witchhunt? Did they write article after article saying the Republicans should back off or the electorate would punish them?
Clinton’s administration was pursued by the corporate press with little mercy, even by news organizations that endorsed his candidacies. And…most of it turned out to be wrong, exaggerated, or unwarranted. How far that is from life under the Bush administration…
When it comes to policy, the story is more mixed. It’s true that the press had a liberal bias in favor of the status quo when Reagan came into office. During Reagan’s first term, the news was filled will news on the homeless, the jobless, and the underclasses that were the victims of Reaganomics. But they learned to change with the times. Today, the press is hostile to welfare, to universal single-payer health care, to affirmative action, to gun control, to higher taxes…and they are pro-free trade, pro-foreign interventionism, pro-Social Security privatization, etc.
The only area where the press seems to have any liberal bias, is in science reporting. They will still side with scientists over energy lobbyists and religious fanatics. Other than that, the press is now biased toward the Republicans and towards the Democratic Leadership Council (Harold Ford, Joe Lieberman, Hillary Clinton) wing of the Democratic Party. Progressives need not apply. Their ideas are kooky.
The situation is so bad that ostensibly left-wing columnists will advise Democrats to vote for torture, illegal surveillance, no-strings-attached war-funding, the suspension of habeas corpus…or anything else the Republicans deem necessary. And they will lie about the facts when they do it. And they will cover up for sources that lie to them. And their editors will refuse to burn sources that lie to them.
We’ll continue to fight back against this systemic bias, but no one should be confused about whether or not it exists.
The corporate media favors Republicans, and it goes far beyond a desire for access. If it was just about access, things would have been different in the Clinton administration and things would have noticeably improved when the Democrats took over Congress.
I wonder how much of the difference in coverage comes from the two parties’ approaches to dealing with articles/features they don’t like. I’m oversimplifying, but it seems like the Democrats whine meekly or politely ask for corrections whereas Republicans unsparingly skewer the media for liberalism every chance they get, and threaten the withdrawal of access. The latter have an approach summed up by “the beatings will continue until coverage improves” and it seems to work.
True. And, interestingly, the beatings, by the Democratic Party, have been delegated to the blogosphere, where we are then painted as extreme.
you’ve captured perfectly why:
When we had murders in our neighborhood and I got a call about my blog from the Daily news, i refused to talk to the reporter until he promised me the article wouldn’t exacerbate the white/black divide in the city. Even then I told him as little as possible, cus i knew he was going to lie anyway.
I’m so much happier now that I don’t give a fuck.
I bow before you for that last line alone.
May I share it?
The sad part of this posting is that unless a method is found by which the media is made to discover that they have a responsibility for publishing the truth, the methodology of constantly attacking any messenger that presents the “facts” will never be changed. Thus, the general reading and listening public will continued to be fed the propoganda that serves the masters needs.
What I thought was that when Dean posed the idea of creating a group of individuals whose reponsibility would be to instantly respond to the attacks and the production of the steady non- truths, there would be somewhat of a leveling of the playing field. I guess that for whatever reason, that never happened. I guess that the method posed by Brendan may well be the solution called for- Glens article is absolutely correct. Now, Next should be suggested solutions because if this problem will bring on another 8 years of WH control. No doubt about it.
“News”? Klein is a commentator, not a reporter in any sense of the word, any more than Greenwald, or for that matter most of the writer’s in this “medium”.
Solid reporting on just about any issue of local, national or global import is available from sources just about everywhere. It is unfortunate that the great “progressive” commentariat wastes more time slamming the bad than finding and promoting the good.
The “commentators” that work for big media, like Klein, mix in reporting with their commentary. Look at Novak, for instance. Republicans and even Democrats leak information to him. Or Saffire. Klein himself, in response to Greenwald, characterizes what he did as “reporting”. I personally don’t have a problem of mixing in reporting with commentary as long as one is a an ethical reporter.
And you appear to be missing the broader point. There is indeed good reporting and analysis out there. That’s why some of us have found our way to this site 🙂 In fact, the one silver lining in the tragedy that is our modern media industry is the blogoshphere and sites like this.
However, the larger point is that our mainstream media, collectively, has failed us miserably.
. . . missing the broader point . . .
You’ve made mine: you’ll never see those writers’ – nor most bloggers’ – bylines on a hard news story. What even the most casual observer sees is that “the media” sharks keep the blogging pilot fish alive.
But with few exceptions, I agree the collective “MSM” failed to do their jobs until shortly before the ’04 election.
Thom Hartmann just said he heard CNN gave the Republican candidates the questions ahead of time.
The Democrats are largely responsible for the right-wing bias in the media. What happens when the right-wingers defame those of us on the left by saying we support terrorists and want to give them the same rights as Americans? Our putative allies, the “moderate” Democrats like Hillary, Lieberman, or Klein, run to the right and coddle the people making the defamatory comments. Those of us on the left are constantly on the defensive because we are being defamed and instead of defending us our putative allies give credibility to the defamers. After all, Hillary and her ilk are more respectful of right-wing smears like the liberal=terrorist coddler defamation than they are of actual liberals. Look at the energy these moderate Democrats spend attacking those of us to their left and then look at the deferential tone they take with right-wing smear artists and their media enablers.
There is very little hope. The Democrats are on the verge of adopting the Joe Klein-type candidate–Hillary. Hillary will attack us far more than she will attack those on the right that are smearing us with this terrorist sympathizer label. Get used to it.
He doesn’t want to lose a source — or sources — whom he knows to have lied to him, consequently whose future information he knows he cannot trust? (In addition, a source — or sources — he knows to have caused him considerable public embarrassment by lying to him and being believed by him?)
I don’t get this part.
…have caused him considerable public embarrassment…
hardly, unless you consider the denizens of the intertubes as being indicative of the the level of awareness of this issue for the general public. if so l’ve some lovely oceanside land in louisiana that you would like.
he’s very well paid to see what they want him to see, and say what they want him to say…if he has to take a couple hits from the left, it’s part of the deal.
same old shit, different day.
lTMF’sA
Well, apparently it caused him enough trouble to force various quasi-retractions and non-retractions and so on from both him and his magazine. If it were just us folks discussing the issue, frankly, I don’t know if they’d go to the effort of “responding” even to the extent that they have. –Of course, I’m not suggesting there’s been some massive public outcry.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m sure Klein hasn’t suffered any sleepless nights over this. But it does appear to have caused him some trouble (otherwise, as I say, he wouldn’t be revisiting the issue in the first place), and that’s probably more trouble than he’d prefer.
But it was an ancillary point anyway — hence its original inclusion in parentheses.
Klein is done as a blogger, even though he is still going to be in Time and on your teevee.
main stream news today is some kind of garbage about the supermarkets labeling food healthy or unhealthy with a commentator chuckling about it – socialist newspapers may exist somewhere but not on this continent – if there is news, it’s here in the blogs!