Is The Media Biased, Liberal or Lazy?
July 11, 2008
Listen to a republican conservative pundit and they tell you the Iraq war is going strong and we are accomplishing much. Listen to a liberal pundit and they will tell you that Iraq is going to break the back of the American economy and we are failing at every turn.
Ask an American journalist, and 8 times out of 10, they will report whatever the last press release came across their desk.
I am not saying that reporters are lazy, it is just … reporters are lazy. They don’t have the energy to have an opinion or do the research. And why should they? Journalists are some of the most underpaid college educated people in the work force. The only benefit they have is their ability to disappear for the day as long as they show up with copy before deadline.
So is the media liberal? Well that is a “yes” and “no” answer.
Yes. It is true that statistically there are more journalists who are democrats and have a more “liberal” outlook on life. That is to be expected. Part of the personality of a journalist is that he is someone better informed than the rest of the population. That is why they were hired and entrusted with a public trust of informing the reader. With that lofted position often comes with it a certain sense of entitlement and “in the know” attitude. That attitude usually develops a liberal flavor because the difference between liberal and conservative is the difference between “status quo” and “change” arguments.
Journalists are taught in schools that a journalist must be adversarial in their approach to the news. At first it is because reporters need to investigate to find the truth. When they get into the business, they realize that they have to be adversarial to get the ratings.
“If it bleeds, it leads!”
There are 10 categories that a journalist uses to see if a topic is newsworthy: immediacy, proximity, consequence, conflict, oddity, sex, emotion, prominence, suspense, progress. It doesn’t take a genius to see that news is very closely related to “spectacle” and “entertainment.”
This is why I also answer, “Journalists are also not liberals.” Journalists have a social responsibility to providing the news to the public, but they have a higher commitment to their employers to get viewers and readers in front of their stories.
As conservative republican as Fox News TV is, when President Bush’s approval ratings dipped below 30%, they stopped defending his policies vigorously. Even Rupert Murdock knows that the news business is business first.
So who is the liberal media?
Traditionally, the liberal media is held to one publication, the New York Times. It is one of the oldest and most established papers in the country, and makes no apologies for his political slant. There are other papers around the country that follow the more liberal/ less establishment editorial slant: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Sun Times, Washington Post, etc. Nevertheless, there are plenty of papers with an equal conservative slant: Pittsburgh Tribune, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, etc.
It has very little to do with an over-reaching agenda and a LOT to do with maximizing profits by defining a market audience to sell to.
In television, Fox News killed the ratings because they were the first to market news to conservative minded watchers. Fox was (is) not interested in trying to convince its audience what is true, they are on a mission to validate the truth the audience already has.
And while it is most obvious with the Fox network, it is certainly not limited to them. ABC, CBS, and NBC mask their real agendas behind the news.
General Electric owns NBC
Westinghouse owns CBS
Disney owns ABC
News Corps owns FOX
But that is not all, News Corps also owns the Wall Street Journal, various other newspapers, the Sky Network, Harper Collins books, etc.
General Electric owns all the NBC stations, the History Channel, Bravo, A&E, etc.
Disney, owns Lifetime, E!, Disney Channel, Miramax, Touchtone Pictures, Hyperion Publishing, Jane magazine, 11 major newspapers and 3 music labels (to name a few).
These are only the few of the media holdings these companies control. It doesn’t take a genius to recognize that perhaps all the stars that are guests on Viacom’s “The Daily Show” probably have something to do with Paramount, MTV Films, Nickelodeon, etc.
That is right—while the world complains that the journalists are liberal, and that Rupert Murdock is an evil conservative—the traditional media is just out there selling you their parent company’s goods.
And while Rush Limbaugh accuses the “drive by media” of being liberal, the reality is that they are just lazy. Corporate America has turned the news into a low production cost, high-yield advertiser. The only news stories that get any budget are infotainment stories like Dateline, 20/20, etc: shows that tell stories of drama, murder and intrigue.
What is truly disturbing is that these “real” journalists complain about the vacuum cleaner journalism of bloggers who have no oversight, feel no responsibility to fact check, and display no sense of impartiality. Unfortunately, a blog is just a person soap box. Bloggers have no social responsibility to anything other than their personal expression.
On the other hand, journalists are supposed to be “the fourth estate.” Reporters are the community’s heralds of the truth. They join organizations such as the NPPA and the SPJ to show that we are committed to professional, accurate and quality journalism. When, in all honesty, they allow poorly researched and sloppily written reporting fill the pages knowing that all that their bosses care about filling space between the all important advertsing.
Entry Filed under: army, jobs, military, stories, veteran. Tags: abc, cbs, conservative, fox, fox news, journalism, liberal, liberal media, nbc, news, reporters, reporting.
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1.
WARVet | July 14, 2008 at 10:56 am
Hi, I think “liberal” is a misuse of the word, just like “progressive”. A more appropriate depiction is ‘Leftist/Socialist’ when describing US media in the 90% generic sense, and “lazy” is on the mark for media and the broad range of Americans who lack the initiative to dig deeper and apply critical thought… I work in DC and am around journalists quite often and listen to conversations off-line, they dress, look, and speak well – but for the most part are heavily biased and don’t have anything beyond fingernail deep substance to back their views – but they’ll happily skew the news to conform to that perspective.
2.
dragonflydm | July 14, 2008 at 11:09 am
WarVet, I edited your post a little to keep focused to your original thought about the difference of “liberal” and “Leftist.”
I think that there is a definite agenda by conservative pundits to spin anyone who is not a social and fiscal conservative as an extremist towards the other direction.
Not to defend liberals or vilify conservatives, but if we look at the politics of our nation, we NEED both. The liberal ideologies of our founding fathers made this country possible. The liberal policies of FDR brought this country out of the depression. The liberal policies of Lincoln removed slavery and established the first federal United States.
Conservatives don’t get a lot of the same press, but then again, they are “conservative.” Their job is to keep liberals from going too far.
However, Leftist and socialist are labels associated with ANTI-AMERICAN sentiment. I seriously doubt that there are many journalists that make up a community of news gatherers that want to disestablish America.
Nonetheless, there are plenty of journalist who just want to collect an easy paycheck. And have any of us NOT worked in a company that didn’t have a large group of lazy “do just enough” employees? The news is no different.
The problem is that we rely on journalists to be the ones that go the extra mile and not stop at the first idea in their head or rumor they have heard.
Then again, if you want that level of commitment, you have to start offering good journalists good salaries. There are bartenders that make more than most journalists in print and television.
3.
WARVet | July 14, 2008 at 12:39 pm
“Leftist and socialist are labels associated with ANTI-AMERICAN sentiment. I seriously doubt that there are many journalists that make up a community of news gatherers that want to disestablish America.” This one sometimes boggles my mind as well, since many of them consider their actions patriotic. Interestingly enough, when we turn the conversation towards application of the ‘liberal’ policies they support their own personal situations… Reminds me of those higher-ups in the old Soviet Communist party who didn’t work for the collective, but touted the virtues of the leftist way to the unfortunate nugs.
“Then again, if you want that level of commitment, you have to start offering good journalists good salaries.” Agreed, my comments are reserved for the high-wage earners which I deal with…which in turn shows us that salary doesn’t make a difference as they are on very tight time lines and are often shooting for sound bites between commercials in TV. The high earning newspaper types, no excuse, they slant purposely. Immerse yourself in their culture and listen to them talk uncensored…bias is too light an adjective.
4.
dragonflydm | July 14, 2008 at 4:36 pm
WarVet,
Well, remember that I have always been a journalist. For the first twenty years a military journalist, and now a civilian journalist.
While I respect your opinion that journalists are liberal, they do not ultimately determine what is aired or printed. That is done by corporate America. Gone are the days of Walter Winchell fighting the advertisers to get the news out on the air. Or the trust we placed in Walter Cronkite.
The news serves two purposes that oppose each other: 1) To inform the public as a service to the community, and 2) To provide revenue for the publisher or broadcaster.
From 1923-1987 there was a very concerted effort for the “fourth estate” to provide professionalism and social responsibility. That ended with the dissolution of the “Fairness Doctrine.”
However– to serve as a bit of history– before 1923, no one would have ever considered the news to be unbiased or even entirely trustworthy. From Ben Franklin to Mr. Hearst, the news has always had some agenda.
The difference is that we have seen how a free press can operated more effectively when it operations within professional ethics (as established by the SPJ, which I am a member). But with dwindling paychecks, professional journalists turn away from “due diligence” and towards anything that avoids “past due” notices.
Journalists are not liberal. They are just word mongers. And if I was every in a situation where I had to live on the average journalist’s salary, I would probably be tempted to write whatever is going to get me the rent too.
As far as big wigs go– they are the biggest mongers of them all. I have seen journalists jump their own editorial positions as soon as they change employers. It isn’t about politics: it is about money.
5. What do the Numbers Reflect? | July 15, 2008 at 8:52 am
[...] the news of the service’s failure hits the media who will inevitably blame something their demographic/readership wants to be held [...]
6.
mark | August 16, 2008 at 11:29 pm
“Liberal media” is a myth of the corporations that control our media. Republicans have allowed the media to consolidate and consolidate thus concentrating profits for a select few. To keep this meme going, they have to convince people that the media is biased towards the liberal when it is quite clearly biased quite the opposite. What we have is a super right wing media AKA Faux, with the rest of it that has a semblance of reality. And since reality has a liberal bias, the rest of the media seems a bit more liberal.
As for Iraq, a decrease in violence was NEVER the measure of success there. The measure is the setting up of infrastructure such that we can leave. If, as the right wing wants us to believe, the surge has succeeded, they why aren’t the troops all on the way home? Not only that, but troops strength isn’t even close to pre surge levels.
The reason why the troops are not on the way home now, is because on all the measures that really matter, shy of one, the surge has not been in any shape or form, a success.
Unless of course, you are willing to keep 130,000 Americans there for another 20 years. Then I guess the surge has been a success. Just as long as all those troops stay there to keep the civil war factions apart.