PrintMay 27, 2007
What Conservative Media?
Despite decades of evidence from Walter Cronkite's offense at Tet and "Bush lied about WMDs" to the contrary, today's liberal is fond of claiming there is not only zero lefty bias in today's mainstream media, but often a conservative bias.
The Nation's resident leftist provocateur, Eric Alterman, most recently contended so last Fall, after he became enraged by the "lies in ABC's mini-series Path to 9/11" (the one the Clinton's had changed in a remarkable cover up). Others look to their perception of the media's "build up of the Iraq War" in 2003, or the Downing Street Memo that a professor in Florida once told me he "writes to the Times (NY, of course) daily imploring them to publicize it more" and many others.
But, naturally, facts tell a different story, as evidence amounting to a left-leaning bias in the mainstream media is as deep as the Marianas Trench.
Led by their long time hero, Chris Matthews, today's media will mention any minor scandal from Scooter Libby to Tom Delay in order to market their erroneous claims, despite nearly a century of history showing the dangers in losing focus of the America's true enemies.
If you watched the deplorably irresponsible journalism the host of Hardball displayed at the first GOP debate, or his racial dividing remarks prior to the Democrat debate on April 26, it is obvious his bias as thick as a humanities professor's at an "elite" northeastern liberal arts college. Yet, the Democrats' refusal to have Fox News' Chris Wallace and Brit Hume moderate their debate was scarcely mentioned nationally? Too bad, as honest analysts noted Brit and Chris W. were "fair and balanced" as can be last week.
The next argument would state that talk radio and internet blogs are dominated by right-leaning folks. Well, that is true. But a closer examination makes clear why. Air America Radio and left-leaning blogs like the Huffington Post and Daily Kos continuously fail or significantly lag behind their competitors due to lack of listeners and readers. There are two overarching reasons for this:
Firstly, the writers, especially on Kos, cannot write. Seriously. It reminds me very eerily of rants of drunk collegians bashing Bush, our soldiers, Christians, anyone but the enemy, etc. Perhaps this toilet humor occurs because the "grassroots" lefty blogs are in fact run by college kids, often left with a lack of facts to support their views. If military history is tragically being retired on campuses, where will bloggers go for proper history? The "Peace Studies" Department?
People, regardless of their political persuasions, are not interested in reading such naive commentary. Kos and Huffington, who rarely pen anything of their own, might also think that having guest writers (often Democrat politicians or celebrities like Laurie David, Bill Maher, Jim Lampley and Harry Shearer) throw out their conjectures makes a blog. This has never been true. The most successful blogs---conservative ones like Michelle Malkin and Little Green Footballs--have no editorialists, but rather are created via links, text, photos and an occasional salient editorial comment at the end or onset, often just a line or two.
Secondly, in a classroom, the NY Times newsroom or in the studios of CNN, CBS or Comedy Central, you need not back up your partisan stances. Make your case to nodding heads, type it up and go to lunch. But live on radio, Rush Limbaugh must back up his claims. Blogs must often do the same in their comment section or with the links to facts.
Truth be told, I'm not really concerned with the Washington Post or SF Chronicle's editorial pages being chock full of leftists; that's just the way it is and always will be. But it's the news stories where the subtle bias is real and disingenuous, since most folks admittedly only glance at the headline and first few lines of a "news" story on their way into work.
My neighbor just canceled her subscription to the Indianapolis Star for those exact reasons. She, a customer for more than three decades, had finally had enough. And though I put the nail in the coffin for her when a recent "news" piece included a Bush-bashing quote from a Chicago-based dental professor with zero relation to the topic {mid-way through linked article}, she had been itching for the time to cancel for a few years now.
When she emailed the paper's ombudsman, he was concerned and informed her that the Star "does carry "conservatives" like Cal Thomas and George Will." He missed the point, naturally. Seems too many liberal media members do this everyday.
Ari Kaufman is the author of Reclamation: Saving our schools starts from within. He is currently a military historian for the State of Indiana's War Memorials.
