essay question

In the Tank? BY P A U L F A R H I

negations of media bias have been a sideshow, and sometimes the main event, of every presidential campaign of recent vintage. Critics shrieked that a line had been crossed in 1987 when the Miami Herald revealed Democratic frontnmner Gary Hart's relationship with Donna Rice. Five years later, George H.W. Bush complained that reporters exaggerated the extent of the recession during bis t«rm. Al Gore's aides thought the media gave him a hard time, and his opponent George W. Bush an easy ride, in 2000. And Howard Dean and John Kerry grumbled about cable TVs obsession with Dean's "scream" and Kerry's Swift Boat opponents in 2004.

Campaign '08 has offered more, often much more, of tbe same. Long before the last primary vote had been cast, charges of media favoritism were flying around like confetti. An incom- plete list: tbe press savaged Hillary Clinton's campaign while going easy on her main rival, Barack Obama (a theme echoed in two memorable "Saturday Night Live" skits); worshipful reporters gave John McCain a pass during his campaign for tbe Republican nomination (a new book by tbe Uberal group Media Matters for America is titled "Free Ride: John McCain and the Media"); Obama was unfairly maligned in the primaries' latter stages.

But each claim about "the media" isn't really clear-cut. Were they too tough on Hillary? Maybe at times. But didn't Clinton's campaign benefit enormously from its early press clippings, too? Her coverage during much of 2007 made ber nomination sound inevitable, which helped ber attract contributions, endorse- ments and key advisers. Didn't she also lose 11 straight primar-

ies to Obama, a track record that would have made another can- didate a media laughingstock?

In love with Obama? Maybe, but only if you don't count rel- atively early stories about his past drug use (New York Times), reports about false rumors of his "secret" Muslim upbringing (Washington Post) and unflattering stories about bis association with a shadowy Chicago fundraiser named Tony Rezko (Chicago Tribune). All of these appeared before the cable-fed eruption over Obama's ties to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his "bitter" com- ments before the Pennsylvania primary and the nap about bis brief association with '60s radicals William Ayers and Bernardine Dohm.

Too easy on McCain? Surely in some instances, but the claim ignores several major caveats, such as the widespread reporting on the disarray and near-bankruptcy of his campaign last sum- mer, when his candidacy was virtually declared dead; the stories about his gaffes {confusing Sunni and Shiite factions in Iraq, for

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In the Tank?

example); and the fact that McCain's long presence on the national scene has made him one of the best-known and most- covered figures in politics. It also fails to recognize the effect of timing on campaign coverage. McCain clinched his party's nom- ination in early March, which shifted the media spotlight from the GOP race to the Democratic battle. In other words, there's still time. As Newsweek's Evan Thomas wrote in early March, "Right now, Obama and John McCain are popular with reporters. But if the usual laws of press physics apply, the media will turn on both men before Election Day."

Nevertheless, cries of bias grow louder with each election cycle. Polls have shown rising public skepticism about the news media for decades. According to research cited by media scholar S. Robert Lichter, two-thirds of the public agreed that the press

media" responsible for some perceived slight is like blaming an entire ethnic or racial group for the actions of a few of its mem- bers.

A starting point: "I think, first of all, we need to distinguish between actual journalism [news reports in print and broadcast] and tbe tbings uttered by TV personalities," says Susan Milligan, a national political reporter for tbe Boston Globe. "Tbe latter become obsessed—based on I don't know wbat—witb provocative topics that may or may not be all that relevant to voters. The Greraldine Ferraro comments [criticizing Obama's candidacy] and the Obama pastor story come to mind. I mean, they're both legitimate stories, but it's a bit ridiculous how so many TV shows did nonstop coverage on them, like it was 9/11 or something."

"Among the greatest of the agendas [of the media-bias industry] is to destroy the credibility of the mainstream press."

was "fair" in a survey in 1937. By 1984, only 38 percent said newspapers were "usually fair" and only 29 percent said this of television reporting. We're fast approaching zero credibiUty. In a national survey conducted by Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, in January, only 19.6 percent of respon- dents said they believed "all or most" reporting. An even larger portion, 23.9 percent, said tbey beueved "little" or none of it.

What's going on here? Are we really so biased, so incapable of cbecking our prejudices that even the most straightforward reporting deservedly engenders suspicion? Is all of the work of the news media deserving of skepticism?

At the risk of sounding biased, no. Leaving aside the obvious—that reporters are flawed

humans who sometimes do launder their prejudices and pas- sions in print or on the air—there are good reasons to be skeptical. The widespread perception of media unfairness doesn't necessarily confirm the existence of it. Consider the case against claims of bias:

• The media aren't a monolith. Critics often blame "the media," as if the sins of some are the

sins of all. It's not just a bland, inexact generalization; it's a slur. The media are, of course, made up of numerous parts, many

of which bear little relation to each other. "Entertainment Tonight" is the media, as is the Christian Science Monitor and the BBC. Reporters, columnists, copy editors, editorial writers, photographers, assignment editors, bloggers, anchors, TV pun- dits are all part of the media. So are magazines, newspapers, TV networks, radio stations and Web sites. Do all, or even tbe major- ity, of "the media" act in concert? Can it all be biased simultane- ously? Hardly. Critics need to define their terms. Holding "the

It's true, certainly, that joumahsts themselves have con- tributed to this confiision. In an ever more complicated and eco- nomically challenged media environment, the lines between reporter and pundit have gradually disappeared. Print reporters now go on TV to opine, or write blogs containing "analysis" that is thinly disguised opinion. Lichter, president of George Mason University's Center for Media and Public Affairs, believes that some of the public's antipatby toward the press has been fueled over the past few decades by the rise of the "celebrity joumalist," tbe reporter who covers the story, then gets on television to tell viewers what to think about it.

"I think there's a feeling that journalists have overstepped their boundaries," he says. "People don't look on Ijoumalists] tíie way journalists like to view themselves—^as the public's tribune, speaking truth to power, standing up for the little guy. They don't look like the little guy anymore. They're part of the celebrity culture." Increasingly, he says, "people Hke the news but bate the news media."

Even so; • The media aren t̂ necessarily more biased;

it's just that the media-bias industry keeps saying they are.

It's not only Rush Limbaugb, with his weekly audience of millions, who inveighs against the news media's perceived unfairness. In the two decades since Limbaugh rose to promi- nence, an entire industry has sprung up, on the left and right, to reinforce and amplify his gospel that the dread mainstream media distort, twist and lie.

The lesser Limbaughs of talk radio have been joined by legions of bloggers whose raison d'être is to catch mainstream

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journalists in mistakes or misfeasance. Organized media- monitoring groups (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, Acciiracy in Media. Media Matters for America, etc.) troll the airwaves and scour the printed page, ready to scold. Bestseller lists are studded with attacks on the press (a copy of Bernard Goldberg's media-crit tome, "Bias," has even been enshrined in the new Newseum in Washington, D.C).

TV shows and movies are in the same game, though typically with a comedie or satiric edge. "The Colbert Report" and "The Daily Show" have raised the skewering of the media's foihles— particularly those of TV pundits—to a fine art (a "Daily Show" sketch in late February featured "correspondent" Samantha Bee reporting from the press' "Anti-Hillary War Room," located at the "Paula Jones Conference Center"). Some pundits have even credited "Saturday Night Live's" parody of the pro-Ohama press with toughening the real press' scrutiny of the candidate.

Some criticism is warranted and healthy But there may be a darker side to all the yammering about, and hammering of, the press. "Among the greatest of the agendas [of the media-bias industry] is to destroy the credibility of the mainstream press," wrote Roy Peter Clark, the Poynter Institute vice president and senior scholar, on Poynter s Web site (poynter.org) in January. "A case can he made that sensitivity to such criticism—along with accusations that journalists are disloyal to American interests— softened the skeptical edge of the news media during the lead- up to the Iraqi war."

• T h e p u b l i c doesn't really u n d e r s t a n d h o w t h e n e w s i s m a d e .

That might sound elitist, except that much of the daily sus- picion cast on reporters' work seems to stem from naïveté and reflexive public cynicism. Ask journalists about a recent accusa- tion of bias and watch their eyes begin to roll. Julie Mason, the Houston Chronicle's White House reporter, remembers one reader who took her to task for being "obsessed" with John Kerry during the 2004 campaign. Obsessed? She was covering his campaign. "It was my job to be with him every day," she laughs.

Another reader spotted bias in the placement of quotes in one of Mason's stories. "I'm biased," she says, "because I put the quote in after the jump, which to them means I'm trying to bury it. They don't believe you when you say you don't control where a story jumped."

A recent letter writer to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's public editor, Angela Tuck, asked: "If the AJC is against bias, why does it seem that it disproportionately endorses Democrats running for office? What is the percentage of Republican to Democrat presidential candidate endorsements? Why make endorsements anyway, as it seems to indicate which political party the staff leans toward?" Tuck patiently explained the sep- aration between the paper's editorial board and its news stafF, how the latter is obhgated to deliver balanced coverage while the foiTner renders opinions and conclusions. Still, wrote Tuck, "many readers don't believe us when we say that editorial writ- ers don't influence the news."

• T h e m o r e t h e y know, t h e l e s s t h e y l i k e . Some of the public's hostility is infonned by, well, more infor-

mation. With a few clicks of a computer mouse, viewers and

"People don't look on [journalists] the way journalists like to view them- selves^as the public's tribune, speaking truth to power, standing up for the little guy. They don't look like the little guy anjrmore. They're part of the celebrity culture."

June/July 2008

I ot all candidates, nor a the news, are created equal.

readers can cross-check and double-check what reporters say— something almost impossible just a dozen or so years ago. They can also see it for themselves, live and unfiltered, thanks to live cable news coverage and Internet streaming.

"We used to be people's eyes and ears at events. Now people can watch for themselves and take away their own conclusions," says Dan Balz, a veteran Washington Post political reporter. "Reporters may emphasize different things. That's not necessar- ily bias, it's just a different perspective."

But seeing is believing, says Jerry C. Lindsley, director of the Sacred Heart poll. "It's not like the old days when there were three sources of [TV] news," he says. '"When people see a dis- crepancy, that leads to frustration. When a reporter leaves some- thing out of a story and others don't, [readers] wonder why. When they use one source but not another, people may think they're not getting the whole picture."

Adds Lindsley, "People know bias when they see it." • E x c e p t t h a t t h e y s o m e t i m e s s e e it e v e n w h e n

t h e y haven't. As the Sacred Heart survey makes clear, people implicitly

overstate how much news they really consume. The poll found, for example, that Americans described the New York Times and National Public Radio as "mostly or somewhat liberal" roughly four times more often than they described those two outlets as "mostly or somewhat conservative." Leave aside the blunt gen- erality inherent in this. (Is all of NPR—from "Morning Edition" to "Car Talk"—"mostly or somewhat liberal?") The more impor- tant (and unasked) question about this finding is its shaky foun- dation. Given that only small fractions of the populace read the Times or listen to NPR on a regular basis, how is it that so many Americans seem to know so much about the poHtical leanings of the Times and NPR?

Similarly, people ranked "PBS News" among the lowest national TV news organizations, with just 3 percent citing it as "most trusted." This might reflect the notion that trust is a func- tion of ratings, rather than actual reporting expertise, since all of the networks that ranked above PBS in the survey had bigger audiences. But it may also say something about the sophistica- tion of the survey's respondents. There is, after all, no such thing as "PBS News."

• T h e v i e w l o o k s different from i n s i d e y o u r own m e d i a h u b h l e .

Unlike 75 years ago, when the public deemed the press more "fair," iinlike even 20 years ago, readers and viewers can now live

Julie Mason

in a media world of their own choosing. A typical news consumer can now surround himself with news that fits his preconceived political sentiments. First talk radio, then cahle TV and now the Internet make it possible to tailor a self-fulfilling news menu.

Is it any wonder that the world outside this bubble often looks strange and biased to those inside it?

"We now live in a period when there is no one media any- more," says Balz. "Consumers now tend to seek out the news that conforms with their view of the world. When they see something that doesn't conform, that's bias to them."

Julie Mason says "partisans" tend to have the strongest perceptions of bias, and they aren't shy about expressing them. "They're exactly like sports fans to me," she says. "As the season pro- gresses, they get more and more myopic about their 'team.' "

• Shocking hut true: We're not nearly as had as they think.

Content analysis is a tricky thing—a lot depends on how one selects and evaluates the content—^but some of the analysis of journalists' work actually tells a positive story. In a study of the A sections and section fronts of three agenda-setting news- papers—the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times—researchers at Bowling Green State University in Ohio found a remarkable degree of balance.

Despite fi-equent complaints that the media have been tinfair (particularly from the Clinton camp), Clinton and Obama received roughly equal number of "positive" and "negative" head- lines from the three papers during the period studied (from Labor Day through the Super Tuesday primaries in early February). About 35 percent of the headlines for Obama were positive and 27 percent were negative. Clinton received 31 per- cent positive and 31 percent negative, The balance of stories was judged to be either mixed (with positive and negative elements) or neutral.

Just as important, perhaps, is that Clinton's coverage wasn't "gendered" in the traditional way. That is, it didn't emphasize her clothing and appearance, something that candidates such as Patricia Schroeder and Elizabeth Dole faced in earlier cam- paigns. This may reflect the fact that Clinton is one of the best- known women in the world, with a long history in the spotlight. Nevertheless, the coverage tended to focus on her campaign and policy questions, the study found.

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TV coverage may be a different story, acknowledges Melissa K. Miller, one of the study's two principal investigators, but that was beyond her scope. "I think when you systemati- caliy study press coverage in this manner, in

V̂ y^^ which you're looking at hundreds if not thou- \ sands of headlines, it may give a different

Melissa K. Miller impression than a person sitting down in front of the TV for the evening news."

A similar analysis of the Chicago Tribune in March by the paper's public editor, Timothy J. McNulty, found that Obama was cited first in 93 front-page stories in the past year, com- pared with 80 for Clinton and 39 for McCain. Obama also led in front-page photographs (40), compared with Clinton (34) and McCain (21). A cleai' bias for Obama? Not exactly. "Those who see a disparity in coverage of Republicans versus Democrats are, of course, absolutely correct." McNuIty wrote. "Much more space has been devoted to the ongoing struggle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama than to McCain because the decision regarding the Republican presidential nominee seems settled."

Which leads to:

• N o t all c a n d i d a t e s , n o r all of t h e n e w s , are c r e a t e d e q u a l .

It's unrealistic, even undesirable, to expect the candidates to receive roughly the same number of stories or minutes of air- time. As McNulty pointed out, there were perfectly valid reasons why the Tribune would write more about Obama than Clinton or McCain. For one thing, Obama is a former community organ- izer and state senator from Chicago, making him the Trib's hometown candidate. What's more, he was the Democratic

schedules for eight years.... And we don't have seven and a half years of Obama Senate votes to scour," because he's been in the Senate just over three years.

o what's a poor, misunderstood news media mono- lith supposed to do to win back its public esteem and fading credibility? Perhaps the futuxe lies in

' the past, in going back to the basics taught in beginning journalism class.

"The best we can do is to try and play it straight and get the facts out as best we can," says Dan Balz.

Says Jerry Lindsley: "I hate to simplify this too much, but people are looking for a balanced presentation of ideas. They want two sides, if there are two sides. People think it's not that dif- ficult to present both sides. Keep your personal biases at home."

To which Lichter has a three-word reply: Not gonna happen. Despite efforts to hold on to text- Jerry c. Lindsley book notions of "objective" reporting, he says, journalistic norms have been in flux for several decades, driven by technological, economic and historic forces. The future promises only more of this. Instead of straightforward descriptive reporting, he says, the news will become more like what it has been becoming for years: More interpretive, more personal, more subjective and more opinionated. "You can't put this genie back in its bottle^there never was a bottle," he says. S. Robert Lichter

It's unrealistic, even undesirable, to expect the candidates to receive roughly the same number of stories or minutes of airtime.

frontnmner in a tight, hard-fought race. For another, not all of the coverage he received was favorable: The Tribune broke a number of stories about Obama's ties to Tony Rezko and covered his relationship with Rev. Wright, another Chicagoan. No doubt the Obama campaign would have preferred fewer stories about "Bittergate" or his bowling skills.

The mistake, says the Globe's Milligan, is "coniusing fairness with balance," when balance means equal criticism of all the candidates. "If we have fewer so-called criticisms of Obama's record, I think much of it has to do with the fact that his record is simply much shorter, and we didn't start looking at it until he ran for president," she observes. "We don't have Obama's daily

"There's going to be a diffusion of viewpoints. People are going to find it easier than ever to find one viewpoint they like and will stick with that."

If so, it augurs one terrifying possibility. All those complaints about bias you've been hearing lately? You haven't heard any- thing yet. Ei

Washington Post reporter Paul Farhi ([email protected]) writes frequently aboat the news media for the Post and AJR. He wrote in AJR'.s April/May issue about the media's penchant for coming to premature and generally incorrect predictions about the current presidential campaign.

June/July 2008