compare and contrast essay

Media Bias Is slanted reporting replacing objectivity?

A n unprecedented number of Americans view the

news media as biased and untrustworthy, with both

conservatives and liberals complaining that coverage

of political races and important public policy issues

is often skewed. Polls show that 80 percent of Americans believe

news stories are often influenced by the powerful, and nearly as

many say the media tend to favor one side of issues over another.

The proliferation of commentary by partisan cable broadcasters,

talk-radio hosts and bloggers has blurred the lines between news

and opinion in many people’s minds, fueling concern that slanted

reporting is replacing media objectivity. At the same time, news-

papers and broadcasters — and even some partisan groups —

have launched aggressive fact-checking efforts aimed at verifying

statements by newsmakers and exposing exaggerations or outright

lies. Experts question the future of U.S. democracy if American

voters cannot agree on what constitutes truth.

I

N

S

I

D

E

THE ISSUES ....................403

BACKGROUND ................409

CHRONOLOGY ................411

CURRENT SITUATION ........416

AT ISSUE........................417

OUTLOOK ......................418

BIBLIOGRAPHY ................422

THE NEXT STEP ..............423

THISREPORT

At MSNBC, which features left-leaning commentator Rachel Maddow, 85 percent of airtime is dedicated to

commentary — rather than straight news — compared to 55 percent at Fox News and 46 percent at

CNN, according to the Pew Research Center. Some media analysts say the public’s growing perception of

media bias is due partly to the rise of opinion- dominated TV and radio talk shows.

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CQ Researcher • May 3, 2013 • www.cqresearcher.com Volume 23, Number 17 • Pages 401-424

RECIPIENT OF SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE ◆ AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION SILVER GAVEL AWARD

90th Anniversary

1923-2013

402 CQ Researcher

THE ISSUES

403 • Should journalists try tobe objective? • Has the rise of media watchdog groups fostered the perception of bias? • Are the media biased in favor of President Obama?

BACKGROUND

409 Journalism’s ‘Dark Ages’Partisanship was the norm during journalism’s early days.

410 The Press TransformedBeginning in the 1830s, the “penny press” offered less partisan news.

412 Electronic MediaThe invention of radio in the 1920s, and later TV, transformed the media.

413 New MediaAll-news cable channels such as Fox and CNN changed the face of objec- tive TV news.

415 Blurring the LinesTalk radio and Internet- based websites and blogs offered a variety of ideo- logical slants on the news.

CURRENT SITUATION

416 New EntitiesAgenda-driven nonprofit news organizations are on the rise.

416 Twitter and MoreJournalists increasingly use Twitter, Facebook and blogs to reach readers.

OUTLOOK

418 Dizzying ChangesJournalists worry that the de- cline of traditional media will increase partisanship in news coverage.

SIDEBARS AND GRAPHICS

404 Coverage of DemocratsWas More Negative Most partisan quotes in 2012 election were from the GOP.

405 Most See Media as Politically Biased More than 75 percent of Republicans and 54 percent of Democrats see tilt.

408 Negative Views of PressGrowing Over 75 percent of Americans say the press is biased.

411 ChronologyKey events since 1690. 412 Media Bias Seen as Threatto Democracy

“I don’t know if democracy can survive without an actively free press.”

412 Fact Checkers Proliferate— and So Do Their Critics Services expose deception; partisans often ignore them.

417 At Issue:Do the mainstream media have a political bias?

FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

421 For More InformationOrganizations to contact. 422 BibliographySelected sources used. 423 The Next StepAdditional articles. 423 Citing CQ ResearcherSample bibliography formats.

MEDIA BIAS

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Media Bias

THE ISSUES “A

total embarrass- ment.” “A fawn- ing interview.” “A

targeted barrage of softballs.” A wide variety of jour-

nalists and media critics used those disparaging terms to at- tack CBS reporter Steve Kroft’s Jan. 27 “60 Minutes” interview with President Obama and out- going Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. 1

The Atlantic compared it to Scott Pelley’s earlier, much tougher “60 Minutes” interview with President George W. Bush and proclaimed “a glaring double standard” favoring Democrats. 2 The Washington Post called Kroft’s sit-down with Obama and Clinton a “soft-as- premium-tissue” interview. 3

Fox News claimed the in- terview “totally epitomizes liberal media bias in the modern era.” 4 The Wall Street Jour nal’s editorial page dubbed it “embarrassing” evidence of “the mainstream media fawn-a-thon toward the current president.” 5

The complaints are only the latest in a rising chorus of charges that the nation’s mainstream media — major newspapers, newsweeklies and broad- casters — lean either to the left or to the right. And polls show that the per- ception of media bias is growing, and that it comes from both sides of the political spectrum.

For example, some mainstream media outlets were accused of slanting their coverage of the Senate’s recent refusal to mandate background checks on gun purchases. “Television hosts, editorial boards and even some re- porters have aggressively criticized and shamed the 46 Senators who opposed

the plan, while some have even taken to actively soliciting the public to con- tact [the senators] directly” to express their displeasure, reporter Dylan Byers wrote in Politico. “The decision by some members of the media to come down so firmly on one side of a pol- icy debate has only served to rein- force conservatives’ longstanding sus- picions that the mainstream media has a deep-seated liberal bias.” 6

The Sunday talk shows also are criti- cized for hosting Republican and conservative guests more often than Democrats or liberals. Of 400 guests hosted by the major Sunday morning talk shows on ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox during the first three months of

2013, 40 percent were either Republicans or conservatives, and only 29 percent were De- mocrats or liberals, complained the left-leaning media watch- dog group Media Matters. Cen- trist, nonpartisan and ideo- logically neutral guests made up 31 percent. 7

The claim that the main- stream media — or as former vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor Sarah Palin calls them, the “lamestream” media — lean to the left has been a favorite theme of the Republican Party for years. “As a conservative I’ve long believed that there is an in- herent media bias, and I think that anyone with ob- jectivity would believe that that’s the case,” vice presi- dential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said last Sep- tember. “I think most peo- ple in the mainstream media are left of center.” 8

The media are “out of control with a deliberate and unmistakable leftist agenda,” the Media Research Center, a conservative media watch-

dog group in Alexandria, Va., charged in an August 2012 “open letter” to the “biased” news media during last year’s presidential race. “To put it bluntly: you are rigging this election and tak- ing sides in order to pre-determine the outcome.”

During the 2012 presidential elec- tion, however, Democrats received more negative coverage than Republicans, according to the 4thEstate Project, which examined three months’ worth of 2012 election coverage. It found that 37 per- cent of Obama’s coverage was nega- tive, compared to 29 percent of Rom- ney’s. About 60 percent of the partisan quotes came from GOP-oriented sources. 9 (See graph, p. 404.)

BY ROBERT KIENER

G e tt y I

m ag

e s/

C h ri

s M

cK ay

Conservative talk show hosts such as Sean Hannity have found huge audiences — mainly among Republicans —

at Fox News. Some media critics trace the rise of partisan programming to the government’s 1987 decision to abandon the Fairness Doctrine, which

required broadcasters to devote airtime to policy debates and offer contrasting views on those issues.

The government said the rapid growth of cable outlets made the rule unnecessary.

404 CQ Researcher

Others see a conservative, pro-GOP slant at some popular media outlets. Fox News is “vital” to the conservative movement, said Republican Jim Gilmore, former governor of Virginia. 10 And a 2009 Pew Research poll found that Fox News is considered the most ideologi- cal channel in America, with 47 percent of respondents saying Fox is “mostly conservative.” 11

Measuring media bias is an inexact science, and researchers who try to quan- tify it have found mixed results, with some studies showing a left-leaning bias and some a rightward tilt.

A Media Matters survey found that about 60 percent of the nation’s news- papers publish more conservative syn- dicated columnists than liberal ones

every week, and among the country’s top 10 columnists (as ranked by the number of papers that carry them), five are conservative, two centrist and three liberal. 12

A classic study by the media watch- dog group Fairness & Accuracy in Re- porting (FAIR) found in 1998 that most journalists were relatively liberal on so- cial policies but significantly more con- servative than the general public on economic, labor, health care and for- eign policy issues. Journalists “nearly always” turn to government officials and business representatives — rather than labor representatives or con- sumer advocates — when covering economic policy, a practice that crit- ics say led to the nation’s business

reporters being blindsided by the 2007-09 recession. 13

Tim Groseclose, a political science professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), has developed a statistical model for measuring the “slant quotient” of news stories. In his 2012 book Left Turn: How Liberal Bias Dis- torts the American Mind, he concludes that “every mainstream national news outlet in the United States has a liberal bias.” Of the 20 news sources he stud- ied, 18 were left of center, he said. 14

But David D’Alessio, an assistant professor of communications sciences at the University of Connecticut, Stam- ford, says his research shows that “while some individuals may produce biased reporting, over time both sides tend to balance one another. There is no clear bias for one side or the other.”

Many observers agree that distrust of the media often depends on one’s political leanings. “Democrats trust everything except Fox, and Republi- cans don’t trust anything other than Fox,” said a Public Policy Polling press release announcing its latest survey of media credibility. 15 “If Fox tilts right, that doesn’t bother conservatives; they don’t necessarily see it as bias,” said Bernard Goldberg, a Fox contributor and author of Bias and other books on media partiality. “And when MSNBC goes left, liberals . . . see it as ‘truth.’ ” 16

“Fox is perfectly entitled to be a conservative news organization” said former New York Times executive edi- tor Bill Keller. “I will always defend their right to be that. My criticism of Fox is that a lot of the time they pretend that they’re not. And I think that just tends to contribute to cynicism about the media. All news organizations, includ- ing the ones that try very hard to play fair and to be even-handed in their re- porting and writing, get tarred by the Fox brush.” 17

Despite the inconclusiveness of the studies, skepticism about media credi- bility is growing. For instance:

MEDIA BIAS

Coverage of Democrats Was More Negative Republican-oriented sources accounted for about 60 percent of the partisan quotes during three months of media coverage of the 2012 presidential campaign, according to the 4thEstate Project, which conducts statistical analysis of the media. It also found that media coverage of health care, the economy and social issues was more negative for President Obama than for GOP challenger Mitt Romney. Thirty-seven percent of total election coverage during the period was negative for Obama, compared to 29 percent for Romney.

Source: “Liberal Media Bias: Fact or Fiction,” 4thEstate Project, July 2012, specialreports.4thestate.net/liberal-media-bias-fact-or-fiction/

Party Affiliation of Partisan Newsmakers

Quoted in Election Coverage, May-July 2012

Nature of Coverage of Presidential Candidates,

May-July 2012

(Percentage)

0

10

20

30

40

50

60%

Total Coverage

59% Republican41%

Democrat Positive Romney Negative Romney Positive Obama Negative Obama

May 3, 2013 405www.cqresearcher.com

• A 2013 Public Policy Polling sur- vey of news media trustworthiness found that Fox’s credibility had dropped significantly: 46 percent of those sur- veyed said they do not trust the net- work — up 9 points since 2010. 18

• A 2011 Pew Research Center poll found that 77 percent of respondents believed news organizations “tend to favor one side” — up from 53 percent in 1985. 19

• A September 2012 Gallup survey found that 60 percent of respondents said they had “not very much” or no trust or confidence that the mass media report the news fully, accurately and fair- ly — up from 46 percent in 1998. 20

“These are big increases, says Mark Jurkowitz, a former Boston Globe jour- nalist and media reporter and now the associate director of the Pew Research Project for Excellence in Journalism. “For the last three decades there has been a seriously embedded, growing thought among the public that the media, es- pecially the liberal media, are biased.”

Larry Light, editor-in-chief of the fi- nancial website AdviceIQ.com, con- tended that public antipathy toward the news media is the result of what he called the right-wing’s ongoing “war against journalists,” which he maintained has stepped up its tempo recently. The perception of bias “has nothing to do with people’s individual observations” but everything to do with “a jugger- naut of conservative, anti-media pro- paganda that has grown more and more powerful,” he wrote. “The propagan- dists repeat the phrase ‘biased liberal media’ a zillion-fold everywhere. That it is a crock of baloney is beside the point.” 21

Some observers blame the chang- ing perceptions on the rise of cable television, radio talk shows and In- ternet sites and blogs, which have en- abled thousands of new players to spread their often partisan messages. Commentators such as conservatives Sean Hannity of Fox News and radio personality Rush Limbaugh, and lib-

erals such as Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, along with news sites such as the right-leaning Drudge Report and left-leaning Huffington Post, have helped blur the line between straight news and opinion. “The public does not always differentiate between these

partisan outlets and the more objec- tive mainstream media,” says S. Robert Lichter, director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University in Annandale, Va., and co-author of the 1986 book The Media Elite.

Most Americans See Media as Politically Biased More than three-fourths of Republicans consider the media politi- cally biased, a perception shared by 54 percent of Democrats and 63 percent of Independents. Sixty percent of Americans say they have little or no confidence in the media to report news fully, accurately and fairly.

Sources: Lymari Morales, “U.S. Distrust in Media Hits New High,” Gallup, September 2012, www.gallup.com/poll/157589/distrust-media-hits-new-high.aspx; “Views of the News Media: 1985-2011,” Pew Research Center, September 2011, p. 11, www. people-press.org/files/legacy-pdf/9-22-2011%20Media%20Attitudes%20Release.pdf

Percentage of Americans Who Say the Media Are Politically Biased, 1985-2011 (by Party Affiliation)

Trust and Confidence in Mass Media to Report News Fully, Accurately and Fairly, 1997-2012

(Percentage)

30

40

50

60

70

80%

2011200920072005200320022001199919871985

40

50

60%

201220112010200920082007200520042003200220012000199919981997

(Percentage)

Republicans Democrats Independents

Great deal/fair amount Not very much/none at all

406 CQ Researcher

Indeed, 63 percent of respondents cited cable news — particularly CNN and Fox — when asked what comes to mind when they hear the term “news organizations,” according to Pew. 22

Pew also found that opinion and com- mentary, as opposed to news report- ing, fill 85 percent of MSNBC’s air- time, 55 percent of Fox’s and 46 percent of CNN’s. 23

Some say the public’s perceptions about media bias may also have been influenced by the growth of media watchdog groups, such as Media Mat- ters and the Media Research Center, which track inaccurate reporting, media bias and political gaffes. Often financed by wealthy partisans, the groups comb the media searching for examples of perceived right- or left-wing bias.

“Part of their message is, ‘The other guy is lying to you,’ ” says Jurkowitz. That helps to convince the public that “the media are biased,” he says.

Others say fact-checking groups such as PolitiFact and FactCheck.org may also have increased the percep- tion that the media are biased. (See side- bar, p. 414.)

Surveys repeatedly have shown that most mainstream journalists in New York City and Washington, D.C., have liberal leanings, but most reporters say they separate their personal views from their reporting. 24 “An opinion is not a bias,” said Michael Kinsley, former edi- tor of the online publication Slate. 25

Longtime Washington Post political re- porter David Broder once famously de- clared that “the charge of ideological bias in the newsroom [is] laughable. There just isn’t enough ideology in the average reporter to fill a thimble.” 26

As scholars, journalists and news consumers explore bias in the quick- ly changing media world, here are some questions they are asking:

Should journalists try to be ob- jective?

As the media landscape grows more varied — with cable broadcast-

ers, bloggers, Twitterers and others adding their often-partisan views to those of the established media — many media analysts are asking if journalistic objectivity is becoming passé.

But for many mainstream media or- ganizations, objectivity is a core part of their brand and very much worth preserving. “Objectivity is like virtue; it’s . . . the thing that you always strive toward” in search of the truth, said New York Times conservative colum- nist David Brooks. 27

He and other journalists say being objective means not playing favorites, regardless of one’s personal views. “It means doing stories that will make your friends mad when appropriate and not doing stories that are actu- ally hit jobs or propaganda mas- querading as journalism,” said Alex S. Jones, director of Harvard Univer- sity’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. “It is essential that genuine objectivity should remain the American journal- istic standard.” 28

In its Handbook of Journalism, the Reuters news service warns journalists: “As Reuters journalists, we never iden- tify with any side in an issue, a con- flict or a dispute.” 29

But many media specialists today question whether journalists can ever be truly objective or neutral. “No jour- nalist is completely objective,” says Pew’s Jurkowitz. “There are subjective judgments made in every story: what quote a reporter uses in his lead, the prominence he gives to certain facts, who gets one or two quotes, the lan- guage used, etc.”

“Objectivity is in the eye of the be- holder,” says Barrie Dunsmore, a for- mer ABC News foreign correspondent. “It’s not just reporting both sides, which often aren’t equivalent in terms of moral, legal or sociological balance. It has to be coupled with knowledge of a subject. It’s easy to be objective if you don’t know anything.”

“The big problem with objectivity is that it has no bias toward truth,” says Eric Alterman, a journalism history pro- fessor at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate School of Jour- nalism and a liberal journalist. “You can quote both sides of an issue, and they can both be false. This doesn’t bring readers any closer to the truth.”

“Good journalism, like good sci- ence, starts out with a hunch, not with an observation, and then builds its case from there” says Reuters media critic Jack Shafer. “It’s the method the journalist uses to arrive at his conclu- sion that has to be objective.”

Some journalists have held that being objective means producing “balanced” stories — stories that give various sides of an issue. But many now see that approach as misleading and often pro- ducing weak reporting.

“There is no such thing as objec- tivity, and the truth . . . seldom nes- tles neatly halfway between any two opposing points of view,” the late Texas columnist Molly Ivins declared. “The smug complacency of much of the press . . . stems from the curious no- tion that if you get a quote from both sides . . . you’ve done the job. In the first place, most stories aren’t two-sided, they’re 17-sided at least. In the sec- ond place, it’s of no help to either the readers or the truth to quote one side saying, ‘cat,’ and the other side saying ‘dog,’ while the truth is there’s an ele- phant crashing around out there in the bushes.” 30

After seeing his reporting reduced to a formulaic, he-said-she-said news story, former Los Angeles Times reporter Ken Silverstein complained to his edi- tors that “balanced” reporting can be “totally misleading and leads to utter- ly spineless reporting.” In the end, he continued, “It’s just an easy way of avoiding real reporting and shirking our responsibility to inform readers.” 31

Constantly demanding balance can lead to a false equivalence, critics argue. “Al Gore says about 97 percent of

MEDIA BIAS

May 3, 2013 407www.cqresearcher.com

climate scientists agree that global warming is real and manmade, but only about 50 percent of news reporting will say that, because they . . . want to give equal weight to both sides,” says Alterman.

“The term ‘balance’ implies equal time, and that’s not sufficient for accu- rate and fair reporting,” says Dunsmore. “It is more important to be accurate and fair than merely showing both sides of an issue in order to be balanced.”

Longtime Washington observers Nor- man Ornstein, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Insti- tute, and Thomas Mann, a senior fel- low at the centrist Brookings Institu- tion, recently excoriated the mainstream press for insisting on writing balanced news stories that gave equal weight to often-outlandish political views, such as the comment by former Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., that “78 to 81” members of Congress are communists.

“Our advice to the press: Don’t seek professional safety through the even- handed, unfiltered presentation of op- posing views,” they said. Instead, re- porters should ask: “Which politician is telling the truth? Who is taking hostages, at what risks and to what ends?” 32 Choosing balance over com- mon sense does the public a disser- vice, they said. Taking a “balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenom- enon distorts reality.” 33

Others, such as George Mason’s Lichter, differentiate between objectivi- ty and balance. Objectivity is “such a valuable gift from America to the world of journalism that I’d hate to lose it,” he says. “We owe a debt of gratitude to the wire services and papers such as The New York Times for making ob- jectivity their goal.”

But some journalists today argue that reporters should not be afraid to declare their biases. With many new- media platforms producing journalism that is increasingly laced with opinion, it’s more important than ever to know a reporter’s agenda, says Jurkowitz. “Or-

ganizations have to be clear about their motives and agendas. Transparency is the new objectivity,” he says.

Has the proliferation of media watchdog groups fostered percep- tions of media bias?

Much of the criticism of the “biased right-wing press” and the “lamestream media” has originated with self-styled media watchdog groups that exist main- ly to monitor the media in hopes of discovering bias, inaccuracies or in- consistencies. Often funded by politi- cally inspired financial backers such as conservative billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch or liberal fi- nancier George Soros, these groups comb the media searching for exam- ples of bias.

“An entire cottage industry exists to highlight the media’s alleged failings,” wrote Paul Farhi, a reporter at The Washington Post. 34

By publicizing failings, groups such as the Media Research Center (MRC), Media Matters for America, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting and others also have ratcheted up the volume in the national conversation about media bias. “Their message that the media are biased has certainly seeped into the public consciousness,” says Pew’s Jurkowitz.

For example: • L. Brent Bozell, founder and pres-

ident of the conservative MRC, said the mainstream media are “the ‘shock troops’ of the Obama administration because they are the ones doing all the dirty work for him so that he doesn’t have to do it.” 35

• Left-leaning Media Matters said Fox News often uses “offensive words” to refer to undocumented immigrants. The group claimed that between Nov. 7, 2012, and Feb. 15, 2013, Fox’s prime- time hosts and their guests used what Media Matters called anti-immigrant language — such as “illegals,” “illegal aliens” and “anchor babies” — 99 times.” 36 (Recently The Associated Press

dropped the term “illegal immigrant” from its AP Stylebook.) 37

• Fairness & Accuracy in Report- ing complained that the mainstream media “failed” to properly question the Bush administration’s justification for the Iraq War by neglecting to suffi- ciently question the existence of weapons of mass destruction and other assertions. 38

These groups have “created the per- ception that the media is more biased than it really is,” says Si Sheppard, an assistant professor of political science at Long Island University and author of The Partisan Press: A History of Media Bias in the United States. “That’s their objective. They like to say that the media play favorites, but studies have shown that there has not been consistent favoritism in reporting over the last few decades.”

Others say that because these groups are open about their own bi- ases, their findings do not unfairly taint the press. “Everyone has to parse every- one’s arguments for themselves,” says Reuters media critic Shafer. “I find these groups valuable.”

But others say the groups have crossed the line from unbiased critics to politi- cal partisans. “When watchdog groups push their political agenda to the detri- ment of facts, they are becoming biased political operators,” says Andrew R. Cline, associate professor of journalism at Mis- souri State University, in Springfield. “They stop doing a good service.”

“Media criticism has become polit- ical criticism by another name,” says George Mason’s Lichter.

But the MRC’s Bozell disagrees. “Data is data, numbers are numbers. While our interpretation of those facts may be subjective, we aren’t forcing the public to see bias everywhere. We are showing them what different news organizations are reporting and the way they are reporting and let them decide.”

“By awakening the public to bias, these watchdogs are doing a favor,”

408 CQ Researcher

says UCLA’s Groseclose. “They are mov- ing people’s perceptions closer to the truth that the media is biased.”

However, some media observers say the groups make the media look more biased than they really are. “These groups’ criticisms are certainly rein- forcing that opinion,” says Lichter. “In- stead of just beating up the other side, there is more beating up on the media for being biased.”

This is more than politically orient- ed criticism. “The new part of some of these groups’ message is, ‘the media are lying to you,’ ” says Jurkowitz. “That has become a significant element of the message that goes out on both sides of the spectrum.”

Lichter and others blame the pub- lic’s declining trust in media in part on the watchdog groups’ repeated al- legations of bias.

Media Matters executive vice- president Bradley Beychok disagrees.

“The fact that public trust in the media continues to fall says more about the media than it does about media watch- dogs. The media landscape is expand- ing beyond television and newspapers. As it does, there is more of a need to combat misinformation from new sources.”

Are the media biased in favor of President Obama?

During the Sept. 16, 2012, presi- dential debate, Republican candidate Mitt Romney implied that Obama’s personal funds likely included invest- ments in China, a charge that had been leveled at Romney.

“Mr. President, have you looked at your pension?” asked Romney.

Obama shot back, “You know, I don’t look at my pension. It’s not as big as yours, so it, it doesn’t take as long.”

In a nearby room where reporters were watching the debate, a round of applause broke out. 39

While conservative commentators used this outburst as proof of their oft- repeated claim that much of the media favored Obama, others said all it showed was that reporters, like anyone else, enjoy a good debate comeback.

Many conservatives, such as the Media Research Center’s Bozell, say the media are pro-Obama and his ad- ministration. “Saying the media aren’t Obama-biased is like saying ducks don’t waddle,” says Bozell.

David Freddoso, editorial page ed- itor of the conservative Washington Examiner and author of Spin Masters: How the Media Ignored the Real News and Helped Reelect Barack Obama, echoes the bias claims but believes that much of it is unintentional. “A lot of the mainstream media’s pro-Obama bias is a product of the ‘liberal bubble world’ most journalists live in,” he says. “When you and most of your col- leagues are liberal, that can easily skew your perceptions.”

Freddoso believes the mainstream media have “misrepresented Obama’s so-called economic recovery” in Obama’s favor and “emphasized Rom- ney’s gaffes during the campaign in- stead of attacking Obama’s handling of the Benghazi attack,” in which the American diplomatic mission in Beng- hazi, Libya, was attacked by insurgents in September, 2012.

Some conservative journalists claim there has been a double standard in coverage of the Obama and George W. Bush administrations. “There was no fear of affronting Bush,” said Fred Barnes, executive editor of the conservative Week- ly Standard. “He faced relentless scruti- ny. . . . The media raised questions about his motives, the constitutionality of his policies, his brainpower. . . . Obama’s adoption of these same poli- cies has drawn minimal attention.” 40

Lichter disagrees. “While Obama did get extremely positive coverage during his extended honeymoon pe- riod in 2009, the press since then has been fairly balanced in its coverage of

MEDIA BIAS

Negative Views of Press Growing The public’s assessment of the press has become increasingly negative since the mid-1980s. Two-thirds of Americans say reports often are inaccurate, compared to about one-third in 1985. Seventy-seven percent say the press shows bias on political and social issues, while 80 percent say the media often are influenced by powerful people and organizations. Experts say the rise of cable television and the Internet has led more media outlets to engage in partisanship, with less regard for accuracy.

Public Views on Press Performance, 1985 and 2011

Source: “Views of the News Media: 1985-2011,” Pew Research Center, September 2011, p. 1, www.people-press.org/files/legacy-pdf/9-22- 2011%20Media%20Attitudes%20Release.pdf

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

80%

Press often influenced by powerful people and organizations.

Press favors one side on political and social issues.

Stories often are inaccurate.

1985 2011

34%

66% 53% 77%

53% 80%

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him and his admin- istration.”

Other media crit- ics claim journalists are so swayed by Obama’s personal story that it is hard to “resist” him. “He is liberal, Ivy League and a person of color. That is simply too powerful a com- bination for the media to resist,” wrote Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Pol- icy Center. “One gets [the] sense that jour- nalists not only like Mr. Obama; they are in awe of him.” 41

But NBC chief White House corre- spondent Chuck Todd called such charges “mythology.” He said conserv- atives increasingly believe, without cause, that the “big, bad non-conservative media is out to get conservatives.”

However, Light, the editor of Advice IQ.com, wrote, “anti-media critiques are often absurdly one-sided. Their anti-media world is one where you whine about perceived slights to your side and conveniently ignore bad press that Democrats get. Anything that doesn’t embrace the right-wing line is, by definition, biased.” 42

Likewise, Romney strategist Stuart Stevens said after Romney’s loss in the election that the media were not “in the tank” for Obama nor were they too sympathetic to him. 43

The public as a whole believes the press was fair in its coverage of the candidates. During the 2012 election, 46 percent of those polled by Pew said the coverage of Obama was fair, and an equal percentage said Romney’s coverage was fair. However, when only Republicans were polled, 60 percent

said the press coverage of Obama was “too easy,” compared to just 4 percent of Democrats. 44

While critics point to negative cov- erage of Romney as an example of media bias, others say it reflected the nature of political reporting: Journal- ists tend to cover politics as a horse race, and gaffes make for entertaining copy. A lot of Romney’s negative cov- erage, they say, was due to his nu- merous gaffes, such as his critical com- ments about how London was handling security for the Olympics or his blam- ing Palestine’s lack of economic suc- cess on cultural differences with Israel.

The 4thEstate study found no pro- Obama bias during the election period it examined. From May 1 to July 15, 2012, Republicans were quoted in news reports 44 percent more often than Democrats, and negative coverage of Obama was 17 percent higher than such coverage of Romney, the group said. “Our data does not support the thesis of a liberal media bias as it relates to Election 2012 coverage,” 4thEstate said.

“If anything, our analy- sis suggests a media bias towards both Mr. Rom- ney and Republicans.” 45

The organization also found that the media discussed Romney more than Obama: 41.8 per- cent of the time versus 36.8 percent. 46

However, a Pew Re- search poll found that Obama enjoyed a surge in positive coverage dur- ing the last week of the campaign. 47

“But on the whole, both candidates got equally negative cover- age,” says George Mason’s Lichter.

BACKGROUND Journalism’s ‘Dark Ages’

H istorians are quick to point outthat the roots of American jour- nalism were deeply embedded in par- tisan soil. Bias was the norm during jour- nalism’s formative years in this country. Indeed, the very idea of an unbiased press was anathema to the nation’s early citizens.

Newspapers reflected the opinions of their owners and publishers. “For most of American history . . . there was only opinion, and highly partisan opinion at that,” said Sheppard of Long Island University. 48 In The Partisan Press, Sheppard cites several early newspaper owners and publishers who attacked the ideas of balance and objectivity:

• On Sept. 4, 1798, the Newark Gazette described giving equal time

Conservatives claimed moderator Candy Crowley (center) of CNN favored President Obama when she intervened on his behalf during the

Oct. 16, 2012, presidential debate. GOP candidate Mitt Romney repeatedly asserted that Obama took “days” to call the Sept. 11, 2012,

attack on the Benghazi consulate in Libya an “act of terror,” while Obama insisted he did so the day after the incident. When Romney

refused to accept Obama’s answer, Crowley said the president “did in fact” call the incident an act of terror on Sept. 12. Crowley later said

she was only trying to move the debate along to other topics.

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MEDIA BIAS

to both sides of the political divide a “ ‘folly that should not be tolerated.’ ” 49

• On July 17, 1799, The Washington Mirror said treating parties equally was impossible, and that “printers who ‘pre- tended’ neutrality succeeded only in willfully misleading the people.” 50

• On March 10, 1800, the New York American Citizen called impartiality “ ‘in- jurious to the best interests of mankind.’ ” 51

Newspapers and their political pam- phlet cousins were “mouthpieces” for the political parties of the era. 52

Many newspapers were even support- ed directly by politi- cians. For example, Thomas Jefferson helped pay for the startup and running of the N a t i o n a l Gazette, and Alexan- der Hamilton sup- ported the Gazette of the United States.

“This gave an ac- rimonious tone to public discourse, since newspapers had no incentive to temper the language they used to crit- icize opponents,” wrote George Mason University’s Lichter. 53 In addition, newspapers often had lucrative gov- ernment printing contracts, which also promoted biased reporting.

To temper the political bias of the press, the government — led by Presi- dent John Adams’ Federalist Party — passed the Sedition Act of 1798, which made it a crime to publish “false, scan- dalous and malicious writing” about the president or Congress. It enabled the gov- ernment to close down many opposition Republican newspapers but caused such a voter backlash that Adams was not re- elected. The act expired in 1801. 54

The partisan press also placed party above accuracy. Some editors and re-

porters even worked part-time for politi- cians. 55 Others were key party lead- ers. 56 Some have called the first quar- ter of the 19th century the “Dark Ages of American journalism.” 57

“Even Jefferson, who famously pre- ferred newspapers without government to government without newspapers, later complained that newspapers made their readers less well informed because ‘he

who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with false- hood and errors,’ ” wrote Lichter. 58

‘Penny Papers’

T he rise of the “penny papers” inthe 1830s transformed journalism’s partisan character. Edited for the mid- dle and working classes rather than for the elites, cheap, tabloid-style papers such as the New York Sun were able to prosper by offering an entertaining, informative product less dependent on partisan politics — for a penny apiece.

This was largely an economic deci- sion. A partisan approach would inevitably alienate a large sector of a paper’s po- tential readership, while a less political

approach was more inclusive and could, in turn, attract more advertising. By mid- 19th century the penny press’ less par- tisan approach dominated journalism.

“Henceforth the reader would typ- ically be viewed as a consumer rather than a partisan, and the nostrums of private enterprise would replace those of political ideology in paying the bills,” wrote Lichter. 59

But the penny papers were not apolitical. They often endorsed candi- dates, sometimes from more than one party. With “a business model incor- porating the indepen- dence of action afforded by financial self-reliance, the critical first steps to- wards objectivity had been established,” ex- plained Sheppard. 60

Toward the end of the 19th century, rapid industrialization and urban growth increased the audience for news- papers. Entrepreneurial publishers such as Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst

helped develop a profitable formula that relied heavily on a sensationalist mix of sex, crime and gossip that came to be known as “yellow journalism.”

A combination of factors soon pushed newspapers to become less sensation- al. Their increased reliance on adver- tising made them reluctant to offend readers and led papers to improve their product and expand circulation. The expansion of the railroad and telegraph created new demand for instantaneous news from isolated communities where political sentiments might differ from the paper’s hometown. Wire services, such as The Associated Press, formed in 1846, prospered by supplying sub- scribing newspapers with concise, ac- curate and objective copy.

Continued on p. 412

Antiwar demonstrators protest the mainstream media’s Iraq War coverage outside NBC headquarters in New York City on March 15,

2006. Critics said the press was too willing to accept the Bush administration’s assertions that Iraq had weapons of

mass destruction before the U.S.-led invasion of the country in 2003. No such weapons were ever found.

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Chronology 1690-1798 News- papers move from partisan ap- proach to more independence.

1690 Publick Occurrences becomes first newspaper published in America.

1702 Daily Courant becomes first English- language daily newspaper.

1791 First Amendment is added to U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing the right to publish news, information and opinions without government inter- ference.

1798 The Alien and Sedition Acts prohibit publishing anything “false, scandalous and malicious” about the president or Congress. More than 20 editors are arrested; some are imprisoned. The laws later expired or were repealed.

•

1800s-1900 Newspapers flourish as the “penny press” gains in popu- larity; journalism becomes a profession.

1830 United States has 715 newspapers.

1833 New York Sun is launched, marking beginning of “penny press.”

1846 Newspapers with varied political views create the nonpartisan Asso- ciated Press wire service.

1850 Only 5 percent of U.S. newspapers are “neutral and independent.”

1851 Believing that a free, indepen- dent press is important to an ed- ucated populace, the Post Office offers a cheap mailing rate for newspapers.

1870 Nearly 5,100 newspapers are pub- lished in the United States.

1878 University of Missouri begins offering nation’s first journalism courses.

1896 Adolph Ochs buys The New York Times “to give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of any party, sect or interest.”

•

1900-2000 Government regulates, then deregulates, the broadcast media. Radio, television and then the Internet change the face of media.

1934 Communications Act creates Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to regulate radio.

1940 American Institute of Public Opinion says 52 percent of Americans rely on radio for politi- cal information; 38 percent rely on newspapers.

1949 FCC’s “Fairness Doctrine” requires broadcasters to devote airtime to controversial issues and to offer contrasting views.

1963 TV surpasses newspapers as the leading source of daily news.

1981 Survey by George Mason University journalism professor S. Robert Lichter shows that 81 percent of mainstream journalists voted for Democrats for president between 1964 and 1976.

1985-1986 Non-journalistic corporations buy all three major television networks, sparking cost cutting and staff re- ductions in the news departments.

1987 FCC drops Fairness Doctrine, saying the growth of cable and broadcast outlets make it unnecessary.

•

2000-2013 News- paper circulation drops; many papers cease publication. Cable broadcasting surges; social media play an increasing role in opinion journalism.

2001 Fox becomes most-watched cable- news network.

2007 Nearly 1,500 newspapers sell 55 million copies daily.

2012 Gallup survey finds 60 percent of Americans have no or not very much trust that the mass media report the news accurately and fairly, up from 46 percent in 1998. Pew Research Center finds that 36 percent of Twitter users follow the news, compared with 19 per- cent of social media users.

2013 Pew Research Center finds that opin- ion and commentary fill 85 percent of MSNBC’s airtime, 55 percent of Fox’s and 46 percent of CNN’s.

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When Adolph Ochs purchased The New York Times in 1896, he an- nounced his intention, “to give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of any party, sect, or inter- est involved.” 61 As journalism history professor Alterman says, “We can date the beginning of serious, objective re- porting in America with Ochs’ pur- chase of The New York Times.”

In part because of Ochs’ paper, ob- jectivity began to play a more im- portant role in journalism. Journalism schools proliferated after the turn of the 20th century and taught the im- portance of objectivity along with ac- curacy and ethical reporting. Accord- ing to a study cited by Lichter, the proportion of objective stories in news-

papers and on wire services doubled from 1897 to 1914. “Having previously served the common good by stand- ing aside from the world of politics, the press would now do so by stand- ing above it,” noted Lichter. 62

Electronic Media

R adio, which burst onto the scenein the 1920s, soon transformed the media landscape. Between 1927 and 1934 the number of homes with radios jumped from 25 percent to 65 percent. Politicians, some angered by what they perceived as a biased press, saw radio as a medium to get their unfiltered message directly to the public. President Franklin D. Roosevelt

famously used his iconic “fireside chats” to circumvent what he considered to be a hostile Republican press and speak directly to the people.

Because the airwaves were con- sidered a public resource, radio was regulated. Under the Communica- tions Act of 1934, created by the Fed- eral Communications Commission (FCC), stations could lose their li- censes if their broadcasts were con- sidered too controversial, and stations had to offer equal time for political candidates.

By the 1940s radio was the main source of political information for 52 per- cent of the public, compared to 38 per- cent who relied on newspapers, ac- cording to a 1940 American Institute of Public Opinion poll. 63

MEDIA BIAS

Continued from p. 410

H ow important is a free and vibrant press to a healthy democracy? The nation’s founders, even though they were not always pleased with the partisan newspapers

that proliferated at the time, thought it was vital. “No government ought to be without censors, and where

the press is free, no one ever will,” Thomas Jefferson told George Washington in 1792. 1 The First Amendment to the Constitution offered special protection to the press by barring Congress from abridging its freedom.

Throughout American history, the press has been viewed as such an important source of checks and balances on the gov- ernment that it became known as the “Fourth Estate” — as im- portant to democracy as the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government. However, while the founders stressed the need for a free press, they never claimed, for example, that the press should be nonpartisan.

As Americans increasingly complain that the media are be- coming more biased, some media critics are asking if such a trend is healthy for democracy.

“We designed a constitutional system with many checks and balances,” said Democratic pollster Patrick Caddell. “The one that had no checks and balances was the press, and that was done under an implicit understanding that, somehow, the press would protect the people from the government and the power by telling — somehow allowing — people to have the truth. That is being abrogated as we speak, and has been for some time.” 2

Caddell and others argue that an increasingly partisan press

not only is slanting the news but choosing not to cover news that could cast an ideology or party in a bad light. Such bias by omission, said Caddell, has led the media to make “them- selves a fundamental threat to the democracy, and, in my opin- ion, made themselves the enemy of the American people.” 3

At the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), an annual political conference attended by conservative activists and elected officials, Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said, “When the media don’t report the facts, Americans can’t make good decisions. And if Americans can’t make good decisions, our democracy is at risk. So media bias, to me, is a major threat to our democracy.” 4

“If society doesn’t have knowledge of the workings of government, how can it pass judgment on government?” asks L. Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, a con- servative media watchdog group “I don’t know if democracy can survive without an actively free press.”

Not everyone agrees that today’s media threaten democra- cy. “When anyone tells me that the media is so biased that democracy is at risk, I remind them that even at the begin- nings of our democracy the media was much, much more par- tisan,” says S. Robert Lichter, director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University and co-author of The Media Elite. “There were no boundaries then, and peo- ple were accused of all sorts of heinous, outlandish things. We survived then, and we will now.”

A continuing decline in the number of journalists and the closure of print and broadcast outlets in recent years could be

Media Bias Seen as Threat to Democracy “I don’t know if democracy can survive without an actively free press.”

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Meanwhile newspapers continued to become more objective. As pub- lishers realized readers were attracted by objective, authoritative reporting, a church-state-style wall separated the advertising and news sides of the business. Robert McCormick, publish- er of the Chicago Tribune, took this separation so seriously that he had two sets of elevators installed in his headquarters building in the early 20th century; one was for reporters and editors, the other for the busi- ness side. 64

After World War II, television emerged as the dominant news medi- um. Nearly half the nation’s house- holds had a television as early as 1953, and by 1963 television was America’s leading source of daily news. 65

To guarantee that the public air- waves exposed audiences to a variety of viewpoints, the FCC’s 1949 Fairness Doctrine required broadcasters to de- vote airtime to controversial matters of public interest and to offer contrasting views on those issues. The act also forbade stations from censoring cam- paign or political ads. Another FCC rule, calling for “equal time” for polit- ical candidates, did not apply to news- casts, documentaries, entertainment pro- grams or political advertising.

Television’s popularity was a fac- tor in the closure of the nation’s af- ternoon newspapers, which could not compete with the immediacy of the evening news broadcasts. However, many papers responded to the new journalistic competitor by “expanding

their interpretative coverage and news analyses, where print held a compet- itive advantage,” wrote Lichter. “Main- stream journalism began to take on a sharper point of view, often in- cluding opinion and advocacy in its reporting. . . . For the next decade, reporters were thrown onto the front lines of political battlegrounds that ranged from the civil rights movement to campus protests, the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal.” 66

New Media

T he 1980s were marked by majorchanges in American media. In 1985 and ’86, non-journalistic corpo- rations bought all three major televi-

more of a threat to democracy than partisan media, say other observers. “There is no end in sight to job losses in journalism,” says Eric Alterman, a journalism history professor at CUNY Grad- uate School of Journalism. “Losing journalists means people will be far less informed as citizens, and that’s bad for democracy. Also, the bad guys will be able to get away with a lot more because there won’t be as many people watching them.”

Others are concerned about the growing concentration of media ownership, which could result in corporate influ- ence on what is covered and how it is covered. Six corpo- rations (Disney, News Corp, Viacom, Time-Warner, Comcast and CBS) control 90 percent of the nation’s news and en- tertainment media, up from 50 percent in 1983. 5 “Rupert Murdoch owns The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post, and he and the Koch brothers are reportedly trying to buy the Los Angeles Times,” says Alterman, referring to wealthy, conservative billionaire brothers who have donat- ed millions of dollars to libertarian, free-market advocacy groups and conservative politicians. “That would result in much less of a national conversation.”

Former “CBS Evening News” anchor Dan Rather, who re- cently described a free and independent press as “the red, beat- ing heart of democracy and freedom,” warned of the dangers of such concentrated ownership.

“These big corporations, for whom news is only a small part of their business — they manufacture defense products and weapons, they run theme parks, they have all kinds of in-

terests — this makes them dependent in large measure on whoever is in power in Washington,” said Rather, who now anchors the news on the cable channel AXS TV. “I think we can all agree that we don’t want to have a few very large cor- porations, working in concert with a powerful political appa- ratus in Washington, deciding what we see, read and hear — and they do, to a very large degree.” 6

— Robert Kiener

1 The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia (1900), p. 130, http://books.google.com/books?id= ZTIoAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA130&lpg=PA130&dq=%E2%80%9CNo+government+ought +to+be+without+censors,+and+where+the+press+is+free,+no+one+ever+will,% E2%80%9D+Thomas+Jefferson+told&source=bl&ots=vamgnUacT4&sig=gHinV3 U0Chb16W3EjRdujaEhRo4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=X7x2UZu6IcXy0QGL9oD4Ag&ved =0CEMQ6AEwAzgK#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CNo%20government%20ought %20to%20be%20without%20censors%2C%20and%20where%20the%20press%20 is%20free%2C%20no%20one%20ever%20will%2C%E2%80%9D%20Thomas%20 Jefferson%20told&f=false. 2 Patrick Caddell, “Mainstream media is threatening our country’s future,” Fox News, Sept. 29, 2012, www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/09/29/mainstream- media-threatening-our-country-future/. 3 Ibid. 4 “Congressman Smith speaks at CPAC 2013 Re: media bias,” press release, March 14, 2013, http://lamarsmith.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?Docu mentID=324058. 5 Ashley Lutz, “These 6 companies control 90% of the media in America,” Business Insider, June 14, 2012, www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations- control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6. 6 Brad Martin, “Dan Rather warns of media control,” American Libraries, June 24, 2012, http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/annual-conference/dan- rather-warns-media-control.

414 CQ Researcher

sion networks, leading to sweeping cost-cutting and staff reductions in the news departments.

Meanwhile, public perceptions that the media were fair were plummet- ing. By 1984, 38 percent of those sur- veyed said newspapers were “usually fair,” down from two-thirds who felt the press was “fair” in 1937.

The FCC dropped the Fairness Doc- trine in 1987, arguing that the growth of cable and broadcast outlets made it unnecessary. The decision, favored by Republicans, is seen as one of the main causes of the rise of conservative talk radio in the 1980s and ’90s. 67 Legisla- tion that liberalized media-ownership restrictions, such as the 1996 Telecom- munications Act, led to widespread

broadcast media consolidation via mergers and buyouts.

Meanwhile, competitive constraints and government regulation of cable channels were relaxed by the Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984. The industry boomed, with hundreds of stations reaching households across the country. Soon, thanks to advances in cable and satellite technology, all- news “24/7” cable channels such as CNN and later Fox News and MSNBC would change the face of television journalism. Outspoken conservative hosts such as Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly would find a lucrative audi- ence, mainly among Republicans, on Fox News. And equally sharp-tongued hosts on talk radio, no longer ham-

pered by the need to present both sides of an issue, filled the airwaves and prospered.

Many journalists were shocked “that they were widely perceived as just an- other cog in a distant establishment, an elite group of wealthy and influ- ential snobs who had forgotten their roots,” said Lichter. 68 Surveys repeat- edly confirmed that the mainstream media were generally to the left of the American public on such hot-button issues as gun control and abortion. 69

Many GOP politicians agreed with the perception that the media were left-leaning and fanned the flames. For example, during the 1996 presidential election, Republican candidate Bob Dole exhorted, “We’ve got to stop the

MEDIA BIAS

“H ere’s the truth the president won’t tell you,” said Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC),

an annual political conference attended by conservative activists and elected officials. “Of every dollar that you hold in your hands, 70 cents of that dollar that’s supposed to go to the poor doesn’t. It actually goes to benefit the bureaucrats in Wash- ington, D.C. — 70 cents on the dollar.” 1

True? Not exactly. The Washington Post’s’ “Fact Checker” column found that

Bachmann was off by at least a factor of 10 — or even a factor of 200 — depending on what was included in her figures. It award- ed her four “Pinocchios” — its worst rating — “for such mislead- ing use of statistics in a major speech.” 2

Written by veteran reporter Glenn Kessler, “Fact Checker” is just one of many fact-checking operations that have sprung up over the last decade or so — including those at CNN, The As- sociated Press, Fox and ABC — to examine the accuracy of statements made by politicians and public officials. Such op- erations also fact-check major speeches, most notably after pres- idential debates, major addresses such as the State of the Union and claims made in campaign ads.

Groups such as PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning site start- ed in 2007 and a project of the Tampa Bay Times (formerly St. Petersburg Times), and FactCheck.org, a project of the Annen- berg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, de- scribe themselves as nonpartisan. FactCheck.org, for example, says it is a “nonpartisan, nonprofit ‘consumer advocate’ for vot-

ers that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics.” 3

But as fact-checking programs have proliferated, so have their critics. Not surprisingly, many of these criticisms fall along ideological lines. On its conservative-leaning editorial page, The Wall Street Journal argued that fact checking is “overwhelming- ly biased toward the left,” while liberals, such as City University of New York journalism professor Eric Alterman, often claim there is a growing conservative bias among the fact checkers. 4

Likewise, candidates have been accusing the fact checkers of bias. During the 2012 presidential election, fact checkers la- beled as deceptive a Mitt Romney campaign advertisement de- picting President Obama as saying, “If we keep talking about the economy we’re going to lose.” Although the fact checkers explained that Obama was merely quoting Republican Sen. John McCain, Romney’s strategists quickly went on the offen- sive. “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact- checkers,” said Romney campaign pollster Neil Newhouse. 5

After Romney lost the election, Media Research Center’s re- search director, Rich Noyes, said his defeat was due partly to opponents “pounding Romney with partisan fact checking.” 6

In fact, both parties often attacked or simply ignored fact checkers’ claims of inaccuracy or deceit. “Both candidates’ cam- paigns laid out a number of whoppers, got clobbered for doing so, and then kept right on saying them,” said New York Times media critic David Carr. 7

Bill Adair, the departing editor of PolitiFact, agrees. “I think there has always been a calculation by political campaigns to forge ahead

Fact Checkers Proliferate — and So Do Their Critics Media services expose deception, but partisans often ignore them.

May 3, 2013 415www.cqresearcher.com

liberal bias in this country. . . . Don’t read that stuff! Don’t watch television! Don’t let them make up your mind for you!” 70

Also in 1996, Fox News was launched by Australian-born news mag- nate Rupert Murdoch, who appointed former GOP media consultant Roger Ailes as CEO.

Says Lichter, “The idea that jour- nalists were presenting news from their own point of view was growing among the public.”

Blurring the Lines

T he growing belief that the mediawere biased, coupled with liberal-

izing legislative changes and technolog- ical developments, opened a new chap- ter in the history of the American media. Television and radio airwaves were soon populated with a growing band of com- mentators and pundits who helped blur the line between journalism and opin- ion for many media consumers.

The media landscape changed dra- matically. Talk radio, cable news net- works, Internet-based websites and blogs fragmented the media but also have made them more populist. The new partisan media, much like their historic predecessors, the National Gazette and other 18th century pub- lications, have offered a wide variety of ideological slants on the news.

As former University of Wisconsin-

Madison journalism school director James Baughman wrote, “In contrast to the fractious newspaper culture of the mid-19th century, today’s media culture is in fact divided between the new partisan media of the radio, In- ternet and cable, and those news out- lets that still endeavor to report the news seriously. Serious news services won’t, for example, provide platforms for those who insist the president was born in Kenya, or that the Bush ad- ministration was behind the destruc- tion of the World Trade Center.” 71

While new media outlets sometimes offer biased slants on the news, the mainstream — or what some term the “elite” — media that still strive to be nonpartisan attract the larger audiences.

with a falsehood if they think it will score the points they want to score.” 8

A recent rise in partisan fact-checking organizations, such as Conservative Fact Check and the Media Matters- sponsored Political Correc- tion, has led to even more charges of bias.

“The term ‘fact check’ can easily be devalued, as peo- ple throw it onto any sort of an opinion that they have,” said Brendan Nyhan, an as- sistant professor of government at Dartmouth College. “The par- tisans who pay attention to politics are being conditioned to dis- regard the fact checkers when their own side gets criticized.” 9

Fact checking has proved to be a valuable resource, but media experts warn that it is no substitute for sampling a diverse range of news and views. As Northeastern University journalism pro- fessor Dan Kennedy noted, “Perhaps the biggest lie of all is that fact-checking can act as some sort of short-cut to the truth. For news consumers, there’s really no getting around the time-intensive work of paying attention to multiple sources of information and making their own judgments.” 10

— Robert Kiener

1 Glenn Kessler, “Bachmann’s claim that 70 percent of food stamps go to ‘bureaucrats,’ ” The Washington Post, March 19, 2013, www.washingtonpost. com/blogs/fact-checker/post/bachmanns- claim-that-70-percent-of-food-stamps- go-to-bureaucrats/2013/03/18/3f85d04 2-8ff5-11e2-bdea-e32ad90da239_blog. html. 2 Ibid. 3 “About Us,” Factcheck.org, www.fact check.org/about. 4 James Taranto, “The Pinocchio press,” The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 4, 2012, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000 87239639044430170457763147049349 5792.html. 5 As The New York Times pointed out, “The truncated clip came from a

speech Mr. Obama gave in 2008 talking about his opponent, Senator John McCain of Arizona.” The full Obama quote was: “Senator McCain’s campaign actually said, and I quote, ‘If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.’ ” See Michael Cooper, “Campaigns play loose with truth in a fact-check age,” The New York Times, Sept. 1, 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/09/01/us/politics/ fact-checkers-howl-but-both-sides-cling-to-false-ads.html. 6 Mike Burns, “Fox blames Romney loss on the ‘biased’ fact-checkers,” Media Matters, Nov. 7, 2012. 7 David Carr, “A last fact check: It didn’t work,” The New York Times, Nov. 6, 2012, http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/06/a-last-fact-check-it- didnt-work. 8 Cooper, op. cit. 9 Ibid. 10 Dan Kennedy, “PolitiFact and the limits of fact checking,” The Huffington Post, Dec. 13, 2011, www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-kennedy/politifact-and-the- limits_b_1144876.html.

The online fact-checking organization PolitiFact — a Pulitzer Prize-winning site started in 2007 by the St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times) —

uses a “pants on fire truth-o-meter” to show when a politician is not telling the truth.

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MEDIA BIAS

But, some media experts say, as the media landscape becomes more parti- san, that grip may become more and more tenuous.

CURRENT SITUATION

Agenda-Driven News

E ach day in more than 20 statesacross the country, some 35 re- porters are investigating topics such as government waste, corruption and fraud. But they are not employed by tradi- tional newspapers or television stations.

Rather, they are part of a nonprofit media program that has quietly been hiring and training reporters in state capitals. The Franklin Center for Gov- ernment and Public Integrity is an in- vestigative nonprofit based in Alexan- dria, Va., that is funded by the State Policy Network — a group of conser- vative think tanks — and other con- servative organizations such as the Rich- mond, Va.-based Sam Adams Alliance and by the Koch brothers.

The center, which the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) called “the most ambitious conservative news or- ganization you’ve never heard of,” hires journalists to report on govern- ment waste and public unions, usual- ly from a pro-free-market, anti-labor viewpoint. Its news stories are pub- lished on its website, Watchdog.org, and elsewhere. 72 Often, the stories are picked up by blogs and by often- understaffed regional newspapers, but only some of the papers tell readers the stories originated with the center.

Although the center describes itself as nonpartisan, the liberal Washington Monthly called it “more like a politi- cal attack machine than a traditional news machine.” 73 A Pew Research

study of Franklin Center-sponsored sto- ries found that 41 percent were pro- conservative versus 11 percent that fa- vored the left. 74

Some media observers also accuse the center of not being transparent. CJR said “a reader of one of the local and regional newspapers that run Franklin Center statehouse reporting might not even be aware of the Franklin Center and its agenda or ‘point of view.’ ” 75

Says Steven Greenhut, Franklin’s vice president of journalism, “I reject the description of us as partisan. We have a free-market philosophy and have done plenty of stories that have offended both conservatives and liberals, Re- publicans and Democrats.”

This sort of nonprofit, sometimes agenda-driven, news organization is a relatively new phenomenon. Since 2000, cash-strapped newspapers have lost 30 percent of their news personnel, ac- cording to Pew, and few can afford the personnel for complex or investigative stories. Nonprofit organizations have moved in to fill some of that void.

Think tanks and partisan organiza- tions, such as the conservative Heritage Foundation, also have begun hiring “news reporters” to help spread their messages to a wider audience. “This is the wave of the future,” says George Mason’s Lichter. “Heritage Foundation and others have realized they don’t need to depend on a few gatekeepers at major media out- lets to run their material. They merely have to put it on the Web themselves.”

Nonprofit organizations such as ProPublica produce nonpartisan, non- ideological investigative journalism, often in partnership with other major media outlets. The Kaiser Health Foundation produces objective health-related news stories under the brand Kaiser Health News. The stories are regularly pub- lished by newspapers such as The Wash- ington Post, but the stories are clearly identified as coming from those sources.

For-profit ideologically driven jour- nalistic operations also are proliferat- ing. In 2010 the conservative online

news site Daily Caller was launched with 21 reporters and editors. Other sites such as Breitbart.com report news with a conservative agenda. Lib- eral, for-profit news sites include The Huffington Post and the Talking Points Memo political blog.

“Efforts by political and corporate entities to get their messages into news coverage are nothing new,” according to Pew. “What is different now . . . is that news organizations are less equipped to question what is coming to them or to uncover the stories them- selves, and interest groups are better equipped and have more technologi- cal tools than ever.” 76

More is not necessarily better. “I have warned conservatives to be careful what they wish for,” explains the Media Research Center’s Bozell. “With the old media, at least there were rules, such as the two-source rule. In the new media there’s the no-source rule. Stories can be written by innuendo. The public is finding it harder to differentiate be- tween news and conjecture.”

Tweeting and More

A bout 35 percent of Americans turnto online sources for news, and as more and more do so, journalists have responded by using blogs, social media sites like Facebook and, more recently, Twitter to reach their audience.

“Tweet your beat” is a common re- frain among online journalists. Accord- ing to recent surveys, only 3 to 4 per- cent of the public gets its news either regularly or sometimes via Twitter, but that number is reportedly growing. 77

Twitter’s immediate and direct (and usually unedited) nature creates a more intimate relationship between journalist and reader than existed in the past. As a Pew Research Center report noted, “Twitter users appear to be more close- ly connected to professional journalists and news organizations than their social-

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At Issue: Do mainstream outlets have a political bias?yes

yes TIM GRAHAM DIRECTOR OF MEDIA ANALYSIS, MEDIA RESEARCH CENTER, ALEXANDRIA, VA.

WRITTEN FOR CQ RESEARCHER, MAY 2013

o ne can tell the tilt of the “mainstream” media merely bylistening to conservatives and liberals complain about thetone of the news. Conservatives demand that the media cover both sides of public policies and controversies. Liberals such as President Obama lament that the media too often pre- sent a “false balance” — that conservatives get any air time to be blatantly incorrect. This suggests the media’s default is to favor liberal views and downplay or ignore conservative ones.

In 2011, former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller wrote, “If the 2012 election were held in the newsrooms of America and pitted Sarah Palin against Barack Obama, I doubt Palin would get 10 percent of the vote. However tempting the newsworthy havoc of a Palin presidency, I’m pretty sure most journalists would recoil in horror from the idea.”

In 2008, the Pew Research Center surveyed 222 journalists and news executives at national outlets. Only 6 percent said they considered themselves conservatives, compared to 36 percent of the overall population that describes itself as conservative. Most journalists — 53 percent — claimed they are moderate; 24 percent said they were liberal and 8 percent very liberal.

Only 19 percent of the public consider themselves liberal. And it’s not much of a leap to presume many of the 53 percent who describe themselves as “moderate” are really quite liberal, since Keller thinks most are horrified by a President Palin.

Our studies of TV news repeatedly show a liberal tilt. Media Research Center news analysts reviewed all 216 gun- policy stories on the morning and evening shows of ABC, CBS and NBC in the month after the Newtown, Conn., school shooting. The results showed staggering imbalance: Stories ad- vocating more gun control outnumbered stories opposing gun control by 99 to 12, or a ratio of 8 to 1. Anti-gun sound bites were aired almost twice as frequently as pro-gun ones (228 to 134). Gun-control advocates appeared as guests on 26 occasions, compared to seven for gun-rights advocates.

But the most insidious bias is what the national media choose not to cover. For example, in 2012 there was only one network mention (on ABC) that Obama promised to cut the deficit “by half by the end of my first term in office.”

Inconvenient clips of tape go missing, while network anchors can find the time to ask the president about Dr. Seuss books and which superhero’s power he would like to possess.no

S. ROBERT LICHTER DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR MEDIA AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS, GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY; CO-AUTHOR, THE MEDIA ELITE

WRITTEN FOR CQ RESEARCHER, MAY 2013

l iberal media bias is an article of faith to conservatives, whosee the news as a reflection of journalists’ well-documentedliberal perspectives and Democratic voting preferences. However, the truth is more complicated.

First, the media aren’t the closed shop they used to be. The Internet hosts a thriving competition between left-wing and right-wing websites and blogs, and any reasonable defini- tion of the “mainstream media” would have to include Fox News and conservative-dominated talk radio.

Second, both conservative and liberal media watchdog groups have long lists of complaints about biased stories. What’s missing is evidence of a broad pattern of coverage that consistently favors one side. For example, a meta-analysis of every scholarly study of election news found no systematic bias in the amounts of good and bad press given to Republi- can and Democratic presidential candidates. Another study compared news coverage of measurable conditions, such as unemployment and murder rates, under Democratic and Re- publican administrations at every level of government. It too found no consistent evidence of partisan favoritism.

Journalists do suffer bouts of “irrational exuberance,” when they wear their feelings on their sleeves. Yet, even Barack Obama’s well-documented media honeymoon in 2008 and 2009 soon gave way to the highly critical coverage that every recent president has suffered. By 2012 Obama’s campaign coverage was as negative as Mitt Romney’s.

So why do conservatives see liberal bias at every turn? One answer is what’s called the “hostile media effect.” Parti- sans treat criticisms of their own side as bias, while assuming criticisms of the other side are well-founded.

But some aspects of political journalism don’t affect both sides equally. In their role as a watchdog over the rich and powerful, journalists see the world in terms of competing eco- nomic and political interests, with the media standing above the battle and serving the public interest. They are sympathetic toward those who define themselves the same way, such as “public interest” groups or social movements demanding equality for excluded groups.

Thus, what conservatives see as liberal bias is often the byproduct of a professional norm that runs parallel to liberal values. And journalists can filter their personal political views out of their stories more easily than their professional identities. So the problem for conservatives is not just that journalists are liberals, it’s that they’re journalists.

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networking counterparts when it comes to relying on them for online news.” 78

“Twitter is a venue for news but also opinion,” says Pews’ Jurkowitz. “It’s tempt- ing to say something memorable and pithy in 140 characters or less.” As some jour- nalist have found, however, tweeting and blogging opinion can prove disastrous:

• CNN’s senior editor for Middle Eastern Affairs, Oc- tavia Nasr, was fired after posting this comment on Twit- ter: “Sad to hear of t h e p a s s i n g o f S ay ye d M o h a m - mad Hussein Fadal- lah. One of Hezbol- lah’s giants I respect a lot.” CNN called her tweet “an error of judgment,” and said, “It did not meet CNN’s editori- al standards.” 79

• The Washington Post rebuked man- aging editor Raju Narisetti for tweeting, “Sen. Byrd (91) in hospital after he falls from ‘standing up too quickly.’ How about term limits. Or retirement age. Or common sense to prevail.” 80

Narisetti — who has since moved to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp as a senior vice president and deputy head of strategy — subsequently closed his Twitter feed. The Post promptly drew up new guidelines, saying its jour- nalists “must refrain from writing, tweet- ing or posting anything — including photographs or video — that could be perceived as reflecting political, racial, sexist, religious or other bias or favoritism that could be used to tarnish our journalistic credibility.” 81

Other papers have drawn up simi- lar conduct codes. “I think that the same

guidelines for reporters would hold true in social networking or any other ways they conduct themselves in their life

outside of work,” said Martin Kaiser, edi- tor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “It’s the same way [that] we don’t want reporters putting bumper stickers on their cars for candidates.” 82

Those who get their news from so- cial networks prefer unbiased reports, according to a recent Pew poll. More than half of the respondents preferred nonpartisan news: 52 percent of those who get their news on Twitter and 56 percent of those who get news on social networks prefer news sources without a particular point of view. 83

Not all journalists agree that opinion should be banned from reporters’ so- cial media outlets. “It’s time to get rid of the hoax that all reporters are ob- jective,” says journalism professor Alter- man. “I am all for journalists exposing their personal biases on Twitter, their blogs or wherever.”

Reuters takes a more balanced ap- proach in its social media policy. Ac-

knowledging that posting on Twitter and blogging can be like “flying with- out a net,” it reminds its reporters that

“social networks en- courage fast, constant, brief communications; journalism calls for com- munication preceded by fact-finding and thought- ful consideration. Jour- nalism has many ‘unsend’ buttons, including edi- tors. Social networks have none.” 84

Whatever side a jour- nalist takes on the so- cial media debate, there’s no denying the power of the new technology. This February, moments after NBC’s Todd claimed that charges of a liber- al media bias were “a mythology,” his Twitter feed and others were filled with tweets, pro and con. After watching the messages pour in,

he tweeted, “when you want to spark a conversation on Twitter, simply talk about media bias.” 85

OUTLOOK Dizzying Changes

T he numbers are grim. Nearly everyweek brings news of another news- paper or magazine cutting staff, shrink- ing the publication, reducing frequen- cy or even closing. Television stations, especially local operations, are trimming staff, and national networks are down- sizing and closing bureaus.

The Internet has essentially “blown up” the old media world and trans- formed the way news is delivered and consumed. Given the dizzying changes in the media world and the speed with

MEDIA BIAS

Continued from p. 416

Former Republican vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor Sarah Palin has been highly critical of the nation’s major newspapers and other mainstream media, calling them the “lamestream media”

and alleging they are biased against conservatives. Studies on media bias have produced mix results.

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which they have altered the landscape, many experts say it’s impossible to know the future of bias.

“Remember, it wasn’t until the 1990s that we even had Web browsers,” says George Mason University’s Lichter. “Since then, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have completely changed the way peo- ple interact with media. One thing is sure: We will see a lot more innovations that change the way people think about the media and its biases. It is difficult to see what’s ahead, but if current trends continue it looks like the media will be becoming increasingly partisan.”

Some even see an end of tradition- al “hard news” coverage. Bozell believes “journalism is losing its seriousness. The line between news and infotainment is being blurred.” Others worry that as news- papers continue cutting back and pro- ducing less hard and investigative news, readers will continue to desert them, as the Pew surveys and others suggest.

“Infotainment is luring more and more people away from solid journal- ism, so I think the news will be play- ing a lesser role in people’s lives than it does today,” says Sheppard, the Long Island University journalism professor. “Kim Kardashian has over 17 million Twitter followers, and many of those people are probably following her in- stead of reading the news. There’s a worry for the future of the republic!”

Many media experts claim the media will grow increasingly partisan, resem- bling the early days of journalism. “I see the wheel turning, not full circle, but toward more partisan narrow-casting,” says Sheppard. “We will see the media creating more partisan information, which will then be seized upon by ideologi- cal audiences.”

According to Sheppard and others, the financial success of Fox News and talk radio will likely spawn even more imitators, each hoping to serve a niche, partisan market. However, if the ideological middle disappears in the media, some worry that new media will merely be “preaching to the choir.”

A more fragmented media will offer more choice but would also further change the public’s perceptions of the press. “The decay of the traditional agen- da-setting function of the press will con- tinue, and with it the idea of ‘the pub- lic’ as a large, interconnected mass of news-consuming citizens,” said a recent Columbia School of Journalism study. “Choice in available media outlets will continue to expand, leading not so much to echo chambers as to a world of many overlapping publics of varying sizes.”

“Seen in this light, the long-term collapse of trust in the press is less a function of changing attitudes toward mainstream media outlets than a side effect of the continuing fragmentation of the American media landscape.” 86

Will there be an increase in trans- parency? “The media will be more open about their views because they real- ize people want a point of view in their news,” says CUNY journalism professor Alterman. “There will always be an audience for trustworthy news organizations such as The New York Times, but media with strong points of view will increase. Fewer people will complain about media bias.”

As long-established and valued news- papers face closure or purchase by par- tisan owners, many journalists believe the nation will be worse off. Many ques- tion how democracy can continue to function if voters become so inundat- ed by “advocacy journalism” that they give up trying to even make an ob- jective, informed decision or simply dis- engage from the democratic process al- together. (See sidebar, p. 412.)

“The world will not be a better place when these fact-based news or- ganizations die,” said former New York Times correspondent Chris Hedges. “We will be propelled into a culture where facts and opinions will be inter- changeable, where lies will become true and where fantasy will be ped- dled as news. I will lament the loss of traditional news. It will unmoor us from reality.” 87

Notes

1 “Obama and Clinton: The 60 Minutes inter- view,” “60 Minutes,” CBS News, Jan. 27, 2013, www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57565734/ obama-and-clinton-the-60-minutes-interview/. 2 Conor Friedersdorf, “Steve Kroft’s Softball Obama Interviews Diminish ‘60 minutes,’ ” The Atlantic, Jan. 29, 2013, www.theatlantic. com/politics/archive/2013/01/steve-krofts-soft ball-obama-interviews-diminish-60-minutes/27 2611/. 3 Erik Wemple, “Kroft on Obama-Clinton in- terview: 30 minutes not enough!” The Wash- ington Post, Jan. 28, 2013, www.washington post.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2013/01/28/ kroft-on-obama-clinton-interview-30-minutes- not-enough/. 4 Noel Sheppard, “The transformation of ‘60 Minutes’ — now the place for swooning, soft- ball interviews,” Fox News, Jan. 30, 2013, www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/01/30/trans formation-60-minutes-now-place-for-swooning- softball-interviews/. 5 Peggy Noonan, “So God Made a Fawner,” The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 7, 2013, http:// online.wsj.com/article/SB100014241278873234 52204578290363744516632.html. 6 Dylan Byers, “Gun vote triggers media out- cry,” Politico, April 18, 2013, www.politico.com/ story/2013/04/gun-debate-triggered-media-bias- 90306.html#ixzz2Rsfg1FgP. 7 “REPORT: Partisanship And Diversity On The Sunday Shows In 9 Charts,” Media Matters, April 5, 2013, http://mediamatters.org/research/ 2013/04/05/report-partisanship-and-diversity- on-the-sunday/193482. 8 “Ryan: As a Conservative I’ve long believed there’s inherent media bias,” Real Clear Politics, Sept. 30, 2012, www.realclearpolitics.com/ video/2012/09/30/ryan_as_a_conservative_ive_ long_believed_theres_inherent_media_bias.html. 9 “Liberal Media Bias: Fact or Fiction,” 4thEs- tate Project, July 2012, specialreports.4thestate. net/liberal-media-bias-fact-or-fiction/. 10 Quoted in Reed Richardson, “GOP-Fox Cir- cus Act,” The Nation, April 29, 2013, pp. 11-15. 11 “Fox News Viewed as Most Ideological Net- work,” Pew Research Center for People & the Press, Oct. 29, 2009, www.people-press.org/ 2009/10/29/fox-news-viewed-as-most-ideologi cal-network/. 12 “Black and White and Re(a)d All Over: the Conservative Advantage in Syndicated Op- Ed Columns,” Media Matters, 2007, http://media

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matters.org/research/oped/. 13 “Examining the ‘Liberal Media’ Claim,” Fair- ness & Accuracy in Reporting, June 1, 1998, http://fair.org/press-release/examining-the- quotliberal-mediaquot-claim/. 14 David Freddoso, “Press pass: In a new book a journalist explains how the media tilts the scales for Obama,” New York Post, Jan. 7, 2013, www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/books/press_ pass_CAbPXffNvA4ntrqbMNIkOI. 15 “4th Annual TV News Trust Poll,” Public Policy Polling, Feb. 6, 2013, www.publicpoli cypolling.com/main/2013/02/4th-annual-tv-news- trust-poll.html. 16 Joseph Cotto, “Bernie Goldberg on media bias in the ‘Unites States of Entertainment,’ ” The Washington Times, Oct. 25, 2012, http:// mobile.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/ conscience-realist/2012/oct/25/bernie-goldberg- media-bias-united-states-entertain/. 17 Joe Strupp, “Bill Keller Speaks Out On Judy Miller, Iraq War Coverage, And Fox News,” Media Matters, June 3, 2011, http://media matters.org/blog/2011/06/03/bill-keller-speaks- out-on-judy-miller-iraq-war/180289. 18 “4th Annual TV News Trust Poll,” op. cit. 19 “Pluralities Say Press is Fair to Romney, Obama,” Pew Research Center for the People & The Press, Sept. 22, 1012, www.people-press. org/files/legacy-pdf/9-22-2011%20Media%20 Attitudes%20Release.pdf. 20 Lymari Morales, “U.S. distrust in media hits new high,” Gallup Politics, Sept. 21, 2012, www.gallup.com/poll/157589/distrust-media- hits-new-high.aspx. 21 Larry Light, “The right’s propaganda vic- tory over the ‘liberal’ media,” The Huffington Post, Dec. 11, 2012, www.huffingtonpost.com/ larry-light/the-rights-propaganda-vic_b_22796 25.html. 22 “The State of the News Media 2013,” The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence

in Journalism, 2013, Key Findings, http://state ofthemedia.org/2013/overview-5/key-findings/. 23 Ibid. 24 Tim Groseclose, Left Turn (2011), pp. 99- 110. 25 Michael Kinsley, “Gore Carries Slate,” Nov. 7, 2000, Slate, www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ politics/readme/2000/11/gore_carries_slate.html. 26 David Broder, Behind the Front Page (2000), p. 332. 27 David Brooks, “Objectivity in Journalism,” Catholic Education Resource Center, www. catholiceducation.org/articles/media/me0054.html. 28 Alex S. Jones, “An Argument Why Journal- ists Should Not Abandon Objectivity,” Nieman Reports, Fall 2009, www.nieman.harvard.edu/ reports/article/101911/An-Argument-Why-Jour nalists-Should-Not-Abandon-Objectivity.aspx. 29 “Freedom from Bias, Reuters Handbook of Journalism,” Reuters, http://handbook.reuters. com/index.php?title=Freedom_from_bias. 30 Chris Hedges, “The Creed of Objectivity Killed the News,” TruthDig, Feb. 1, 2010, www. truthdig.com/report/item/the_creed_of_objec tivity_killed_the_news_business_20100131. 31 Ken Silverstein, “The Question of Balance: Revisiting the Missouri Election Scandal of 2004,” Harpers, May 8, 2007, http://harpers. org/blog/2007/05/the-question-of-balance- revisiting-the-missouri-election-scandal-of-2004/. 32 Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, “Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem,” The Washington Post, April 27, 2012, http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-04-27/ opinions/35453898_1_republican-party-party- moves-democratic-party/3. 33 Ibid. 34 Paul Farhi, “How biased are the media, really?” The Washington Post, April 27, 2012, http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-04-27/ lifestyle/35451368_1_media-bias-bias-studies- media-organizations.

35 “MRC launches $2.1 million campaign de- manding liberal media ‘tell the truth!’ ” News- busters, Oct. 5, 2010, http://newsbusters.org/ blogs/nb-staff/2010/10/05/new-2-1-million- campaign-demands-liberal-media-t0ell-truth. 36 Salvatore Colleluori, “Roger Ailes’ Latino out- reach at odds with Fox News’ anti-immigrant rhetoric,” Media Matters, Feb. 19, 2013, http:// mediamatters.org/research/2013/02/19/roger- ailes-latino-outreach-at-odds-with-fox-ne/192714. 37 Paul Colford, “ ‘Illegal immigrant’ no more,” The Definitive Source, April 2, 2013, http://blog. ap.org/2013/04/02/illegal-immigrant-no-more/. 38 Jim Naureckas, “The media didn’t fail on Iraq; Iraq just showed we have a failed media,” Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, March 25, 2013, www.fair.org/blog/2013/03/ 25/the-media-didnt-fail-on-iraq-iraq-just-showed- we-have-a-failed-media/. 39 Stephen Dinan, “Reporters applaud Obama’s slam on Romney’s wealth,” The Washington Times, Oct. 17, 2012, www.washingtontimes. com/blog/inside-politics/2012/oct/17/reporters- applaud-obamas-slam-romneys-wealth/. 40 Fred Barnes, “The four-year honeymoon,” The Weekly Standard, Jan. 14, 2013, www. weeklystandard.com/articles/four-year-honey moon_693769.html. 41 Peter Wehner, “Media bias in the age of Obama,” Commentary, Jan. 30, 2013, www. commentarymagazine.com/2013/01/30/media- bias-in-the-age-of-obama/. 42 Light, op. cit. 43 Jon Nicosia, “Top Romney strategist Stuart Stevens says media not ‘in the tank’ for Presi- dent Obama,” Mediate, Feb. 24, 2012, www. mediaite.com/tv/top-romney-strategist-stuart- stevens-says-media-not-in-the-tank-for-presi dent-obama/. 44 “Pluralities say press is fair to Romney, Obama,” Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, Sept. 25, 2012, www.people- press.org/2012/09/25/pluralities-say-press-is- fair-to-romney-obama/. 45 “Liberal media bias: fact or fiction?” op. cit. 46 “Romney discussed more than Obama in election coverage,” 4thEstate, Aug. 1, 2012, http://election2012.4thestate.net/romney-dis cussed-more-than-obama-in-election-coverage/. 47 “Low marks for the 2012 election,” Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, Nov. 15, 2012, www.people-press.org/2012/11/ 15/section-4-news-sources-election-night-and- views-of-press-coverage/press. 48 Si Sheppard, The Partisan Press (2008), p. 19. 49 Ibid., pp. 18-19.

MEDIA BIAS

About the Author Robert Kiener is an award-winning writer based in Ver- mont whose work has appeared in The London Sunday Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The Washington Post, Reader’s Digest, Time Life Books and other publications. For more than two decades he worked as an editor and correspondent in Guam, Hong Kong, Canada and England. He holds an M.A. in Asian studies from Hong Kong Uni- versity and an M.Phil. in international relations from Eng- land’s Cambridge University.

May 3, 2013 421www.cqresearcher.com

50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 Quoted in ibid., pp. 22-23. 53 S. Robert Lichter, “The Media,” in Peter H. Schuck, Understanding America: The Anato- my of an Exceptional Nation (2009), p. 187. 54 Geoffrey R. Stone, Perilous Times (2004), p. 73. 55 James L. Baughman, “The Fall and Rise of Partisan Journalism,” Center for Journalism Ethics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, April 20, 2011. 56 Paul Starr, “Governing in the age of Fox News,” The Atlantic, Jan. 1, 2010, www.theatlan tic.com/magazine/archive/2010/01/governing- in-the-age-of-fox-news/307845/. 57 Sheppard, op. cit., p. 22. 58 Lichter, p. 187. 59 Ibid., p. 188. 60 Sheppard, op. cit., p. 76. 61 William Safire, “On language; default, Dear Brutus,” The New York Times, Dec. 10, 1995, www.nytimes.com/1995/12/10/magazine/on- language-default-dear-brutus.html. 62 Lichter, op. cit., p. 190. 63 Ibid., p. 32. 64 Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, The Ele- ments of Journalism (2001), p. 62. 65 Alan Greenblatt, “Media Bias,” CQ Re- searcher, Oct. 15, 2004, p. 866. 66 Lichter, op. cit., p. 194. 67 Peter J. Boyer, “Under Fowler, FCC treated TV as commerce,” The New York Times, Jan. 19, 1987, www.nytimes.com/1987/01/19/arts/ under-fowler-fcc-treated-tv-as-commerce.html. 68 Lichter, op. cit., p. 205. 69 For survey results, see Sheppard, op. cit., p. 284. 70 Quoted in ibid., p. 280. 71 Baughman, op. cit. 72 Justin Peters, “Serious, point of view jour- nalism?” Columbia Journalism Review, Sept. 13, 2012, www.cjr.org/united_states_project/serious_ point-of-view_journalism.php?page=all. 73 Laura McGann, “Partisan Hacks,” The Wash- ington Monthly, May/June 2012, www.wash ingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1005.mc gann.html. 74 “Non-profit News: Assessing a New Land- scape in Journalism,” Pew Research Center, July 18, 2011, p. 11, www.journalism.org/sites/ journalism.org/files/Non-profit%20news%20 study%20FINAL.pdf. 75 Peters, op. cit. 76 “The State of the News Media 2013,” op. cit. 77 “In Changing News Landscape, Even Tele- vision Is Vulnerable,” Pew Research Center

for the People & The Press, Sept, 27, 2012, www.people-press.org/2012/09/27/section-2- online-and-digital-news-2/. 78 Ibid. 79 James Poniewozik, “CNN, Twitter and Why Hiding Journalists’ Opinions Is (Still) a Bad Idea,” Time, July 8, 2010, http://entertain ment.time.com/2010/07/08/cnn-twitter-and- why-hiding-journalists-opinions-is-still-a-bad- idea/. 80 John Morton, “Staying Neutral,” American Journalism Review, Dec./Jan. 2010, www.ajr. org/article.asp?id=4837. 81 Stephanie Gleason, “Going Public,” Amer- ican Journalism Review, December/January 2010, www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=4846. 82 Ibid.

83 “In Changing News Landscape, Even Tele- vision is Vulnerable,” op. cit. 84 Handbook of Journalism, Reuters, http:// handbook.reuters.com/index.php?title=Report ing_From_the_Internet_And_Using_Social_Media. 85 “Chuck Todd discusses the ‘mythology’ of media bias against conservatives,” Twitchy, Feb. 19, 2013, http://twitchy.com/2013/02/19/ chuck-todd-discusses-the-mythology-of-media- bias-against-conservatives/. 86 C. W. Anderson, Emily Bell and Clay Shirky, “Post-Industrial Journalism,” Columbia Jour- nalism School, 2013, p. 108, http://journalists resource.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/ TOWCenter-Post_Industrial_Journalism.pdf. 87 Hedges, op. cit.

FOR MORE INFORMATION Accuracy in Media, 4350 East West Highway, Suite 555, Bethesda, MD 20814; 202-364-4401; www.aim.org. Conservative media watchdog organization that searches for potential liberal bias.

American Society of News Editors, 209 Reynolds Journalism Institute, Missouri School of Journalism, Columbia, MO 65211; 573-884-2405; www.asne.org. Promotes ethical journalism, supports First Amendment rights, defends freedom of information and open government.

Center for Media and Public Affairs, 933 N. Kenmore St., Suite 405, Arlington, VA 22201; 571-319-0029; www.cmpa.com. Nonpartisan research and educational organization that studies the news and entertainment media.

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, 104 W. 27th St., Suite 10B, New York, NY 10001; 212-633-6700; www.fair.org. Liberal media watchdog organization that moni- tors bias and censorship.

Media Matters, P.O. Box 52155, Washington, DC 20091; 202-756-4100; www.media matters.org. Liberal media watchdog group that looks for potential conservative bias.

Media Research Center, 325 S. Patrick St., Alexandria, VA 22314; 703-683-9733; www.mrc.org. Conservative media watchdog group that searches for potential liberal bias.

Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, 1615 L St., N.W., Suite 700, Washington, DC 20036; 202-419-4300; www.people-press.org. Nonpartisan media research organization funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Poynter Institute for Media Studies, 801 Third St. South, St. Petersburg, FL 33701; 727-821-9494; www.poynter.org. Journalism education and research organization; ethics section of its website (www.poynter.org) includes articles, discussions, tips and case studies.

Society of Professional Journalists Ethics Committee, 3909 N. Meridian St., Indianapolis, IN 46208; 317-927-8000; www.spj.org/ethics.asp. Advises journalists on ethical matters; website contains ethics resources and a blog.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

422 CQ Researcher

Selected Sources

Bibliography Books

Alterman, Eric, What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News, Basic Books, 2004. A City University of New York journalism professor and

liberal journalist says the news media are far more slanted toward conservative than liberal thought, contrary to the claims of many conservative media critics.

Freddoso, David, Spin Masters: How the Media Ignored the Real News and Helped Reelect Barack Obama, Reg- nery Publishing, 2013. The editorial page editor of the conservative Washington

Examiner contends the mainstream media manipulated cov- erage of the 2012 presidential candidates, were obsessed with Mitt Romney’s gaffes and refused to cover stories that could have portrayed President Obama in a negative light.

Groseclose, Tim, Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind, St. Martin’s Press, 2011. A UCLA political science and economics professor concludes

that nearly all mainstream media have a liberal bias, based on a formula he uses to analyze political content in news stories.

Hunnicut, Susan (ed.), At Issue: Media Bias, Greenhaven Press, 2011. Media experts explore the history of bias, the meaning of

objectivity, whether the mainstream media are biased toward Democrats or Republicans, whether bias in financial report- ing contributed to the nation’s financial crisis and more.

Sheppard, Si, The Partisan Press: A History of Media Bias in the United States, McFarland & Co., 2008. An assistant political science professor at Long Island Uni-

versity places the debate about media bias in historical con- text. He tracks media bias from the early days of the na- tion’s partisan press to the rise of objectivity in the 20th century to today’s technology-driven media alternatives.

Stroud, Natalie Jomini, Niche News: The Politics of New Choice, Oxford University Press, 2011. A journalism professor at the University of Texas-Austin ex-

plores how consumers navigate the increasingly crowded and diverse new-media market and investigates the political implications of those choices.

Articles

Alterman, Eric, “Think Again: Why Didn’t the Iraq War Kill the ‘Liberal Media’?”American Progress, April 4, 2013, www.americanprogress.org/issues/media/news/2013/04/ 04/59288/why-didnt-the-iraq-war-kill-the-liberal-media. In reporting on the Iraq War, reporters ignored traditional

journalistic practices in order to dismiss counter-evidence

provided by numerous experts, says the author. Because of these lapses, the author claims, the bulk of the mainstream media and much of the blogosphere showed bias in favor of the war.

Carr, David, “Tired Cries of Bias Don’t Help Romney,” The New York Times, Sept. 30, 2012, www.nytimes.com/ 2012/10/01/business/media/challenging-the-claims-of- media-bias-the-media-equation.html?_r=0. Although the press is frequently accused of exhibiting a

liberal bias when conservative candidates drop in the polls, the media increasingly are made up of right-leaning outlets, says the Times media critic.

Chozik, Amy, “Conservative Koch brothers turning focus to newspapers,” The New York Times, April 21, 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/business/media/koch- brothers-making-play-for-tribunes-newspapers.html?page- wanted=all. Charles and David Koch, the billionaire supporters of lib-

ertarian causes, reportedly are considering trying to buy the Tribune Co.’s eight regional newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune. Some in the media in- dustry are asking whether they would use the papers to fur- ther a conservative agenda.

Friedersdorf, Conor, “Steve Kroft’s Softball Obama Inter- views Diminish ‘60 Minutes,’ ” The Atlantic, Jan. 29, 2013, www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/01/steve-krofts- softball-obama-interviews-diminish-60-minutes/272611. An Atlantic staff writer argues that “60 Minutes,” which

prides itself on tough investigations and probing interviews, limited its interview with President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to “softball” questions.

Stray, Jonathan, “How do you tell when the news is biased? It depends on how you see yourself,” Nieman Journal- ism Lab, June 27, 2012, www.niemanlab.org/2012/06/ how-do-you-tell-when-the-news-is-biased. Recent research shows that people detect and judge bias

in news reporting based on such factors as how they see themselves, not on what journalists write.

Reports and Studies

“The State of the News Media 2013: An Annual Report on American Journalism,” The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, March 18, 2013, http://stateofthemedia.org. The nonpartisan research group’s annual study includes re-

ports on how news consumers view the media’s financial struggles, how the news landscape has changed in recent years, an analysis of the main media sectors and an essay on digital journalism.

May 3, 2013 423www.cqresearcher.com

Fact Checking

Brown, Neil, “You Can Handle the Truth,” Tampa Bay (Fla.) Times, Sept. 9, 2012, p. P1, www.tampabay.com/news/ perspective/you-can-handle-the-truth/1250373. Fact-checking websites have made many politicians think

twice before making a statement on the record, says the edi- tor of the Tampa Bay Times.

Bui, Lynh, “Separating News From Noise,” The Wash- ington Post, April 13, 2013, p. B1, www.washingtonpost. com/local/education/schools-demanding-news-literacy- lessons-to-teach-students-how-to-find-fact-amid-fiction/2013/ 04/15/e67b9c26-963d-11e2-9e23-09dce87f75a1_story.html. Schools are focusing more on teaching students how to iden-

tify misinformation found on the Internet and social media.

Cooper, Michael, “Fact-Checkers Howl, But Campaigns Seem Attached to Dishonest Ads,” The New York Times, Sept. 1, 2012, p. A14, www.nytimes.com/2012/09/01/us/ politics/fact-checkers-howl-but-both-sides-cling-to-false- ads.html?_r=0. Many political campaigns continue to run televisions ads con-

taining statements that have been criticized by fact checkers.

Obama Administration

Batten, Taylor, “Obama, the Media and One Angry Read- er,” Charlotte (N.C.) Observer, Oct. 7, 2012, www.char lotteobserver.com/2012/10/07/3579557/obama-the-media- and-one-angry.html. Most journalists have a left-of-center political philosophy

but it is unfair to say the media aided President Obama’s re-election, says a columnist.

Kelly, Jack, “The Media Flack for Obama,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 27, 2012, p. B3, www.post-gazette.com/ stories/opinion/jack-kelly/the-media-flack-for-obama-637722/. The media tend to dismiss or ignore stories that reflect

poorly on President Obama, says a columnist.

Schaller, Thomas F., “How Come We Don’t Hear About ‘Conservative Media Bias’?” The Baltimore Sun, March 5, 2013, articles.baltimoresun.com/2013-03-05/news/bs-ed- schaller-media-bias-20130305_1_liberal-media-bias-fox- news-channel-opinion-media. The corporate-owned American media are hardly liberal

when it comes to Obama’s tax policies and government reg- ulations, says a political science professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Objectivity

Harper, Christopher, “Journalists’ Ideals of Objectivity

Unattainable,” The Washington Times, Feb. 28, 2013, p. A5, www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/28/harper- journalists-ideals-of-objectivity-unattaina/?page=all. Journalists cannot be consistently objective without their

personal biases being reflected in their reporting, says a Tem- ple University journalism professor.

Rutten, Andy, “A Solid Democracy Relies on Fair, Ob- jective Journalism,” South Bend (Ind.) Tribune, July 15, 2012, p. C11, articles.southbendtribune.com/2012-07-15/ news/32688630_1_journalism-opinion-objective. Among the nation’s biggest problems is a lack of objective,

thorough journalism, says a columnist.

Sullivan, Margaret, “When Reporters Get Personal,” The New York Times, Jan. 6, 2013, p. SR12, www.nytimes.com/ 2013/01/06/public-editor/when-reporters-get-personal.html. Personal biases in reporting can help expose the truth in

some instances but at the risk of making a journalist’s work seem to lack balance, says a columnist.

Watchdogs

Farhi, Paul, “FCC Seeks News Transparency,” The Washing- ton Post, Jan. 4, 2012, p. C1, articles.washingtonpost. com/2012-01-03/lifestyle/35440083_1_fcc-report-corie- wright-stations. Media watchdogs have praised a Federal Communications

Commission proposal that would require commercial TV stations to disclose the corporate interests funding their newscasts.

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CHICAGO STYLE Jost, Kenneth. “Remembering 9/11.” CQ Researcher, September

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