Biased about Bias

The hunt for ideology becomes an ideology.

Matt Welch from the December 2004 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

"Old media's refusal to note what ordinary Americans are talking about is the latest in a series of stubborn refusals that began with elitist indifference and ideological bent and which are ending in irrelevance," Hewitt thundered.

Of course, calling Hewitt biased is like saying the sky is blue.� The subtitle of his most recent book is Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends on It. Every day, in his nationally syndicated show, weblog, and online columns, Hewitt fights for his political party and makes predictions that don't come true--while accusing the media of incorrigible bias.

This is a common tack, and completely understandable. Once you've discovered a useful decoding device for consuming media--and there is little doubt that employees of the mainstream media generally swing left--it's tempting to chalk up every nominally anti-Republican story as the result or even direct intention of media bias.

Tempting, and wrong. Developing hypersensitivity to hidden ideology can easily become a distorting ideology of its own, especially when inconvenient facts, such as journalism's culture of rejecting overt political agendas, are brushed aside. "It is the tragic story of a 'mental short circuit,'" Vaclav Havel wrote in a marvelous 1985 essay on a different topic. "Why bother with the never ending, genuinely hopeless search for truth when a truth can be had so readily, all at once, in the form of an ideology or doctrine? Suddenly it is all so simple. Think of all the difficult questions which are answered in advance!"

When you already "know" that the media are objectively anti-Bush, it's not such a stretch to assert, as U.S. News & World Report columnist Michael Barone did in May, that "today's press works to put the worst possible face on the war." Or to join Andrew Sullivan in nicknaming the BBC the "Baghdad Broadcasting Company."

The main problem with these characterizations is that they are wrong. The ideology of bias detection begets the shortcut of hyperbole, which then demands escalation when the conditions being described worsen. Many of the same people who roasted Dan Rather lapped up Judith Miller's discredited New York Times reporting about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. People believe what they want to hear. What are bloggers and other media watchdogs willing to believe about the target of their wrath?

"Because you ignored us," Breitbart says, "because you ignored Rush and Drudge and God knows who else, we decided to go out and create our media. And I think that what we're doing is building up something that may be bigger and better."

Bigger, probably. Better, arguably. More factual...we'll see.