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Tim Cavanaugh | September 13, 2004

Matt Welch outfoxes the Fox hunters.

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|9.13.04 @ 6:26PM|#

Red and Blue journalism will never displace yellow!

Kevin Carson|9.13.04 @ 6:26PM|#

I'd certainly prefer to see newspapers of all editorial persuasions actually drawing conclusions from the facts under their noses, instead of studiously trying to avoid doing so. It's a funny kind of "objectivity" that treats acknowledging the truth as evidence of bias.

For example, instead of professional stenographers (er, journalists) endlessly repeating the latest "he said" from Bush and Kerry over the Texas Air National Guard documents, I'd like to have seen the mainstream press asking the kinds of serious questions that have been raised by the AWOL Project. But that would require diverting valuable resources from the *real* job of journalists: like buying hair care products, or standing in front of a courthouse with a microphone.

|9.13.04 @ 8:22PM|#

Still, the lions of journalism -- major dailies, network news broadcasts, Time and Newsweek -- were able to keep their turf almost totally free from the perceived poison of identifiable politics. That is, until competition cracked open the door and Rupert Murdoch rammed a bulldozer through

It sounds like you're claiming that the major media had no discernable political bias until Rupert Murdoch showed up. That's not a very credible claim. I don't think many people have ever had trouble discerning the "identifiable politics" of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the LA Times, the Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, and the major TV networks.

I'd like to have seen the mainstream press asking the kinds of serious questions that have been raised by the AWOL Project

The AWOL Project is raising the same questions as the major media is. Yawn.

Matt Welch|9.13.04 @ 8:40PM|#

Dan -- No, that's not what I was saying; my wording was bad.

"Totally free from the perceived poison of partisan politics" is meant as an internal approach; i.e., newsrooms had convinced themselves, and were operating under the presumption of, the idea that partisan politics was NOT dictating their editorial choices.

This is how to this day big-city newspapers (let's take my hometown L.A. Times as an example) can reject the label "liberal paper," even if they are presented with evidence that, say, 90 percent of the newsroom votes Democrat. (That number is made up, but not implausible). The point for them is that they are attempting to be impartial, balanced, fair, etc., and that that approach, which Fox cheerfully rejects while wickedly adopting the same J-school language, is enough to overcome the heavy Democratic orientation.

From a results point of view, the bias that ensues therefore tends to be more unconscious than deliberate -- it's the old fish-don't-feel-the-water bit. If someone stood up at the L.A. Times, and announced "I think we should do X story because it will make Bush look bad," he would likely be dressed down by the editor in chief. If you did the same at Fox, substituting the word "Kerry," people would probably just laugh.

This is all an important distinction, and the source of much heat in the Media Bias wars (especially between the Establishment Media and the unwashed masses, as currently playing in a Rathergate Theatre near you). L.A. Times reporters (though, interestingly, not the editor) tend to quickly tune out charges of Liberal Bias, because A) those people just don't understand that we're trying to be balanced and comprehensive,, and B) the criticisms are rarely couched in the same kind of mannered, quasi-objective politesse that newspaper cultures have produced.

This, incidentally, is the subject of my *next* column, which hopefully includes wording that is not so unclear.

|9.13.04 @ 11:25PM|#

Your description of the newsroom mentality reminds me a lot of the mentality white southerners had towards accusations of racism during (and for a decade or so following) the Jim Crow years. "How dare you call me racist, I'm just traditional, yadda yadda". It's a roundabout way of saying "I can't be biased, all right-thinking people believe the exact same thing I do."

Anyway, I'm not convinced that the Fox News newsroom would be laugh off an "anti-Kerry" pitch while, say, CBS would condemn it. If I recall correctly, most of the journalists working for Fox are Democrats.

|9.14.04 @ 9:24AM|#

"But that would require diverting valuable resources from the *real* job of journalists: like buying hair care products, or standing in front of a courthouse with a microphone."

Kevin,

"As you can see, the winds have really picked up here. There's debris flying around, and low lying areas are beginning to flood."

|9.14.04 @ 11:15AM|#

Welch wrote:

Having nonpartisan, elite news organizations staffed overwhelmingly by Democratic-leaning journalists -- a recent study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press showed that newsroom liberals outnumber conservatives by 5 to 1 on the national level, 3 to 1 locally -- creates an obvious demand for right-leaning news in the growing number of markets that enjoy competition.

Welch's POV demonstrates the pervasive media groupthink, an indication that Fox and talk radio have succeeded in moving the perceived "center" into right-wing bias.

Reporting that used to be regarded as simply factual is now labelled "liberal" because the authoritarians who have co-opted the media seek to discredit actual, demonstratable truths, like: (1.) George Bush lost the 2000 election; (2.) The overwhelming scientific consensus is that global warming is due to human activity; and (3.) marijuana is effective medicine.

Journalists who investigate these three issues (and many others) for themselves, analyze them objectively, and report what they find are mislabeled "liberal" when they're actually being simply factual.

|9.14.04 @ 11:35AM|#

"The overwhelming scientific consensus is that global warming is due to human activity"

Care to support that?

|9.14.04 @ 12:44PM|#

(1.) George Bush lost the 2000 election.

Care to support that?

|9.14.04 @ 1:25PM|#

In the comments window, there's not enough room to persuade those who refuse to consider evidence -- there's not enough bandwidth on the entire Internet to convince a mule to reason.

But in case some reader is vaguely interested, here are two places to start: An independent reporter, examining claims and counterclaims regarding global warming, will find that most of the arguments against human agency are employed by companies (or their "think tank" propaganda arms) who see costs in addressing the problems.

The climate scientists most widely respected by their peers for their scholarship who are not paid shills for polluters agree that global warming is due to human activity; this is consensus, not certainty. See also
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/global_warming/index.cfm

With respect to the 2000 election, it is undisputed that Gore won the popular vote with hundreds of thousands of votes to spare. An unbiased reporter who gets to the bottom of the story of the 2000 Florida vote finds that the proper legal standard for hand recounts is that of voter intent, and that applying that proper legal standard yields a Gore victory in Florida. Two independent audits of the vote after the fact agreed on this conclusion. Gore's victory margin would have been greater if not for the illegal interference by Bush's brother and his campaign operative, Harris, prior to voting day.

The comments thread is not the place for a brief on either issue; I urge you to investigate for yourself.

|9.14.04 @ 7:02PM|#

An independent reporter, examining claims and counterclaims regarding global warming, will find that most of the arguments for human agency are employed by grant seeking employees at state agencies or state universities or "environmentalist" fundraising scaremongers who want to impose the costs of addressing the non-problems on taxpayers.

Why would a leftist support a myth that was started by Margaret Thatcher to destroy the Coal Miners Union.

http://www.john-daly.com/history.htm

"Mrs Thatcher could not have promoted the global warming issue without the support of her UK political party. And they were willing to give it. Following the General Election of 1979, most of the incoming Cabinet had been members of the government which lost office in 1974. They blamed the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) for their 1974 defeat. They, therefore, desired an excuse for reducing the UK coal industry and, thus, the NUM's power. Coal-fired power stations emit CO2 but nuclear power stations don't. Global warming provided an excuse for reducing the UK's dependence on coal by replacing it with nuclear power."

An unbiased reporter who gets to the bottom of the story of the 2000 Florida vote finds that the hand recounts demanded by the democrats were illegal since the reason for the undervotes was not because the card reading machines had malfunctioned but because voters had failed to mark the ballots clearly (ie punch out the chads).
The only legal reason for a hand recount in 2000 was a malfunction of the card readers. The recounts were an attempt by Democrat officials to convert unmarked ballots into votes for algore. Oh and last time I checked the constitution the popular vote has nothing to do with the election of the prez. Furthermore gore's plurality represented a statistically insignificant number of votes. But if it'll make you feel any better sometimes I wish Gore had stolen the election.

See two can play at the game of proving objectivity by making unfounded assertions.