Shape Of Earth: Views Differ

Time's James Poniewozik notices that the news media is biased:

Often, moderate bias is just the result of caution, but the effect is to bolster centrist political positions — not least by implying that they are not political positions at all but occupy a happy medium between the nutjobs. Meanwhile, conservatives see moderate bias as liberal, and liberals see it as conservative — letting journalists conclude that it's not bias at all.

Moderate bias also grows from a related phenomenon: status-quo bias. Journalists, like anyone, have a built-in bias toward believing that what was true yesterday will be true tomorrow. Establishment news outlets grow cozy and comfortable with other establishments. One reason some journalists insufficiently questioned the run-up to the Iraq war and underestimated the housing bubble was that they listened to their usual, credentialed sources — and the history of the past decade is the history of the experts being wrong.

And especially in the top ranks of journalism, there's class bias. If I wanted to look at potential conflicts of interest in reporters covering bank bailouts, for instance, I'd be less concerned about their party affiliation than whether they're based (like me) in New York City, where the economy lives and dies on finance.

Good for Poniewozik - a teevee critic - for actually getting this mostly right. Ironically, though, he succumbs to some false equivalence at the end of his column - Rachel Maddow and Sean Hannity are two sides of the same coin, which ignores the importance of facts. The meaning of a fact can be argued but the fact itself cannot be disputed. Maddow (or Olbermann) pointing out that about 47 million Americans lack healthcare coverage is not the same as Hannity (or O'Reilly) screaming about "death panels".

Reporters work themselves into a frothy fury when they hear themselves called "stenographers" but their operating principle of two-sides-to-every-story-report-them-both (what I call the Cult of Objectivity) is exactly that - stenography.

If I had to makes an educated guess - and this is nothing more than that - the "news" media leans slightly left on social issues (e.g., abortion, gay marriage) but almost hard right on economic issues (The economy is in recovery! Increasing unemployment and stagnant wages? What? Everybody I know has a job!).

And horse race journalism - Who's winning! Who's losing! - is simply lazy and serves no purpose but to make the David Broders of the world feel good about themselves.

.

Comments

[gyma]

This is one thing the UK has right. They are called 'News Readers.'

And don't forget the part about what is reported - all that crap that means jack shit to the world but is soooo easy. The balloon boys, the missing blonde women, the ONE fucking dead cat from H1N1. Now I really need to know that stuff, don't I?

Ack, I hate that journalists no longer provide perspective. It was my #1 complaint about the Wall Street companies getting vaccine. Yes, 1,400 is a big number, but compared to what?! It's only big if you have 1,500 employees, not if you have a million.

/rant

[spork_incident]

Good rant.

One thing, though, in fairness: The original crop of US news anchors really were journalists, coming out of print and radio. Today, of course, one just needs a communications degree (about as useless a degree as one can get), be blandly attractive, learn to read a prompter, and work up through the farm system of local "news".

But American corporations want us to believe that Charlie Gibson is out chasing down the stories that matter.

.