Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.insight From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: THE LAST WORD Date: Mon, 23 Nov 92 11:35:36 EST Message-ID: \SE THE LAST WORD \HD The Politics of Media Bias \BY Woody West \CR INSIGHT Try this on for size - the campaign just interred revealed the press as unmitigably biased, maliciously negative and as full of prunes as a large Danish. And there was hardly a bother to make any pretense about it. A postmortem of media performance ought to top the agenda of public conversation as the dust settles. Will it? Probably not. Because: 1) The media control the conduits of discussion; 2) The media are disingenuous in contending they are unfailingly fair, as a bullfighter contends that the bull really enjoys the ring; 3) The sheer amount of "information" (a term of craft that begs the question of good, bad or something in between) overloads the circuits and dulls concern; and 4) The public has learned to separate the occasional grain of wheat from bushels of chaff. Mix and match. As a general thing in jeremiads about the media, the print press has been exculpated. That's less so now - newspapers major and minor pretty well have accepted being the tail of the television dog and wag in the reflected light. So pervasive was the spin and frequently nasty coverage (with George Bush the overwhelming recipient) that there must be an explanation besides the obvious ideological tilt. Just so. First, the dominant media have institutionally a left-of-center predisposition, to put it no stronger. When this is asserted, the media flacks retort that 'tain't so - and, anyway, even if it were, personal predilection is subdued in the reportage. Umm. A critic can cite a growing stack of studies. In addition, a hefty anecdotal case can document the bias. (To those who snort: Recall Thoreau, that some circumstantial evidence is stronger than other, as when you find a trout in the milk.) Second, there is the incessant and routine negativity of the press. Yes, yes, a dog biting a man is not news. But we're talking here of proportion. The press constantly presents the worst face of the country and its leaders, of events, of prospects. It is astounding how thoroughly the nightly newscasts are permeated by unalloyed bad news - worse, much of it is merely purported bad news. A premier example is economic coverage, what can be called the "comma-but" technique - the economy in the last quarter grew by 2.7 percent, less than robust but growth nonetheless. As the press (and especially the networks) massage it, the story usually goes something like this: "Modest economic gain was reported today, but it does not help Joe Matiatz of Hiho, Ind., the father of six and sole support of his parents and three dachshunds [footage of glum Mr. and Mrs. Matiatz and the dogs], who's been out of work since the Ford administration . . ." This is followed by the correspondent's somber assertion that "many economists" dispute the supposed gain. Third, the platoons of the media now come out of journalism school boot campus imbued with the belief that the true role of the trade is adversarial. Allied to this is the propensity of those in the trade to presume to call the moral balls and strikes, if you will - in the news "columns" as opposed to editorials. The interminable bleating about "negative campaigning" suggests, for instance, that few of the pressies have read any American history or, if they have, have utterly forgotten it. The consequent posture of moral arbiter would be more convincing if it weren't so uninformed and "progressively" partisan. Fourth, it is a dull reporter today who does not fancy becoming a player in public affairs, rather than slogging along quaintly as a channel of accurate data. Tool the old career cannily and there's a talking-heads TV show in the future, a book maybe, celebrity. The celeb factor is poisonous. Journalists are now charter members of "the chattering class" - also known as the cultural elite. What might follow from so dolorous a diagnosis if enough of the public gets its fur up? It is not inconceivable that protective interpretations of the First Amendment could be chipped away by a judiciary disenchanted with today's unrestricted expression, or statutorily assailed. That's heresy in the trade, and it would be an unhapy, even dangerous, eventuality. The more likely possibility, in an emerging thesis, is that journalists quickly will become irrelevant. The ubiquitous TV camera, with its sense of seeming instantly to convey reality, continues to expand its range. Why will the viewer need an intermediary to describe what he sees (or thinks he sees) on the screen? In fact, the correspondent's knowledge of what's pictured often is no greater, and often less, than the viewer's. Politicians aren't dummies, of course, as was evident in their stampede this year to the TV "interview" shows to eliminate the middle man, the reporter. The gentlemen and ladies of print can be smug about this at their peril; given the primacy of TV, the politicians and apparatchiks will pay them less and less heed. "Witnesses [in the Westmoreland libel suit] with a claim to any sort of journalistic affiliation considered themselves a class apart, by turns lofty, combative, sullen, lame, condescending, speciously pedantic, but, above all, socially, and as it were, constitutionally arrogant, in a surprisingly unintelligent and uneducated way," wrote Renata Adler in her 1986 book, Reckless Disregard. "Who are these people?" And we haven't even talked about Hollywood and Murphy Brown. +++ This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM