I’m not sure exactly when, but a few months ago, I happened to
catch the last half of a televised debate on the question of
whether there is a liberal bias in the mainstream American media.
The entirety of the case for the negative was, apparently, that (a)
conservatives dominate talk radio (yes, but Rush Limbaugh doesn’t
pretend to be an unbiased source of news — CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, the
New York Times, etc. do), and (b) the mainstream media
could not possibly have a liberal bias because before the war with
Iraq, most members of the media believed the Bush “line” that
Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. The team for the
affirmative was Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson. In the portion I
saw, Laura Ingraham didn’t say much of anything, and Tucker Carlson
spent most of his time either simply guffawing (not an effective
debating tactic) or actually agreeing with Al Franken. It was a
disappointing display.
I was reminded of this recently when I happened across one of
the more blatant liberal hack jobs that I had seen in awhile. This
one was courtesy of CBSNEWS.com reporter Jarrett Murphy. Since this
“news story” was printed in the “Politics” section, apparently Mr.
Murphy and his editors at CBS didn’t think that standards of “fair
and balanced” needed to apply.
You could tell that this article, entitled “Bush Team’s Fuzzy
Math,” was not going to be remotely even-handed by the
accompanying, obviously doctored, “photo” of President Bush. Bush’s
coloration was a greenish-gray, his mouth set in a frown. Behind
him was a black background on which you can faintly make out math
equations. The article itself was nothing more than a recitation of
critics’ charges regarding Bush’s budget and job growth
projections, and sought to question Bush’s honesty because the OMB
and CBO (each using different assumptions) have different cost
projections for the Medicare expansion bill. The one sacrifice to
fair play was the line: “There’s often debate in Washington over
numbers, and past administrations have also been accused of fudging
it.” But that was immediately followed by: “But the Bush team’s
math seems unusually sloppy to some long-time observers.” No one
outside of those “some long-time observers” got any say in the
article. Mr. Murphy, however, did manage to throw this in:
“Numbers have always been key to Mr. Bush’s image. He lost the
2000 popular vote by 540,000 votes, but won Florida by 537. He
based his case for war in Iraq partly on 25,000 liters of anthrax
for which Iraq allegedly failed to account; they haven’t been
found.”
These “numbers” had nothing to do with Mr. Murphy’s article, but
he managed a contortion to make these swipes “relevant.” And Saddam
“allegedly” failed to account for his anthrax? Was Mr. Murphy
suggesting that perhaps Saddam actually did account for it, but
that his accounting has been suppressed by some Bush-U.N.
conspiracy? Well at least the not-so-subtle attack on Bush’s
legitimacy didn’t read that he “allegedly” won Florida. I guess we
can be thankful for that.
NEWS BIAS IS USUALLY more subtle. It’s usually manifested in what
stories make the cut and which don’t. And, of course, how they are
presented. How many times have you seen a newspaper article or a
news anchor lead a story with something like this: “Bush policies
are designed to kill all poor people, starting with women,
children, and minorities,” then continuing “that, according to a
new study by Physicians against Capitalism.” And somehow studies
done by liberal groups — Physicians for Social Responsibility,
Citizens for Tax Justice, People for the American Way — always
seem to make the news. How many times have you seen a study by the
Cato Institute or the Heritage Foundation be the focus of a news
story in the mainstream media?
The news media’s fascination with the charges concerning
president Bush’s National Guard service was also telling. John
Kerry’s 1971 false testimony to Congress accusing American soldiers
of committing war crimes in Vietnam is not news because it is old,
but charges of Bush being AWOL at roughly the same time is news
because it is a new accusation. Well, actually it was an old
accusation that was dealt with during the 2000 race. But the media
loved it. I remember watching CNN’s cute Rudi Bakhtiar exclaim with
glee to the CNN reporter on the story, something like: “And Bush’s
commander says he never saw him! Isn’t that so?!” It turns out to
have been a hollow story, but she was very excited for a while.
I also remember CNN Headline News’ treatment of the Republicans’
30-hour-long House floor debate designed to bring attention to the
Democrats’ stonewalling of Bush judicial nominees. CNN previewed
the story with the subtext “Master Debaters.” Take out the “De” and
you know what the ever so clever producers of CNN Headline News
think of Republicans.
And now, of course, we have the example of the treatment of the
Bush campaign ads. You know, the ones with brief images of the
destruction wrought on September 11th while the voice over talks
about challenges that we have faced, and met, over the past few
years. After just one day the news media was full of
“outraged” relatives of 9/11 victims, and, of course, the
excoriating words of Harold Schaitberger, president of the
International Association of Fire Fighters, accusing Bush of
exploiting the tragedy of 9/11 for political gain.
That these people found their way to the airwaves so quickly is
testimony to the fact that they had their “outrage” and their press
conferences primed for the ready, knowing that Bush would likely
have some reference to 9/11 in his upcoming ads. And the media were
more than willing to accept them as representatives of most 9/11
families.
A typical headline was “Sept. 11 Families Disgusted by Bush
Campaign Ads” (Reuters, March 4th). Most all stories carried Harold
Schaitberger’s comments, and did identify him as a strong and vocal
Kerry backer and his union as having endorsed Kerry. The presented
“outraged 9/11 family members” were usually members of a group
called “September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows.” Many
articles, however, did not mention this fact, including the Reuters
piece which quoted Colleen Kelly, but neglected to mention that she
runs Peaceful Tomorrows. But was this just a meaningless
oversight?
None of the news stories (as far as I could find) that did
report a Peaceful Tomorrows connection ever said anything about the
organization, other than that it is a group of relatives of
September 11 victims. (A Fox News story, however, did contain a
link to its website, showing why Fox is reviled by liberals.) None
of the stories, for instance, reported that Peaceful Tomorrows has
been accusing president Bush of “exploiting the tragedy of
September 11 for political gain” ever since it came into existence
about two years ago, long before any Bush political ads were even
in the works. Nor did they report that Peaceful Tomorrows is an
anti-Bush political organization that “seeks effective nonviolent
responses to terrorism” and accuses the Bush administration of
pursuing “unilateral and unpopular policies that turned the world
against the United States and made us less secure.” Is it odd that
almost no news organizations thought that these facts were relevant
when reporting on the “outrage”? These stories should have more
correctly been headlined “Liberal Anti-Bush Groups Disgusted by
Bush Campaign Ads.”
I WONDER IF USING THE tragedy of September 11th to advance a
liberal foreign policy agenda is “disgusting.” I also wonder if
disingenuously claiming “offense” and “outrage” to references of
9/11 for the purpose of damaging a political rival qualifies as
“exploiting the tragedy of September 11.” Is it “unconscionable”
for Bush to use muted images of 9/11 in a commercial but okay for
others to use 9/11 to attack Bush?
Apparently the major media outlets that have fallen over
themselves to book Kristen Breitweiser think so. Breitweiser, a
harsh anti-Bush firebrand, September 11th widow, and friend of the
“Bush Knew” kooks, uses her appearances, in which she is ostensibly
supposed to represent a 9/11 victim’s view of the
“inappropriateness” of Bush’s ads, to launch into her trademark
Bush-bashing calumnies like: “Three thousand people were murdered
on president Bush’s watch,” and “[I]n the early morning hours when
this country was under attack our Commander in Chief was drinking
milk and eating cookies with second graders.” If a group of 9/11
families holds a news conference in the near future criticizing
John Kerry’s foreign policy and his history of voting to cut
intelligence budgets, I wonder if Reuters and other news
organizations will cover it as they have covered this episode.
Though Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson couldn’t quite
effectively make the argument that there is a liberal bias in the
mainstream American media, it nonetheless is there. And every
presidential election year it bursts so uncontrollably out into the
open that even Al Franken should be able to recognize it.
