Friday, July 23, 2004
Thoughts on Media Bias
James Lilek's has more thoughts on the media reaction if instead of Sandy Berger, Dick Cheney had been caught smuggling out and disposing of potentially incriminating documents related to the 9/11 attacks, before they had a chance to be turned over to the 9/11 committee:
We wouldn't be hearing about impeachment, we'd be debating the probity of rolling a guillotine toward the White House, and whether the heads should be arranged alphabetically on the fence spikes, or by seniority.Meanwhile the NY Times seems to think the Sandy Berger story is actually a Republican scandal. CBS and ABC news agree that the real story is the interesting timing of the story, just before the Democratic Convention. And alert Instapundit reader Rob Wiles mentions that the recent revelations on Sandy Berger were not even brought up last night on NBC Nightly News.
Again, this demonstrates that if you're getting your news from the traditional sources, you're getting sanitized coverage. Why? Every news entity tends to have a narrative or a philosophy which represents their understanding of the way the world works. Because journalists are overwhelming left-leaning, their political philosophy can be simplified to: Republicans are warmongering tools of exploitative corporations and the wealthy, while Democrats are peace-loving, selfless, tireless workers for the common man.
Journalists' time and space are limited, regardless of the medium, so you're not going to get a lot of coverage on an issue, unless journalists think it is important to their narrative -- something you need to know to understand why the world is how it is. In this case, they see the Sandy Berger scandal as at best unimportant -- I mean, c'mon we all know Sandy Berger is a Democrat and so he is one of the good guys: Time magazine's Joe Klein declared, "[T]he notion that he would do something mortally sinful is about as likely as Brent Scowcroft or George Shultz or name your foreign policy priesthood member. This is a very solid, decent guy. I'd be shocked if there was something really terrible that he did here." At worst this is a Republican-planted story to draw attention away from the Democratic National Convention or the 9/11 report itself. And what self-respecting journalist would allow himself or herself to be taken off-message by a scheme of the Republicans?
Lileks' experience is becoming the norm for those who want to stay well-informed:
A while ago I noted that I had ceased to rely on my paper for international and national news. The web's competitive advantage is overwhelming. Now I turn straight to the Metro section, because the web can't yet match the resources and reach of a newspaper. If I were king of the forest, I'd turn the A section into the Metro section. For most papers beside the big swingin' Johnson dailies, the A section is a lost cause; its lunch has not only been eaten but digested and excreted, and most newspapers think it's still on the plate with its garnish intact. Newspapers to me no longer look like great sober edifaces inscribing the details of history as the parade clatters past. They just look like group blogs. Without the honest admission of bias.
