Media Bias? What Media Bias?

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | Tuesday, June 1, 2004 | Adam Sparks

[presidio9]

The "red states," where Americans overwhelmingly voted for President Bush in 2000, are often derisively called "flyover country" by the liberal elites. Flying over the nation is the only experience many of these people -- particularly those in the Eastern media establishment -- have of the heartland of America.

The media deride the good folk in much of flyover country by using additional condescending regional labels such as "the Bible Belt" or "the Rust Belt." The Bible Belt is ridiculed because this region is where folks believe that God, family and country matter. The Rust Belt? Well, to them, that's just a has-been region that really never was much of anything even when it was a thriving steel/industrial center. The basic idea is, if you don't live in major media centers on the East or West coasts, well, you're a gun-toting yahoo living in the backwater who needs to be educated.

This belief explains, in part, why the Fox News network is beating out cable rivals CNN and CNBC and the other alphabet channels. Fox, for example, is the one news station that respects our troops, our president and our nation even while doling out fair criticism -- much like the good folks in the red states, and unlike much of the balance of the media (including the press in the red states).

Now, a new poll of 547 national and local reporters, producers, editors and executives across the country administered by the nonprofit and highly respected Pew Research Center confirms the distrust many in flyover country have for much of the media -- namely, wariness about its liberal bias.

People in the media like to think of themselves as fair and balanced. So, when the Pew survey asked them how they self-identified, you can be sure the number who consider themselves liberals was modest. However, the truth came out later, when respondents were asked specific questions and those views were compared to those of the general public. That's where it got interesting.

The poll essentially showed that many in the media think being moderate, fair and balanced is best expressed by adopting the philosophy of liberalism. Media professionals either don't know they are overwhelmingly liberal, or they simply won't admit it. The survey didn't reach any conclusions about that.

What the poll did reveal is that the media is more liberal than Americans in general are. This might come as a surprise only to the very insular media itself and to a few die-hard lefties who don't think the media is lefty enough.

The survey showed a 27 percent gap between liberals and conservatives in the media: Among members of the press, 34 percent self-identified as liberals, compared to only 7 percent who consider themselves conservatives. This range is startling enough. But the Pew Research center did a reality check to determine whether this level of diversity in political philosophy also reflects the popular sentiment. Its national poll of the general public revealed that self-identifying conservatives outnumber liberals 33 percent to 20 percent.

Ironically, the media frequently champions diversity in hiring that mimics the makeup of the local population; it apparently is not referring to diversity in political opinions. If it is, the media is failing miserably. Conservatives are underrepresented not by a mere 5 or 10 percent margin, but by a factor of about 471 percent.

It gets better: Liberals can think of conservative publications, but they can't come up with any liberal ones. This failure could be because the liberal outlets, like The New York Times, simply appear moderate to a liberal reader. One of the survey questions was, "Can you think of any news organizations that are especially liberal?" Among national journalists, 62 percent said no, they couldn't. But 82 percent said they could identify a news organization that is "especially conservative."

The gap is even larger when analyzing only the liberal journalists' response: Among them, 79 percent could think of a conservative organization, and only 24 percent could come up with a liberal one. Jeez, let me guess: I wonder whether they were thinking of either the Fox News Network or The Wall Street Journal when they identified conservative media outlets? There are no others. And why can't liberal journalists identify liberal media? Like a fish in a fishbowl, they can't see the water they're swimming in. But to conservatives, the balance of the media is liberal, and this poll supports their intuition.

In many instances, according to the poll, the general public is more conservative than conservative journalists are. For example, one of the questions asked in the survey was whether a "belief in God was necessary to be moral." Among Americans in general, 58 percent agreed, whereas only 26 percent of conservative journalists concurred -- but more startling is that a mere 3 percent of liberal journalists accepted the statement.

[ken5050]

The SF Chronicle?...fer pete's sake..? whahappened.the editors were hung over?

[presidio9]

Sparks contributes a weekly column titled "View From The Right."

[ken5050]

Thanks for the info....it should be posted here every week..I hadn't seen it before....regards..

[raccoonradio]

Even papers like the Boston Globe sometimes can get it right (er, when a conservative writer like Jeff Jacoby pens a column, for example). As the saying goes, even a stopped clock tells the correct time twice a day LOL