Posted on 03/16/2003 3:49:35 AM PST by Timesink
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 Deborah Copaken Kogan/Basic Books Eric Alterman, author of the book "What Liberal Media?" |
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WHAT LIBERAL MEDIA? The Truth About Bias and the News. By Eric Alterman. 322 pp. New York: Basic Books. $25.
DEMOCRACY AND THE NEWS By Herbert J. Gans. 168 pp. New York: Oxford University Press. $26.
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he only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists,'' Alexis de Tocqueville wrote. ''They indeed are not great writers,'' he added with Old European disdain, ''but they speak the language of their country and make themselves heard.'' Of course, merely because Tocqueville said it does not mean that it was true (he also urged remedial instruction in Greek for our underachieving writers). But in this case, our favorite cheese-eating surrender monkey was quite correct in his diagnosis. Journalism is still essential to the health of democracy in America, and two new clinical studies argue that the patient is not faring well.
Eric Alterman and Herbert J. Gans write from very different perspectives. Alterman, the louder of this odd couple, is an outspoken columnist for The Nation and MSNBC.com. As its title implies, ''What Liberal Media?'' issues a riposte to the notion that a vast left-wing conspiracy controls America's airwaves and newsprint, recently argued in Bernard Goldberg's ''Bias'' and routinely promoted as gospel on the right. Gans, a mild-mannered Columbia University sociologist, is less concerned with political nuance and more with the declining quality of the information peddled as news. Both have important things to say.
Alterman is ready for a bar fight, and he comes out swinging. His first targets are Goldberg and Ann Coulter, the acidulous commentator whose mini-skirts and mini-thoughts have ensured her a wide following on the paleolithic end of the political spectrum. Alterman dusts off some of her more outrageous quotations (wishing that Timothy McVeigh had blown up The New York Times, to cite one example), which more or less refute themselves, and then proceeds to the more serious argument that ''the right is working the refs'' the way loudmouthed coaches do -- to gain whatever tactical advantage they can.
In fact, Alterman argues, the bias is hard to find. The Times was hardly soft on the Clinton administration, chasing after Whitewater for years, and The Washington Post has been slouching rightward for some time. Talk radio is Death Valley for the left, and the world of television punditry is not much better. Throughout the book, the idea of a liberal reporter seems a faint anachronism -- like the typewriter or Jimmy Olsen's bow tie -- when contrasted to the disciplined nexus of private foundations, talk shows and dirt-seeking oppo men that the right uses to get out its message. Alterman vividly presents this nether world as something out of Dante's ''Inferno'' -- the trust-funders with deep pockets, like Richard Mellon Scaife; the Internet bottom-feeders who traffic in rumors and half-truths (Matt Drudge); the braying hosts and guests on shows like ''The O'Reilly Factor'' and ''The McLaughlin Group,'' who never shut their mouths to listen to one another (where's the duct tape when you actually need it?).
But it's one thing to rant about the right, and it's another to show tangible proof that democracy is being tampered with. This Alterman sets out to do in his two best chapters, detailing the press's dismissive treatment of Al Gore in 2000 and its indifference to the actual counting of the votes in Florida. Alterman suggests persuasively that the press mollycoddled George W. Bush in the months leading to the election. Another interesting revelation is that the Republicans were poised to launch a ''massive talk radio operation'' to attack the verdict if Gore won the electoral count but lost the popular vote. History turned out differently, as we know, and Gore was excoriated as a sore loser for even questioning the result. By working the refs, the Bush team ended up winning the Super Bowl.
Alterman is not afraid to name names, and he goes after many of the sacred cows of his profession. David Broder may need smelling salts after reading his portrayal. Chris Matthews is quoted gushing that George Bush proved his leadership quality and fulfilled Hemingway's ''very definition of courage'' (grace under pressure) by throwing a strike at Yankee Stadium to open Game 3 of the 2001 World Series. On that basis, I would like to nominate Pedro Martinez as secretary general of NATO and Roger Clemens as secretary of agriculture. Tim Russert, on ''Meet the Press,'' asked Laura Bush if her husband had become president because of divine intervention (tactfully, she said no).
The book appears to have been written quickly, and at times it shows. From a historian's perspective, Alterman could have spent far less time on the minutiae of recent television broadcasts and more on the deeper background of the changes in the media industry over the last two decades. He makes a good case that a narrow federal appeals court decision in 1986 paved the way for the corporate control of radio that now slants the news (the two votes in the 2-1 decision came from Antonin Scalia and Robert Bork). But there is little on the rise of the Internet and the cable industry, the purchase and collapse of local family-owned newspapers around the country (abetted by USA Today), the 1996 Telecommunications Act, the AOL Time Warner merger and other steps toward the dumbing down of political reporting. All have something to do with the story. Nor is there much on the long prehistory of media bashing in this country, from both sides. There's another book's worth of material in the story of our evolution from muckraking to H. L. Mencken to Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Dan Quayle and their successors (on second thought, evolution may not be the right word). To some extent, a book seeking to explain Rush Limbaugh's popularity must explore cultural as well as political factors. And it would be strengthened if it examined liberal shortcomings more forcefully -- why is it that liberals fare badly on live radio and on television? That is a difficult but important question. Still, ''What Liberal Media?'' is bold, counterintuitive and cathartic.
''Democracy and the News'' is a more modest offering, clocking in at under 170 pages. Gans has enjoyed a long and eminent career, and if his writing is a tad academic, he still radiates decency and common sense. Like Tocqueville, he also brings something of the neutral tone of a foreign observer (he arrived in his early teens as a refugee), and he is refreshingly free of partisan bias.
But that does not mean Gans is less worried than Alterman. From his more sociological perch, he fears that an economic and political ''disempowerment spiral'' is removing citizens from meaningful participation in the life of the Republic, endangering democracy by making it ''upscale,'' like so much froth on a caffe latte. He finds a convenient villain in a press that has grown corporate and corpulent, seeking excessive rates of profit, replacing hard news with soft features and blurring the once inviolable division between church (the editorial side) and state (the business end).
These are all fair critiques. The problem is that Gans, like the rest of us, has no workable idea about what to do next. Yes, if more people voted, we would have truer democracy. Yes, if the press did a better job informing people and helped them to vote for the best candidates, based on real comprehension of the issues, government would improve. And if frogs had wings, they wouldn't bump their bottoms. Near the end of the book, Gans issues a series of cautious recommendations, most of which are quite plausible. He thinks that more of the media costs of running for office should be subsidized by the government. Reporters should make national stories local so that their implications are easier to understand. And journalists should pay more attention to the enormous power of lobbyists in Washington. But despite his good intentions, there is a wistful, elegiac quality to this book that does not translate easily into hard policy recommendations.
Recent news suggests that the story may soon need updating, however. A group of investors led by venture capitalists from Chicago is seeking parity through the creation of an alternative radio network that tilts left. Predictably, Hollywood talent is being lined up, although that could doom the effort from the start. What would excite Limbaugh more than a long soliloquy on globalization from Barbra Streisand, perhaps set to the tune of ''The Way We Were''? Or Harry Belafonte reprising Paul Robeson's classic Chinese Communist ballads? Still, the planning of this network, like the writing of these books, is a sign that democracy is once again recalibrating itself. We can all hope that a genuine debate will ensue.
Ted Widmer is the director of the C. V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College in Chestertown, Md.
Is it only me, or does Mr. Widmer exemplify what he is trying to excuse here?
Time to dust off the ol' trusty Transmogrifying Twit Filter...
I get the Times Book Review with my Saturday paper and saw this yesterday AM. I wondered what great mental capacity it takes to become the director of the C. V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College in Chestertown, Md. (I've never heard of the C.V. Starr Center, Washington College, or Chestertown Md. - Well, I have heard of Maryland.) Mini-thoughts, indeed!
So intent on the use of the only arrow in his quiver, the ad hominem attack, the Great Director confuses sarcasm ("Maybe McVeigh should have blown up The New York Times.") with dead serious commentary. ("I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early, like many black men do, of heart disease." - Julianne Malveaux, speaking of Justice Clarence Thomas)
Alterman vividly presents this nether world as something out of Dante's ''Inferno'' -- the trust-funders with deep pockets, like Richard Mellon Scaife;
Ah the eeeevil deep pocketed Richard Mellon Scaife! Can't have some left wing screed without talking about the world's richest man. It's okay for Babs to go around blabbing, and buttkissing Bubba, but the eeeevil, filthy rich Richard Mellon Scaife should just sit around and let Michael Eisner do the talking.
But it's one thing to rant about the right, and it's another to show tangible proof that democracy is being tampered with. This Alterman sets out to do in his two best chapters, detailing the press's dismissive treatment of Al Gore in 2000 and its indifference to the actual counting of the votes in Florida.
How can one argue with people who are so far removed from reality?
ML/NJ
Their supposed fair representation of facts is colored by their personal political bias and their choices of which topics to cover, and which ones to run from. In Goldberg's book, he makes this point clearly. Alterman chooses to setup the strawman argument of the biased commentator and then tears down his own unarmed ghost. Democrat voters fall for such arguments, which is why they are Democrats.
Hollywierdos, like New York Times reporters, are rich in P.R. power. Their typical fan doesn't have sufficient intelligence to be interested in Rush Limbaugh's commentary, and therefore takes the word of the prettiest face on TV."Liberalism" is arrogant, superficial contempt for what/who we-the-people depend on. Cheap, infantile criticism of the fact that money doesn't grow on trees.
. . . like the way they lauded Gore's intelligence (BA, Harvard) and sneered at Bush's (MBA, Harvard) "stupidity"?and its indifference to the actual counting of the votes in Florida. . . which they expressed by televising the truck taking the ballots from Palm Beach to Tallahassee.No discussion of that election is complete without making the point that in nearly every case the delay between a state's poll-closing and broadcast journalism's call of victory depended as strongly on the identity of the proclaimed victor as on the closeness of the election. In the notorious case of Florida, the call was made before the polls closed--and for the loser, not the winner, of the state. That suppressed turnout in the not-yet-closed polls in conservative northwest Florida--without which the result would not have been close enough for Gore to hope to overturn with his challenges. I am not prepared to believe that the journalists who made the call early for Gore would have been willing to abandon hope of a Gore victory in the panhandle, had the demographics of that region favored him and had their computer model indicated a Bush win while Gore was in the lead in the actual count. But with Bush in the lead, and with polls in Bush's stongest area still open, the journalists called the state for Gore.
And after election night was over, the journalists found interesting, not the fact that they had called for Gore when Bush came out ahead by a few hundred votes, but the fact that the first journalist to call the actual outcome correctly was related to the winner.
Bernard Goldberg made this point in Bias. Liberals regard liberalism as sensible, rational, and mainstream. All political faiths see themselves as the keepers of sense and clear thinking. The problems that have arisen in the Old Media are due to the overwhelming predominance of leftish thinkers in those trades. The result of that predominance is that they almost never hear the opinions of anyone who differs with them ("How could Reagan have been elected? No one I know voted for him!"), and so come to think that theirs is mainstream opinion.
Personality inventories have indicated that a propensity for leftist politics is strongly correlated with a penchant for self-expression and a desire to go into the communications trades. It's quite possible that there's no way to offset those currents within the Old Media, which has erected stout barriers against ideological contamination by the Right. But the New Media are a different story -- and a good general always cuts his losses and reinforces his successes.
Anyway, what would we have expected from a socialist bastion like The New York Times Book Review?
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason:
http://palaceofreason.com
Alterman is ready for a bar fight . . . .
Uh-huh.
"Is it only me, or does Mr. Widmer exemplify what he is trying to excuse here?"
Mr. Widmer is a prime example.
. Of course the press emphasized Gore's flooding FL with lawyers, the suppression of Armed Forces votes and the strange appearance of a Votomatic in a Democrat's car trunk. The police classified the latter as a possible theft but charges weren't pressed when the (surprise) Dem in charge of the voting distict dropped the matter. Why had it been stolen?
Isn't that the truth!!I have a friend who is an outspoken anti-Bush Democrat.
An outspoken pro-life anti-Bush Democrat.Go figure . . .
He is the perfect poster child for the navel-gazing, hate-filled left, so wrapped up in angst and hate that they do not realize that they have become the embodiment of everything they claim to hate.
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