Why conservatives are wrong about liberal media bias
By DAN KENNEDY
The Media Research Center is out to get those damned liberal reporters. Armed with a $2.8 million war chest, the ultraconservative organization, based in Alexandria, VA, has announced a major effort to call public attention to the press' alleged support for Bill Clinton's re-election. The aim, according to the MRC's Tim Graham: to "expose the media" and "make bias an issue."
The opening salvo is a 271-page book by Graham titled "Pattern of Deception: The Media's Role in the Clinton Presidency," a comprehensive brief that displays both the strengths and the weaknesses of the conservative media critique.
On the one hand, the book is filled with eye-opening examples of obsequious treatment accorded to Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton by ABC's Peter Jennings, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift, Time's Margaret Carlson and numerous others.
On the other hand, Graham's contention that the media have given the Clintons a free ride on issues such as Gennifer Flowers, Paula Corbin Jones, draft-dodging, Whitewater and Travelgate (not to mention Filegate, which arose too recently to make the book) is unconvincing. Some of those stories nearly derailed Clinton's campaign in 1992, and one or more of them may yet bring him down in '96.
At least on the surface, the MRC appears to have a compelling case. A recent survey of the Washington press corps by the Gannett-funded Freedom Forum and the Roper Center showed that 89 percent of reporters voted for Clinton in 1992, and that 61 percent described themselves as "liberal" or "moderate to liberal." The results were similar to those of other surveys taken over the past several decades. And yes, the Washington press corps did have an affinity for Clinton, at least in 1992. As Graham notes, Hendrik Hertzberg wrote in The New Republic during the early stages of the campaign that most of his colleagues considered Clinton "the most talented presidential candidate they have ever encountered."
That's just a small part of the picture, though. What the MRC doesn't get -- or chooses not to get -- is that many of those liberal reporters bend over backwards to avoid being accused of bias, bashing Clinton unmercifully for petty and even non-existent scandals. Remember Haircutgate? Indeed, even Terry Eastland, a former Reagan Justice Department official who's now the editor of the conservative Forbes MediaCritic, thinks the media put Clinton through an exceptionally brutal "honeymoon" period over such issues as gays in the military and Zoe Baird's household-help troubles. No less a conservative than Newt Gingrich has said that "the press overall has been very tough on the president and Mrs. Clinton."
The Atlantic Monthly's James Fallows, author of the influential book "Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy," argues that to obsess over examples of liberal (or conservative) bias is to misunderstand what the modern media are about.
"The real ideology that matters is that of skepticism, hostility, and cynicism in covering politicians," Fallows says. "If party loyalty or party ideology had been the main factor, Clinton would have gotten a free ride in the press. I submit that he's gotten something far from that. The generally snarling tone about his motives, his slipperiness, and so on suggests that when two ideologies collide -- party ideology versus free-form nihilist ideology -- it's the latter that wins."
Besides, are the media as liberal as the Freedom Forum/Roper survey results would imply? Not really. Though the press is liberal on cultural issues such as gay rights and abortion rights, that liberalism largely masks the media's innate conservatism on economic issues. Who among the mainstream media, after all, has spoken out against Clinton's conservative support for free trade, for balancing the budget and for cutting spending aimed at alleviating poverty?
"In economic matters," Fallows says, "there has been an unacknowledged rightward tilt, as elite reporters have become more and more part of the 'haves' class. Coverage of trade is the classic example. Labor-union spokesmen are treated as if they were cavemen."
Norman Solomon of the liberal media-watch organization Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) calls Clinton "a favorite of corporate titans," and finds it a source of endless frustration that the right has succeeded in portraying the president as a liberal. FAIR pushes this message relentlessly in its magazine, Extra!, and on its Web site, but it lacks the resources of the MRC, which gets big bucks from the likes of the conservative Olin Foundation and from oil mogul T. Boone Pickens.
As Solomon's remarks show, the media are seen as out of touch by their critics on the left as well as the right.
The right, though, is a lot more effective at getting its message out.
Dan Kennedy is the media reporter for the Boston Phoenix.