In some circles it evokes guffaws - even ridicule - the way lawyer jokes do. But, for the faithful men and women employed as journalists, seeking the truth about life’s events and reporting them in a responsible way is a high calling.

Christian American researched and interviewed a cross section of journalists who profess a faith in Christ. Some are high profile media personalities. A few are not household names but their media are. They include network television’s first religion reporter, Peggy Wehmeyer of ABC; syndicated columnist Mike McManus; B.C. and The Wizard of Id cartoonist Johnny Hart; prolific author, editor and journalism professor Marvin Olasky; David Aikman, former senior foreign correspondent for Time; Jody Hassett, CNN producer; Jeffery Sheler of U.S. News & World Report; Leonard Apcar, business and financial section editor, The New York Times; Anahid Schweikert of The La Crosse (Wis.) Tribune; Bob Welch of The Eugene (Ore.) Register-Guard; and Julie Duin, culture editor for The Washington Times.

In the lexicon of their profession, most spoke on-the-record, although a few reverted to background information, especially on sensitive issues such as censorship. Most wanted to give fellow Christians a better understanding of this demanding, complex profession that is often maligned and yet so responsible for shaping the culture in which we live.

Are they well-respected by colleagues who know their religious beliefs? Do they share their faith and, if so, how? What ways have they found to be most effective in both honoring Christ and not interfering with their unique work which - by definition - must be free of bias and personal perspective? And, in their view, what’s the truth about a liberal, anti-Christian bias in the press?

“The press and its public are polarized. Insults have been hurled by both sides. It’s been a team effort,” says Bob Welch, Register-Guard features editor. “There’s a wall built with bricks called ‘fear,’ ‘ignorance’ and ‘prejudice.’”

Most Christian journalists who spoke to Christian American do not seek to be portrayed as spiritual leaders but as humble pilgrims whose words carry the same journalistic integrity with their peers as those of the doubter or the unbeliever. Most are unafraid of conflict - even welcome it - believing that the tension of disparate ideas encourages growth.

Marvin Olasky, journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and editor of World magazine, writes a column for The Austin American-Statesman. He was surprised at first, then delighted to discover that reactions to his opinions could be so strident.

“I draw some really hostile readers and some who are wildly supportive,” Olasky said. “As Christians we see hearts with tiny cracks. If we can play a role in broadening those cracks so that God can do his work, then we’ve made a difference.”

Although some have come under fire for weaving their beliefs into their work, most Christians working in journalism said they have not been persecuted or - to their knowledge - even ridiculed. In the latter category, there are some notable exceptions.

During Palm Sunday and Easter in 1996, The Los Angeles Times and The Atlanta Constitution pulled Johnny Hart’s B.C. cartoon strips because they delivered a strong Christian message. Hart and others consider these actions a form of anti-Christian censorship.

Other Christians in journalism say editors have a right to print - and not to print - what they want. For example, Mike McManus, whose columns appear in 90 newspapers, has been canceled hundreds of times.

“Editors have every right to refuse to publish,” McManus says. His “Ethics and Religion” column for The New York Times Syndicate takes risks on subjects such as pornography and homosexuality. “Whenever I write that homosexuals can become heterosexual, a paper will drop me.”

Rather than share incidents of anti-Christian bias in the media, most Christian journalists were more interested in improving the relationship between those working in the media and their customers. They were delighted to help fellow believers learn some secrets of their trade.

No conspiracy

Even the most conservative, evangelical journalists dismissed the notion that editors actually plot against publishing biblical points of view. What most agree on, however, is what Olasky calls “the media’s worldview of atheistic liberalism.”

Polls show that more than half of Americans regularly attend church or synagogue, but the figure among newspeople is only 14 percent. It figures, then, that faith talk is like a foreign language in most newsrooms.

“If you talk about materialism, that’s OK. But if you talk about spiritual things as though they’re real, you’re seen as zany,” says Olasky.

As for the pervasive culture of skepticism within the media, insiders say that goes with the trade.

“The nature of the business is that you’re taught to be critical and skeptical, to look at things and tear them apart, skills that tend to make some people even cynical,” says Peggy Wehmeyer. “But being a journalist means seeking the truth - being fair, honest and accurate - and that’s also what it means to be a Christian.”

The ABC reporter believes the goal of good reporters is “not to get rid of personal opinions but to keep our viewpoints out of the story.”

“Having a personal agenda or trying to twist a story to reflect what I believe would violate my faith values because I would be behaving dishonestly as a journalist,” she told Christian American.

Wehmeyer is certain there’s no conscious conspiracy to censor the Christian perspective. She finds “most newspeople to be smart and caring. In general, I’m impressed by the deep way people in the media think, and I’m not threatened by opinions that differ from my own. I’m surprised occasionally by how little some of them have been exposed to traditional religion or spirituality.”

Why all the bad news?

Well-meaning people of every stripe ask often, “Why doesn’t the media report more good news?” It’s the question that most frustrates Christian journalists for a variety of reasons.

These reporters believe that writing news involves putting a mirror up to society, reporting what’s out there and saying, “Here’s what’s going on.”

U.S. News & World Report senior writer Jeff Sheler says: “To the extent that media does what it’s supposed to, it reflects society. So if crime is rampant, for example, you’re going to read a lot about crime in your city.”

Christian journalists argue that there is a value to bad news. More than many professionals, they who deal daily with the harsh realities of life see that God is still God and He is at work. In his book, Telling the Truth, Olasky writes: “You must grasp the depth of sin’s ravages to understand the full need for Christ’s sacrifice: If man is essentially good, Jesus did not have to die.”

Quiet witness speaks loudest

Some might expect Christian journalists to use their power of the pen to openly advance God’s work.

Examples abound of journalists whose very lives and experiences turned out to be greater testimony than anything they could have printed or broadcast.

When Beirut hostage Terry Anderson, Associated Press Mideast correspondent, was released in 1991, secular journalists politely gave him ink for a few days. A nominal Catholic before capture by Muslim radicals, his story of survival and revitalized faith centered on reading the Bible - at least 50 times during his nearly seven years of captivity. The sheer number of times Anderson read and re-read Scripture added interest to the short-lived story.

Nathaniel Nash, bureau chief in Germany for The New York Times perished in a plane crash with Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown. Stories about Nash’s death emphasized the power of his witness, despite the fact that he rarely spoke aloud about his faith.

Nash’s editor at the Times, Leonard Apcar, spoke to the reporter just before he boarded the fatal flight.

“Nathaniel wasn’t preachy,” he told Christian American. “He comported himself in such a way that you knew what was his moral compass.”

Apcar recalled a time when he and Nash had a couple of hours to kill before Apcar left for home. They wandered through a lovely Bavarian town, eventually entering a cathedral. Apcar, who makes no secret at the Times about his own religious beliefs, was struck that Nash did not use the opportunity to witness to his boss. Instead, they simply admired the architecture and enjoyed what Apcar recalls as a comfortable but poignant moment.

Jody Hassett, with CNN in Paris and Atlanta before landing in Washington, recalled her coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. She had just completed a three-day spiritual retreat when she was called to Oklahoma City to participate in the network’s Emmy award-winning coverage. Immediately, Hassett knew that God had prepared her.

“Here I was fresh from this rich, contemplative experience,” she said. “Then I was stuck in a tent city among people grappling with the reality of evil.”

While covering the devastation, some people associated with the event openly prayed with victims and shared their faith. But Hassett felt that her greatest Christian contribution was to produce the highest quality coverage of which she was capable to honor the citizens’ courage.

Mutual trust needed

Christians frequently complain that the media dismisses news of interest to people of faith - or worse, misinterprets the motives. Those working in secular journalism complain that some Christians too often generalize about the news media and don’t trust it. Christians working in journalism say the dilemma can be improved in a number of ways:

Recognize and give journalists credit for the hard work they do.

Understand and acknowledge the competitive nature of news gathering.

Remember: reporters are people too.

Don’t look for special favors from Christian reporters.

A pet peeve among journalists is when fellow believers ask Christian reporters for special treatment, such as slanting the story for a pro-Christian bias. They say such practices are unethical and don’t allow for the good judgment of the news person.

By the same token, Christian reporters are annoyed that news of Christian events often are given short shrift by their secular colleagues. For example, CNN’s Hassett recalls how, when a reporter came back from a Promise Keepers event, she grilled him on the details: How many attended? What was the agenda, the message?

“He never got beyond learning that women weren’t allowed, so he spoke to a few feminists and made that the focus of his story,” recalled the producer, who required a rewrite. “He figured since it was about religion, it wasn’t worth treating seriously.”

Hassett pointed out that if it had been a sports event instead of a gathering of Christian men at the stadium the reporter “wouldn’t have dreamed of returning to the newsroom without the score and the stats.”

Other journalists recounted examples of when non-believers in the media have ignored bonafide religion news. But people of faith must begin the dialogue, emphasized the professionals.

“The distrust is so high that it’s almost paranoia,” said Anahid Schweikert of The La Crosse Tribune. “The evangelical community feels that when they’ve been underrepresented they can’t talk to [the press]. So the gap widens.”

The truth is that most journalists care deeply about their work, and Christian journalists - like believers in any other profession - approach their work prayerfully and with other spiritual preparation.

Last year David Aikman, who now writes books and contributes to The American Spectator, Weekly Standard, Readers Digest and other magazines, organized a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Christian media people. The trip drew 17 journalists from 15 countries, many of them friends from his days of covering international news at Time. Looking back on the Holy Land trip, Aikman recalls with fondness the “sweet Christian spirit so pervasive among these professionals trained to be competitors and to focus on others rather than themselves.” He recounts special moments - reading together Jesus’ words known as the beatitudes, praying together for wisdom in their news gathering work.

“It was the renewal we needed.”

======================================

Paying the price: Do journalists who make public their faith in Christ take professional risks? (Christian Coalition, 970500)

Consider these examples:

Judith Sweener, former president of The Los Angeles Times’ Orange County edition, lost her job shortly after delivering a speech entitled “Centered in Christ,” in which she told college students: “Working in the secular field is one of the hardest things God will every call us to do.... Look for balance in your life and in your work, keeping Christ at the center of all you do.”

Linda Rios Brook was told by Minneapolis station KARE-TV that, as a broadcast journalist working there, she could not also teach Sunday school or Bible classes.”

Julia Duin, now culture editor for The Washington Times, tried to respectfully sensitize an editor at her former newspaper, The Houston Chronicle, to how “offensive” abortion was to more than a half million people within the Chronicle’s readership. The paper had been using pro-choice coverage on Page 1 and burying pro-life on Page C8. “He just lost it and really started screaming at me,” she recountedf to Christian American. She was fired soon afterward with no explanation.

One former newspaper reporter, who requested that neither his name nor his paper be used, shared his personal account, because he thought it was illustrative. He used the word “baby” in a direct quote -- exactly as it was expressed by the source -- rather than the word “fetus”. The context was a happy expectant mother seeing her baby’s figures and toes for the first time during a sonogram. The editor stormed into the newsroom and in front of colleagues, swore at the reporter and called him a right-winger. The editor’s comments were peppered with expletives.

==============================

The Liberal Lady Debate at the New York Times is a one-way street (NRO, 010618)

Mr. Kurtz is also a fellow at the Hudson Institute

Cultural bias in the academy and mainstream media is one of my favorite topics. But no matter how many times I write about it, I feel as though I never get it quite right. There’s always an impulse to find that smoking gun — that instance of bias so egregious that it sweeps aside the usual attempts at denial and obfuscation by the leftist powers that be. Such smoking guns exist. Yet the operation of leftist bias in our governing cultural institutions is typically a more subtle affair. You find it in debates that really aren’t debates — passionate disputes about, say, whether the most constructive resources for feminist thought are to be found in Marxism or in postmodernism. For a socially moderate or conservative American, it’s the Alice-in-wonderland quality of listening to these pseudo-debates on the left — in even mainstream cultural organs — that brings home the message that seemingly more conventional cultural ideas are now considered beyond the pale.

I had that Alice-in-wonderland experience last Saturday while reading an article in the New York Times about Kenji Yoshino, an activist gay law professor at Yale. The article, by Kristin Eliasberg, was headlined, “Making a Case For the Right to Be Different.” Professor Yoshino, it turns out, was one of the inspirations for Justice John Paul Stevens’s dissent in last year’s Supreme Court decision affirming the right of the Boy Scouts to exclude homosexuals from positions of leadership in their organization.

Professor Yoshino, whose work is influenced by queer theory and postmodernism, is looking to expand the meaning of constitutionally forbidden discrimination. Instead of prohibiting discrimination against “immutable traits,” like skin color, Yoshino want to read the Constitution as prohibiting discrimination based on anything that could be interpreted as a sign of a person’s social identity — their language, their hair-style, their personality, or their sexual orientation. In effect, Yoshino wants to use the Constitution to force people to “recognize and respect” attitudes and forms of behavior of which they disapprove.

Of course, while purporting to be based on a liberal respect for rights, Yoshino’s views fly in the face of our most cherished traditions of freedom. The right of free association, and the distinction between tolerance of those with different views and state-enforced approval of those with such views would all be cast aside if Yoshino’s ideas take hold. That certainly doesn’t mean Yoshino’s work isn’t worth writing about. It does mean that the least one might expect from our newspaper of record is some actual consultation with Yoshino’s critics.

Instead what the Times gives us is a series of quotes from friends, colleagues, and supporters of Yoshino. Those comments create the appearance of a debate, without actually allowing one to take place. Instead of finding a conservative legal scholar who might clearly and energetically explain the dangerous and controversial implications of Yoshino’s views, we get sympathizers who sorrowfully point out that the “lack of constitutional grounding” for Yoshino’s theories might be a bit of a “hurdle” for the poor professor. “I have a lot of respect for Yoshino’s work, but I think he tends to overestimate what judges will accept.” That’s the worst that is said of Yoshino. Maybe to the editors at the Times, that sounds like a debate. But to anyone who isn’t already on the cultural left, this article sounds like a bunch of radicals sitting around a table arguing about how to bamboozle a few judges into “subverting” the Constitution. And in fact the only time a conservative shows up in this article is in an anecdote supposedly illustrating how benighted judges who aren’t already sympathizers of queer theorists can be.

This inconspicuous article in the Times may convey as much about the day-to-day operation of bias in our newspapers and universities as the brouhaha over the ads by David Horowitz and the Independent Women’s Forum. A bunch of leftists ragging on conservatives and commiserating about how difficult it’s going to be to twist the Constitution into a shape that will accomplish their cultural ends--that is what goes on in much of the academy today. In that sense at least, the Times has covered the story with perfect accuracy.”

Is there a solution? Sure. The Times could solve the problem easily enough, simply by bringing on some conservative reporters. Any reporter for a national paper of record like the Times ought to strive for balanced coverage. But reporters of different political and cultural dispositions will inevitably frame their stories, and interpret the imperative to be balanced, in different ways. That means that in addition to an ethic of fair representation of viewpoints within a story, we need to have a variety of reporters coming at stories from different perspectives. For a national daily newspaper, we need, not the pseudo-diversity of multiple leftist ethnicities, but a collection of reporters that reflects the range of political at cultural attitudes at play in our national debates.

Don’t hold your breath. Genuine diversity in the newsroom is something we will never get from the current management of the New York Times. In earlier columns I’ve looked at bias in the Times’s treatment of feminism and race. On issues of homosexuality, the outcome is no different. When it comes to the controversial cultural issues of our day, debate at the New York Times is a one-way street.

==============================

Eight things to keep in mind when watching TV news about terrorism (CBC, 011001)

Shari Graydon (worked for NDP)

Like everybody, I’ve been riveted to – and overwhelmed by – the images on my TV screen since the devastating events of September 11th. Suddenly the future seems remarkably precarious. I feel compelled to watch, hoping to understand the incomprehensible, and maybe also get some reassurance.

That’s a tall order, especially given TV’s limitations. Because TV is so effective at delivering images, emotions and experts, we’re sometimes seduced into believing that it can supply everything we need to know. But it can’t, and we need to remember that.

So while I’m glued to the set, here are a few things I try to keep in mind:

1. What’s missing from what I’m watching?

Television is not a “window on the world” and any newscast is highly selective. Countless decisions get made about which stories to cover, who to interview, what questions to ask, how much of the responses to include and which visuals to show. The pictures aired of some Palestinians celebrating in the streets, for instance, hardly represented the reaction of the entire Arab world, but might easily have been interpreted that way.

2. Who’s talking on TV, and who isn’t’?

People who present, explain or comment on television news, have the power to shape our perceptions. So it’s critical to notice who is doing the shaping: who is given the opportunity to frame an issue or story, to influence how the rest of us think about it and, as importantly, who is not.

3. Listen for bias in the way people talk

Listen to the language that TV commentators are using. I’ve noticed that when they’re talking about how to respond to terrorism, TV commentators seem to be using the words “justice” and “retribution” interchangeably, but of course they mean profoundly different things.

4. TV doesn’t always tell the truth

Because we have the sense that “seeing is believing,” we often assume that everything presented on a TV news show is factual. But since human beings provide the voice-overs and carry out the interviews, opinions often creep in -- especially when the issues being discussed are emotionally charged. Since the terrorist attacks, some U.S. newscasters in particular have stopped reporting and started advocating. When U.S. Secretary of State, Lawrence Eagleburger told CNN, “There’s only one way to begin to deal with people like this... you have to kill some of them even if they are not directly involved” - that’s not a statement of fact, it’s an opinion. And we should question how informed it is.

5. Get information from other sources - magazines, newspapers, books, online

TV is a visual medium that relies on images to tell easily-understood stories. Like a children’s picture book, it’s best suited to simple, dramatic and personal stories that fit into its audience’s existing frame of reference. It has a hard time presenting complex issues, so it tries to make them simple and accessible.

6. TV can trivialize

That’s because TV is supported by ads, and newscasts that include ads have to attract an audience for the commercials. So a news show, in addition to providing information about important events, must also entertain, ideally more effectively than its competitors. Catchy slogans -- “Attack on the USA” or “The Aftermath” -- fancy graphics, attention-getting theme music, and action footage are all used to keep viewers tuned in. These elements - and the commercials themselves -- create an environment that changes the way we see what’s going on.

7. Don’t watch too much

Watching too much of this can numb or traumatize us. I try to limit myself to one newscast a day, and I talk about the issues with people around me.

8. Talk back

Are you worried about factual inaccuracy, lack of context or rhetorical excess? Then get involved. You can and should demand greater responsibility from broadcasters by using the feedback mechanisms they provide. It’s important, because we all have a stake in what images and voices and words appear on TV, and what courses of action they appear to recommend. And we need, more than ever, for our leaders and our broadcasters to practice rigor and restraint in this conflict.

==============================

New vast, right-wing media plot (WorldNetDaily, 021204)

Al Gore pulled an old play out of his Clinton-era book of political tricks, in an interview with the New York Observer last week.

The reason he and his Democratic Party cronies are having a tough time lately, he explains, is because of a vast, right-wing media conspiracy against them.

No, he didn’t use exactly those words, as Hillary Clinton had six or seven years ago. But his take is pretty close. Same play, new spin.

“The media is kind of weird these days on politics, and there are some major institutional voices that are, truthfully speaking, part and parcel of the Republican Party,” he said. “Fox News Network, the Washington Times, Rush Limbaugh – there’s a bunch of them, and some of them are financed by wealthy ultra-conservative billionaires who make political deals with Republican administrations and the rest of the media. ... Most of the media [has] been slow to recognize the pervasive impact of this fifth column in their ranks – that is, day after day, injecting daily Republican talking points into the definition of what’s objective as stated by the news media as a whole.”

He said it. I’m not kidding. It’s no joke.

Al Gore honestly believes that the media are stacked against the Democrats – against bigger government, against taxing and spending, against more Washington control over the people. At least he says it with a straight face. Who knows what he really believes?

If all this sounds similar to Hillary’s old “vast, right-wing media conspiracy” chatter, that’s because it is. Listen as Gore explains how the “communication stream of conspiracy commerce,” to borrow another Clinton phrase, works in 2002:

“Something will start at the Republican National Committee, inside the building, and it will explode the next day on the right-wing talk-show network and on Fox News and in the newspapers that play this game, the Washington Times and the others,” he says. “And then they’ll create an echo chamber, and pretty soon they’ll start baiting the mainstream media for allegedly ignoring the story they’ve been pushing into the zeitgeist. And then pretty soon the mainstream media goes out and disingenuously takes a so-called objective sampling, and lo and behold, these RNC talking points are woven into the fabric of the zeitgeist.”

Some time back in 1994 or 1995, Bill and Hillary Clinton dreamed up the idea of blaming their political and personal problems on the media – “the vast, right-wing media conspiracy,” if you can believe it.

Their nightmare scenario was chronicled in a 331-page report co-published and distributed, at taxpayer expense, by the Democratic National Committee and the White House counsel’s office. The report was titled, “The Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce.”

This was a report distributed to select U.S. reporters in an effort to discredit a new breed of investigative journalists digging into what was already emerging as the most scandal-plagued administration in the history of the United States. Let me quote from the opening lines of the report that placed yours truly at the center of the storm:

“The Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce” refers to the mode of communication employed by the right wing to convey their fringe stories into legitimate subjects of coverage by the mainstream media. This is how the stream works. First, well-funded right-wing think tanks and individuals underwrite conservative newsletters and newspapers such as the Western Journalism Center, the American Spectator and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Next the stories are reprinted on the Internet where they are bounced all over the world. From the Internet, the stories are bounced into the mainstream media through one of two ways: 1) The story will be picked up by the British tabloids and covered as a major story, from which the American right-of-center mainstream media (i.e. the Wall Street Journal, Washington Times and New York Post) will then pick the story up; or 2) The story will be bounced directly from the Internet to the right-of-center mainstream American media.

After the mainstream right-of-center American media covers the story, congressional committees will look into the story. After Congress looks into the story, the story now has the legitimacy to be covered by the remainder of the American mainstream press as a “real” story.

Now, this wholly unbelievable conspiracy theory is back.

Yes, forget about the New York Times. Forget about USA Today. Forget about the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times and NBC and ABC and CNN. Forget about the Associated Press and Dan Rather. Forget about all of the political partisans of the establishment press and their extreme biases for bigger government and the politically correct social policies Al Gore favors. Forget all about that.

That’s the kind of forgetfulness required to believe Al Gore.

==============================

What’s Wrong With The American News Media? (Free Congress Foundation, 021101)

Bashing and criticizing the news media has become a national sport in the United States. A whole library full of books attacking every aspect of the news media has been written and published, and a small army of commentators including Rush Limbaugh, Steve Brill and Bill O’Reilly is making a good living attacking the news media. These observers have done a good job of identifying many of the symptoms afflicting the news media; unfortunately, they have failed to diagnose the disease that is causing them or to offer a cure for it.

Therefore, I shall attempt to identify the disease, the main problems with the news media, and the way it gathers, reports and presents the news. I won’t offer any solutions, I’ll just try to state what the fundamental problems with the media are and put them out for discussion. I’ve identified these problems through years of working in the media and in my own reading and watching the news.

The first and most serious problem with our news media is that of dishonesty. The American news media has become fundamentally dishonest. In fact, a culture of dishonesty now prevails in American newsrooms. We can see this in the media’s claims of objectivity: the big three TV networks, the cable news networks, PBS, the major newspapers, the wire services, and the news magazines all claim to be objective and unbiased. Yet it is obvious, to all but the most naïve reader or viewer, that they are biased in favor of left-wing positions.

Other examples of this dishonesty abound. The news media claims to champion the underdog and the common people, yet it espouses and promotes an ideology that is hostile to the values and beliefs of the common people. Those who work in the news media claim not to be interested in money or the trappings of wealth, yet they compete ferociously for huge salaries and the trappings of wealth. News management claims to champion the cause of diversity and equality for people of all races, yet CBS news executives only ran news stories that featured white faces as veteran CBS newsman Bruce Goldberg revealed in his excellent book, “Bias.”

Going hand in hand with the fundamental dishonesty of America’s news media is the second problem: hypocrisy. The news media claims to disdain capitalism and profit, yet most media outlets are part of huge for profit corporations that engage in fierce, often cutthroat, competition. Media figures draw huge

salaries and their news reporting often reflects the interests of the big corporations they work for rather than the public interest. The media claims to operate in the public interest, yet it often operates in its own interest.

For example, most media professionals favor so-called campaign finance reform, basically restricting the amount of money political candidates and their supporters can spend on advertising and campaigns. The news media claims that its support of such reform is motivated by a desire for “clean” politics. But, as Rush Limbaugh has pointed out, restricting campaign funding will greatly increase the news media’s power and influence as it becomes the sole source of information about political campaigns.

The third fundamental problem facing the news media is that of arrogance. Journalists no longer feel bound by the same rules and values as the rest of us. They feel free not to participate in their communities, and, even worse, believe that they have a moral right to force their values upon the rest of us. Many journalists now feel that they have a moral right to manufacture stories and distort news coverage in order to promote the causes they believe in. Some journalists now believe that they are superior beings who have a right to dictate what the rest of us believe. To make matters worse, most journalists spend much of their time and effort trying to impress the media elite so they can join it to share its wealth and power rather than really trying to report the news.

The dishonesty, hypocrisy and arrogance that is prevalent throughout America’s news media poses a serious danger to our country’s future. A nation like ours needs a free press that is willing and able to present its citizens with an honest and unbiased picture of the world around it. There is no way that today’s American news media, which is so dishonest, hypocritical and arrogant, can fulfill that role.

Daniel G. Jennings is a freelance writer and journalist who lives and works in Denver, CO. He has worked as a reporter and editor for daily and weekly newspapers in five states.

==============================

The Left: Conspiring To Defeat Themselves (Free Congress Foundation, 021209)

Back when I became a part of the conservative movement, in the late 1950s, we were preoccupied with conspiracies. I attended several meetings where the program was an explanation of charts showing how this left-wing group was connected with that left-wing group, and who was on whose board of directors. It was all very scary.

In the early 1960s, I recall receiving a flyer about the “terrible 1414.” The number referred to an address on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, which was the headquarters for virtually any and every left-wing group in the Midwest. I probably do not recall the address correctly, but you get the idea. The point is, I phoned all of my friends, asking them if they knew about that “terrible 1414” address. Most did not, so I proceeded to tell them about this headquarters for the left and all the horrible ideas that radiated from it. My friends were suitably impressed. Of course, they did nothing about it. I recall arranging for a briefing from the folks who put out the pamphlet for a group of conservatives who were suitably frightened at the conclusion of the briefing.

Years later, when I compared notes with my colleague Morton Blackwell, who grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he recalled spending lots of time with the same charts and graphs during the same period. I grew up in Racine, Wisconsin. Later, I had a discussion with another colleague who was raised in California and sure enough, he had attended briefings with the same kind of conspiracy charts.

And do you know what? We achieved absolutely nothing during that period. We didn’t elect anyone. We didn’t advance new ideas. We absolutely did not capture the minds of the American voter.

The reason I bring this up is because these days the liberals seem to be similarly preoccupied with conspiracy theories. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) suggests Rush Limbaugh, Limbaugh “wannabes” and the religious right are responsible for personal attacks on himself and possibly even violence in this country.

And now Al Gore, the former Vice President, has taken up where Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) left off (remember the vast right-wing conspiracy?), and accuses The Washington Times, Fox News, Limbaugh and talk radio in general, of taking their cues from the Republican National Committee. That is quite laughable since the Republican National Committee, whatever else its merits, is hardly the headquarters for interesting ideas. If anything, a case might be made that the RNC gets some of its ideas from Limbaugh and The Washington Times.

Regardless, when we as a movement got over our preoccupation with conspiracies, we began to elect people and our ideas began to be considered seriously. Not only did the ideas promoted by the left-wing ‘conspiracy’ backfire once the public saw their true nature and adverse impact, but we conservatives spent more time developing and refining and promoting our own ones. Now, we have ideas these days, and our ideas matter. The liberals don’t seem to have many.

So I hope Tom and Al and Hillary and the rest of them spend all their time worrying about conspiracies. The Heritage Foundation leases space to many other conservative groups, so I imagine that liberals are sitting around with pictures of the Heritage building, and graphs and diagrams showing how all these groups are interconnected.

If they are going to sit around and whine about how this vast right-wing conspiracy is blocking them from getting their message out, I’ve got news for them. They will not be electing anyone and if they have any ideas they will not be taken seriously.

Imagine, the silliness of the charge. These people have had a monopoly for nearly forty years on the major radio and television networks, PBS, the reportorial pages of the important daily papers and most local radio and TV stations. They complain about ONE cable TV network, Fox News, which has fewer than two million viewers. And Fox puts on liberals at every turn, though they do put on the opposing view. And despite having CNN (the Clinton News Network), MSNBC and at times CNBC, they still whine just because one network gives them only 50 percent of the coverage.

As to The Washington Times, its circulation is just 50,000 on Sundays. Compare that with The Washington Post at 1.1 million on Sundays. Or The New York Times, a national newspaper available in all the important cities, with a circulation of 1.7 million on Sundays. In addition, the vast number of local newspapers are in liberal hands.

Now it is true that Rush Limbaugh has a following in excess of 20 million cumulative listeners on a weekly basis. Even so, that is only a small portion of the electorate. Even if Sean Hannity, Ollie North, G. Gordon Liddy, Bob Dornan, and all the other national talk show hosts are added in, plus the many, many local Limbaugh types, you still have to stretch to reach a third of the electorate.

I do hope Tom and Al and Hillary and the others in the echo chamber believe their own rhetoric. I well recall people on the conservative end of the spectrum who were so convinced that the American left-wing conspiracy was so powerful that there was nothing we could do to fight it. These were the same people who convinced themselves that the Soviet Union was going to win. Even Whittaker Chambers, whose defection from the Communists was a major blow to them in this country, said he feared he was leaving the winning side to join the losing side.

As long as they think the vast right-wing conspiracy is so terribly powerful, they will excuse themselves for their inability to act. Just as the many on our side threw up their hands and insisted “there is nothing we can do,” it sounds as if Daschle, Gore and the rest have adopted that same notion. After all, if we are really that powerful then their failures can be excused.

The left believes that, since it is morally superior, it should win without having to fight for victory. Leftists are outraged that the American people don’t recognize their moral superiority. It can’t possibly be them, or their ideas, or their candidates who are at fault, so it must be the all-powerful right.

It took us more than a decade and a half to wake up and figure out that while we were wringing our hands and worrying about the all-powerful left, they indeed were acquiring more power by default. Once we got our act together, we became competitive. Since the left is not as smart as we are, it ought to take at least two decades for them to get it. Meanwhile, I hope we make good use of the time.

Paul M. Weyrich is Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.

==============================

Are the Media Biased? (NRO, 030205)

Yes: Brent Bozell

These are fascinating times for polemical debate. Are we right to invade Iraq? Will tax cuts weaken or strengthen the economy? On these and so many other issues a conservative can enjoy energetic discourse with the political left.

Just don’t ask a liberal if there is a liberal bias in the national news media. In answer to that question you’ll continue to hear what conservatives have been hearing for decades. No matter how many times the obvious is proven, and no matter how many ways that evidence is documented, the response from the liberal elites is always the same.

Noise.

For decades conservatives have charged that a liberal bias dominated the press; at every turn the liberals in the press have denied it. But when irrefutable evidence is presented — say, a national survey of the Washington-based media commissioned by the Gannett media organization showing that in 1992, by 89-7 percent, they voted for Bill Clinton over George Bush; that by 50-14 percent they see themselves as Democrats over Republicans; and that while 61 percent describe themselves as liberal, only two percent dare call themselves “conservative” — how do they respond? OK, they concede, we may be philosophically liberal, but it doesn’t prove our philosophy affects our performance. But how can such an overwhelming bias not affect the work product? Noise.

The Media Research Center has produced dozens of scientific studies, often examining tens of thousands of stories at a time, proving the liberal bias dominating the news media. Not once has a single study ever been refuted, or any of the hundreds of thousands of data been disputed. Much in the same vein that Saddam denies the existence of his weapons of mass destruction, the liberal media simply deny the evidence proving their bias. And if pressed they’ll fall to the next line of defense: it speaks to a general bias, but doesn’t prove anyone’s specific bias. More noise.

What, exactly, is a liberal denying when he denies a liberal bias in the media? Most journalists continue to promote the mythology that bias is nonexistent in the news business, an amazing proposition given that it is impossible not to be biased. What is news? What is the day’s top news story? What is to be the lead? Who is to be cited? What ought to be the conclusion? These and so many others are the daily questions a reporter faces, and every single one demands a subjective, biased response. So why do so many journalists deny the obvious? First and foremost, because they really do believe their liberalism is mainstream.

But wait! Stop the presses! Extra! Extra! Bias has been found! After all these years suddenly these same journalists are finding that a conservative bias — yes, indeedy, a conservative bias dominates the press because the Fox News Channel and Rush Limbaugh control the world, or something.

Assuming Fox were as conservative as liberals charge — and it’s an assumption I am not willing to make — it would now be one against CBS, NBC, ABC, CNBC, MSNBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, and on and on and on. Some conservative dominance. What about Rush and the seemingly endless list of conservatives in the media today, men and women like Cal Thomas, Bob Novak, Michael Reagan, Laura Ingraham, and the like? All have two things in common: All openly, cheerfully acknowledge their biases; and all are commentators. Not a one is a member of the “news” media.

But if you’re on the other side of the political fence the rules are very different. If you’re a liberal, you’re objective. And if you are promoting an agenda, you’re a reporter.

Making noise.

— L. Brent Bozell III is president of the Media Research Center.

(030207)

I’m not quite sure how to proceed. The question before us is “Are the Media Liberal?” to which Mr. Alterman’s response is “Brent and Other Conservatives Do Not Understand Gay People,” which is meant to indicate, I suppose, that the media aren’t liberal.

Do you see what I mean by the noise?

Alterman takes a column I wrote criticizing the gay agenda being promoted at the New York Times and by deliberately omitting any mention of the evidence I presented — that nettlesome, bothersome evidence — he feels free to suggest I am intolerant, ignorant and, of course, a homophobe.

Last night I filed a column blasting the walking freak show known as Michael Jackson. I wonder if by this morning Mr. Alterman has accused me of bigotry.

Wednesday night I was also on CNN’s Crossfire where Tucker Carlson did the unthinkable, quoting Alterman directly: “The vast majority [of reporters] are pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro separation of church and state, pro-feminism, pro-affirmative action, and” — yes, Alterman wrote this — “supportive of gay rights.”

Using Altermanlogic we can deduce that Mr. Alterman is now an ignorant gay basher, just like me.

Having openly conceded the existence of a liberal bias, how does Alterman now deny it? He falls back to yet another wall of defense: “While I admit and agree that most elite reporters are socially liberal,” he claimed last night on national TV, “it’s not up to reporters what gets on the news.” That, he proceeded to state, is being decided by …(insert Phantom of the Opera soundtrack here) …”the owners.”

Leaving us with what? Alterman’s argument is reduced to this: There is no liberal media bias except O.K., reporters are liberal, but on social issues, not economic ones, and who cares, because it’s really “owners” who are reporting news, not reporters, don’t you know. And Bozell is a homophobe.

It’s at this point that a conservative reaches for the aspirin, his head having crashed into his keyboard as he dissolves in laughter.

— L. Brent Bozell III is president of the Media Research Center.

==============================

God, Satan and the media (Washington Times, 030307)

Cal Thomas

Ten years ago, The Washington Post carried a front-page story on evangelical Christians. The writer, Michael Weisskopf, famously dismissed this significant demographic as “poor, uneducated and easy to command.” Uproar ensued, and members of this particular class telephoned and faxed their bona fides, noting their degrees from accredited and mainstream universities.

Mr. Weisskopf was forced to amend his story, explaining he meant “most” evangelicals are poor, uneducated and easy to command. That brought more objections from the same class of people. The Post ombudsman at the time, Joann Byrd, wrote a column in which she tried to explain Mr. Weisskopf’s faux pas. Ms. Byrd said readers needed to understand that most journalists don’t know any of “these people.” Don’t want to know them is a better explanation.

Now comes the newly minted New York Times op-ed columnist, Nicholas D. Kristof, with a similar statement. He not only displays the kind of ignorance such people like to attribute to evangelicals but also will reinforce in the minds of many what might be called the “evangelical bias” that causes so many Christians to distrust the mainstream media.

First, a definition: An evangelical Christian is one who believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and who has repented of sin and accepted Jesus as his or her savior. The evangelical believes he has the privilege and obligation to share the “good news” that Jesus came to save sinners with others so they might go to heaven rather than hell.

Clearly, Mr. Kristof, like his Post predecessors, would not recognize an evangelical if he saw one. He correctly writes that “it is impossible to understand President Bush without acknowledging the centrality of his faith.” He notes that “evangelicals are increasingly important in every aspect of American culture.” And he accurately says, “In its approach to evangelicals, the national news media are generally reflective of the educated elite, particularly in the Northeast. It’s expected at New York dinner parties to link crime to deprived childhoods — conversation would stop abruptly if someone mentioned Satan.”

Having made the case for the presence and importance of evangelical Christians in our country and culture, Mr. Kristof, who acknowledges that a Gallup Poll last December found that 46 percent of the country identified with the labels “evangelical” and/or “born again,” then writes this incredible sentence: “Yet, offhand, I can’t think of a single evangelical working for a major news organization.”

Mr. Kristof needs to spend less time at those New York dinner parties and engage the real world. Throwing modesty to the winds, the most widely syndicated op-ed columnist in the United States would identify with the label “evangelical Christian,” though he dislikes labels unless people first define them (see above). This fellow also has a TV show on a secular cable network and has worked in “major news organizations” nearly all of his professional life. He is not alone.

Depending on one’s definition of a major news organization, there are perhaps hundreds of evangelical Christians working at newspapers, television and radio stations and even in Hollywood. An international reporter for USA Today is a strong evangelical Christian. A White House correspondent for a major wire service covered the Jimmy Carter campaign for president and his presidency, as he did Watergate, with distinction, fairness and credibility. There are many more examples.

While Mr. Kristof laments the separation of media from faith and the media’s failure to understand and explain faith to consumers, he and his newspaper have the power and the staff to open their eyes (if not their souls) to the “good news,” or at least to the largest and most ignored (by elites) demographic in the country. If they won’t do it as a mater of faith, they should do it as a matter of business. If the New York Times cares about covering not only evangelical Christians, but religion in general, it might begin by reading World Magazine’s March 8 issue (www.worldmag.com). The cover story, “What We Don’t Know Can Hurt Us,” chronicles the failure of “major news organizations” to get a grip on religion coverage and how that has hurt the public’s right to know.

Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist

==============================

Our Western Mob: From the graveyard of Kabul to the quagmire of Iraq to the looting of Baghdad (NRO, 030414)

Victor Davis Hanson

The jubilation of liberating millions from fascism and removing the world’s most odious dictator apparently lasted about 12 hours. I was listening to a frustrated Mr. Rumsfeld last Friday in a news briefing as he tried to deal with a host of furious and crazy questions — a journalistic circus that was nevertheless predictable even before the war started.

I thought immediately of the macabre aftermath to the battle of Arginusae in 406 B.C. After destroying a great part of the Peloponnesian fleet in the most dramatic Athenian naval victory of the war, the popular assembly abruptly voted to execute six of their eight successful generals (the other two wisely never came back to Athens) on charges that they had failed to rescue seamen who were clinging to the wreckage.

The historian Xenophon records the feeding frenzy and shouting of the assembled throng. Forget that Sparta felt beaten and was ready for peace after such a catastrophic defeat; forget the brilliant seamanship and command of the Athenian triremes; forget that a ferocious storm had made retrieval of the dead and rescue of the missing sailors almost impossible; forget even that to try the generals collectively was contrary to Athenian law. Instead the people demanded perfection in addition to mere overwhelming success — and so in frustration devoured their own elected officials. The macabre incident was infamous in Greek history (the philosopher Socrates almost alone resisted the mob’s rule), a reminder how a society can go mad, turn on its benefactors, throw away a victory — and go on to lose the entire war.

Something like that craziness often takes hold of our own elites and media in the midst of perhaps the most brilliantly executed plan in modern American military history. Rather than inquiring how an entire country was overrun in a little over three weeks at a cost of not more than a few hundred casualties, reporters instead wail at the televised scenes of a day of looting and lawlessness.

Instead I had been expecting at least some interviews about bridges not blown due to the rapidity of the advance. Could someone tell us how special forces saved the oil fields? How Seals prevented the dreaded oil slicks? Whose courage and sacrifice saved the dams? And how so few missiles were launched? Exactly why and how did the Republican Guard cave?

In short, would any reporter demonstrate a smidgeon of curiosity — other than condemning a plan they scarcely understood — about the mechanics of the furious battle for Iraq? It would be as if America forgot about Patton’s race to the German border, and instead focused only on Frenchmen shaving the heads of Vichy collaborators, or decided that it had not been worth freeing the Italian peninsula because a mob had mutilated and hung Mussolini from his heels. Did any remember what had happened to a Russian armored column that tried to enter Grozny to control that city? Did any have a clue what Germany or Italy was like in June 1945?

What was striking about the Iraqi capitulations was the absence of general looting on the part of the victorious army. From the fall of Constantinople to the Iraqi takeover of Kuwait City, winners usually plunder and pillage. American and British soldiers instead did the opposite, trying to protect others’ property as they turned on water and power. That much of the looting was no more indiscriminate than what we saw in Los Angeles after the Rodney King Verdict, in the New York during blackouts, or in some major cities after Super Bowl victories, made no impression on the reporting. Remember this was a long-suffering impoverished people lashing out at Baathists — not affluent, smug American kids looting and breaking windows at the World Trade Organization in Seattle.

A terrorized people, itself looted and brutalized by fascists for three decades, understandably upon news of liberation feels the need to steal back from Baathist elites and government ministries what had been taken from them. This is not an excuse for general lawlessness, but rather a reminder that freedom for the oppressed sometimes goes though periods of volatility and messiness.

All this was lost on our journalistic elite, who like Athenians of old wished to find scapegoats in the midst of undreamed good news. Dan Rather, for example, finished one of his broadcasts from liberated Baghdad with an incredible “before” and “after” footage of his entry that should rank as one of the most absurd pieces of the entire war coverage. Tape rolled of his initial drive a few weeks ago to Saddam’s HQ, when the roads were once safe from banditry and free of destruction. Then in glum tones he chronicled his harrowing current arrival into Baghdad amid craters and gunfire.

Mr. Rather — so unlike a Michael Kelly or David Bloom — forgot that he was now motoring right smack into a war zone. And he seemed oblivious that just a few weeks ago he had just conducted a scripted and choreographed interview with a mass murderer. Consider the sheer historical ignorance of it all: Was Berlin a nicer place in 1939 or 1946? And why and for whom?

The machinery of a totalitarian society, of course, can present a certain staged decorum for guests who are brought in to be manipulated by dictators. How many were shot in dungeons during his visit, he never speculated. In contrast the first 48 hours of liberation are scary — who after all could now put Mr. Rather up at a plush state-run hotel and shepherd him in to the posh digs of Saddam Hussein with the security of an armed Gestapo? That the chaos Mr. Rather witnessed was the aftermath of a 30-year tyranny under which one million innocents have been slaughtered made no discernable impression on him — nor did the bombshell story how the Western media has for years collaborated with a horrific regime to send out its censored propaganda.

Next I turned on NPR. No surprise. Its coverage was also fixated on the looting, and aired several stories about the general shortcomings of the American efforts. Again forget that a war was waging in the north, that Baghdad was still not entirely pacified, and that there was the example of a normalizing postbellum Basra. No, instead there must be furor that the United States had not in a matter of hours turned its military into an instantaneous police, fire, water, medical, and power corps.

Personally, I was more intrigued that in passing the same reporter at last fessed up that during all of her previous gloomy reports from the Palestine Hotel of American progress, she and others had been shaken down daily for bribe money, censored, and led around as near hostages. It is impossible to calibrate how such Iraqi manipulation of American news accounts affected domestic morale, if not providing comfort for those Baathists who wished to discourage popular uprisings of long-suffering Iraqis.

There is something profoundly amoral about this. A newsman who interviewed a state killer at his convenience later revisits a now liberated city and complains of the disorder there. A journalist who paid bribe money to fascists and whose dispatches aired from Baghdad in wartime only because the Baathist party felt that they served their own terrorist purposes is disturbed about the chaos of liberation. Now is the time for CNN, NPR, and other news organizations to state publicly what their relationships were in ensuring their reporters’ presence in wartime Iraq — and to explain their policies about bribing state officials, allowing censorship of their news releases, and keeping quiet about atrocities to ensure access.

In general, the media has now gone from the hysteria of the Armageddon of Afghanistan to the quagmire of Iraq to the looting in Baghdad — the only constant is slanted coverage, mistaken analysis, and the absence of any contriteness about being in error and in error in such a manner that reflected so poorly upon themselves and damaged the country at large at a time of war. It is as if only further bad news could serve as a sort of catharsis that might at least cleanse them of any unease about being so wrong so predictably and so often.

In the weeks that follow, the media, not the military, will be shown to be in need of introspection and vast reform. Partly the problem arises from the breakneck desire of reporters to obtain near celebrity status by causing controversy and spectacle. Many (especially executives) also came of age in Vietnam and are thus desperate to recapture past glory when once upon a time their efforts made them stars and changed our national culture. Reporters are cultural relativists, who never ask themselves how many more people are tortured and die because of their own complicity with a murderous regime. Ignorance also is endemic. Few read of history’s great sieges and the bedlam that always follows conquest, liberation, and the birth of a new order. Arrogance abounds that journalists are to be above reproach and thus deserve to be moral censors in addition to simply recording the news.

So while it is censorious of politicians and soldiers, the media is completely uninterested in monitoring its own behavior. Would Mr. Rather have gone to Berlin amid the SS to interview Hitler in his bunker as the fires of Auschwitz raged? Would NPR reporters have visited Hitler’s Germany, paid bribes to Mr. Goebbels, and then broadcasted allied shortcomings at the Bulge, oblivious to the Nazi machinery of death and their own complicity in it?

There is also a final reason that explains our demand for instantaneous perfection. It is often a trademark of successful Western societies that create such freedom and affluence to fool themselves that they are a hair’s breadth away from utopia. Journalists who pad around with palm pilots, pounds of high-tech gear, dapper clothes, and expensive educations have convinced themselves that if lesser people were as caring or as sensitive as themselves then we could all live in bliss. The subtext of the daily Western media barrage has been that if we were just smarter, more moral, or better informed, then we could liberate a country the size of California in days, not weeks, lose zero soldiers, not 110, and be instantaneously greeted by happy Iraqis who would shake hands, return to work, and quietly forget thirty years of terror as they voted in a Gandhi.

Anything less and Mssrs. Rumsfeld, Meyers, Franks, “the plan,” — somebody or something at least! — must be held accountable for the absence of utopia.

But that is a word, they should remember, that means not a “good place” but “no place” at all.

==============================

Religious Media Not Exempt from Advocacy Journalism (Crosswalk, 040112)

Baptist Press News Service

In national media, apparently it is okay to mock evangelical Christians. That appears to be the theme of media whistle-blower Bernard Goldberg. His book, “Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distorts the News,” published by Regnery, doesn’t tell anything really new to those who don’t buy into every morsel of information propagated by the major network news moguls.

However, Goldberg uses his insider information and experience to demonstrate that media elites color the news as they do because their own cultural perspective prevents them from seeing the world any other way.

Goldberg’s book has launched some honest public conversation exploring how the media has used its resources to condition the public’s opinion. For years, the national media has painted its left-wing political perspective (bias) as “normal,” while conservative thinking was portrayed as “fundamentalist” or “extremism.” As a general rule in the secular press, journalists have a left leaning and often hold conservative views up for ridicule.

It is a good thing that Goldberg’s book made the New York Times best sellers list in early January 2002, because his former colleagues have ostracized him. Journalists in print and electronic media have long held to a principle of objectivity. It works like this. Somehow, a news reporter is supposed to mystically disengage his/her personal bias and objectively report an event. While this may be a worthy goal, in the real world it is obviously not a preeminent core value. Far too many journalists report their own opinions as fact. This is what is called “advocacy journalism.”

How do they do this?

One way is with the use of adjectives. What would a writer do without adjectives? They are a vital part of speech in the English language. It is the linguistic tool that paints color into a text. However, adjectives also reveal the bias [or in some circumstances the agenda] of a reporter.

Goldberg sites an example of how the adjective is used to change perceptions. Robert Bork, the highly credentialed Supreme Court nominee was called a “conservative” judge by TV news commentators. The word conservative was used as a synonym for “fundamentalist” or “extremist.” In contrast, Lawrence Tribe, a well-known liberal academe, was regularly referred to by the media talking heads as simply a “Harvard Law Professor.”

Religious media is not exempt from advocacy journalism. Although some of my religious journalism colleagues may say they do not practice advocacy journalism, they are being dishonest with their readers when they do.

Last month one particular Baptist editor wrote a public relations editorial for his state newspaper explaining how this particular paper was insulated from bias and “does not engage in so-called ‘advocacy journalism’ in its news reporting.” Yet in the very same issue was a news article, not an editorial, in which they reported the SBC first vice-presidential nomination of Judge Paul Pressler. When describing Pressler, the reporter described him as “one of the two key architects of the fundamentalist movement that gained control of the Southern Baptist Convention.”

By the use of a few clever slogan words like “fundamentalist” and “gained control,” the writer expressed his distaste for the current events in the SBC. Furthermore, the writer demeaned every person in his state who believes that the events of the last 25 years of SBC life were the result of a network of mainstream, grassroots Southern Baptists who were reclaiming their institutions and theological heritage.

Can religious journalists be truthful while advocating a position or a particular agenda? Absolutely. However, religious journalists need to be honest about their advocacy. In Baptist life, the entire context of news reporting is a form of advocacy. We tell the story of God at work in the churches. When we do, we are advocating the work of the Lord. We must tell the truth about brothers who disagree with others, and in so doing we advocate the value of discernment, judgment and, hopefully, reconciliation. We must report about the failure of institutions to fulfill their obligations to their constituencies. When we report this kind of word, it brings to the forefront the importance of honesty and accountability. Baptist journalists are advocates for the Lord Jesus, the Word of God, the Gospel, missions and evangelism and a plethora of other Kingdom issues.

Baptists need advocacy journalism to tell about the great things God is doing in this world. Oklahoma Baptists need their churches to partner with the Baptist Messenger as we advocate moral righteousness in a culture that has lost its hold on decent values and right relationships. The Baptist Messenger has a 90-year history of telling and advocating the truth and trusting the people to make the appropriate decisions.

Yeats is editor of The Baptist Messenger, the state paper of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma.

==============================

Mainstream Media (Global Issues Website)

[liberal viewpoint]

Media Power is Political Power

Concentrated ownership of media results in less diversity. This means that the political discourse that shapes the nation is also affected. And, given the prominence of the United States in the world, this is obviously an important issues. However, politicians can often be hesitant about criticizing the media too much, as the following from Ben H. Bagdikian summarizes:

“[M]edia power is political power. Politicians hesitate to offend the handful of media operators who control how those politicians will be presented -- or not presented -- to the voters. Media political power has always been a fixture in American history. But today the combination of the media industry and traditional corporate power has reached dimensions former generations could not match. ... Today ... political variety among the mainstream media has disappeared. As the country enters the twenty-first century, the news and analyses of progressive ideas and groups are close to absent in the major media. Similarly absent is commentary on dangers of this political one-sidedness to American democracy.”

-- Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, Sixth Edition, (Beacon Press, 2000), pp.xv - xvi

Political Scientist and author, Michael Parenti, in an article on media monopoly, also describes a pattern of reporting in the mainstream in the U.S. that leads to partial information. He points out that while the mainstream claim to be free, open and objective, the various techniques, intentional or unintentional result in systematic contradictions to those claims. Such techniques -- applicable to other nations’ media, as well as the U.S. -- include:

* Suppression By Omission: »

o He describes that worse than sensationalistic hype is the “artful avoidance” of stories that might be truly sensational stories (as opposed to sensationalistic stories).

o Such stories he says are often “downplayed or avoided outright” and that sometimes, “the suppression includes not just vital details but the entire story itself” even important ones.

* Attack and Destroy the Target: »

o Parenti says, “When omission proves to be an insufficient mode of censorship and a story somehow begins to reach larger publics, the press moves from artful avoidance to frontal assault in order to discredit the story”.

o In this technique, the media will resort to discrediting the journalist, saying things like this is “bad journalism”, etc., thus attempting to silence the story or distract away from the main issue.

* Labelling: »

o Parenti says that the media will seek to prefigure perceptions of a subject using positive or negative labels and that the “label defines the subject without having to deal with actual particulars that might lead us to a different conclusion”.

o Examples of labels (positive and negative) that he points to include things like, “stability”, “strong leadership”, “strong defence”, “healthy economy”, “leftist guerrillas”, “Islamic terrorists”, “conspiracy theories”, “inner-city gangs” and “civil disturbances”. Others with double meanings include “reform” and “hardline”.

o Labels are useful, he suggests, because the “efficacy of a label is that it not have a specific content which can be held up to a test of evidence. Better that it be self-referential, propagating an undefined but evocative image.”

* Preemptive Assumption: »

o As Parenti says of this, “Frequently the media accept as given the very policy position that needs to be critically examined”

o This is that classic narrow “range of discourse” or “parameters of debate” whereby unacknowlegded assumptions frame the debate.

o As an example he gives, often when the White House proposes increasing military spending, the debates and analysis will be on how much, or on what the money should be spent etc, not whether such as large budget that it already is, is actually needed or not, or if there are other options etc.

* Face-Value Transmission: »

o Here, what officials say is taken as is, without critique or analysis.

o As he charges, “Face-value transmission has characterized the press’s performance in almost every area of domestic and foreign policy”

o Of course, for journalists and news organizations, the claim can be that they are reporting only what is said, or that they must not inject personal views into the report etc. Yet, to analyze and challenge the face-value transmission “is not to [have to] editorialize about the news but to question the assertions made by officialdom, to consider critical data that might give credence to an alternative view.” Doing such things would not, as Parenti further points out, become “an editorial or ideological pursuit but an empirical and investigative one”.

* Slighting of Content: »

o Here, Parenti talks about the lack of context or detail to a story, so readers would find it hard to understand the wider ramifications and/or causes and effects, etc.

o The media can be very good and “can give so much emphasis to surface happenings, to style and process” but “so little to the substantive issues at stake.”

o While the media might claim to give the bigger picture, “they regularly give us the smaller picture, this being a way of slighting content and remaining within politically safe boundaries”. An example of this he gives is how if any protests against the current forms of free trade are at all portrayed, then it is with reference to the confrontation between some protestors and the police, seldom the issues that protestors are making about democratic sovereignty and corporate accountablity, etc. (See this sites, section on free trade protests around the world for a more detailed discussion of that aspect.)

* False Balancing: »

o This is where the notion of objectivity is tested!

o On the one hand, only two sides of the story are shown (because it isn’t just “both sides” that represent the full picture.

o On the other hand, “balance” can be hard to define because it doesn’t automatically mean 50-50. In the sense that, as Parenti gives an example of, “the wars in Guatemala and El Salvador during the 1980s were often treated with that same kind of false balancing. Both those who burned villages and those who were having their villages burned were depicted as equally involved in a contentious bloodletting. While giving the appearance of being objective and neutral, one actually neutralizes the subject matter and thereby drastically warps it.”

o (This aspect of objectivity is seldom discussed in the mainstream. However, for some additional detail on this perspective, see for example, Phillip Knightley in his award-winning book, The First Casualty (Prion Books, 1975, 2000 revised edition).)

* Follow-up Avoidance: »

o Parenti gives some examples of how when “confronted with an unexpectedly dissident response, media hosts quickly change the subject, or break for a commercial, or inject an identifying announcement: “We are talking with [whomever].” The purpose is to avoid going any further into a politically forbidden topic no matter how much the unexpected response might seem to need a follow-up query.

o This can be knowingly done, or without realizing the significance of a certain aspect of the response.

* Framing: »

o “The most effective propaganda” Parenti says, “relies on framing rather than on falsehood. By bending the truth rather than breaking it, using emphasis and other auxiliary embellishments, communicators can create a desired impression without resorting to explicit advocacy and without departing too far from the appearance of objectivity. Framing is achieved in the way the news is packaged, the amount of exposure, the placement (front page or buried within, lead story or last), the tone of presentation (sympathetic or slighting), the headlines and photographs, and, in the case of broadcast media, the accompanying visual and auditory effects.”

o Furthermore, he points out that “Many things are reported in the news but few are explained.” Ideologically and politically the deeper aspects are often not articulated: “Little is said about how the social order is organized and for what purposes. Instead we are left to see the world as do mainstream pundits, as a scatter of events and personalities propelled by happenstance, circumstance, confused intentions, bungled operations, and individual ambition -- rarely by powerful class interests.”

==============================

Friendliness toward religion (PEW Survey, July 2003)

Americans’ perception of whether selected groups are friendly towards religion:

	Friendly	Neutral	Unfriendly
Professors	18	40	26
News media	16	41	34
Hollywood	16	31	45

==============================

Left Eye’s View: Seeing through the Abu Ghraib coverage (NRO, 040519)

In World War II, a passer-by, lost in London’s main official thoroughfare of Whitehall, stopped a military officer and asked him which side the Defense Department was on. The officer thought for a moment and then said: “Well, it’s hard to be sure, but our side, I hope.”

In the last week the coverage of Iraq by the U.S. media has exhibited at least four separate failings:

1. Selective Agonizing. Ever since the Abu Ghraib photographs emerged, the media has shown them on every possible occasion, accompanied by reports and editorials on America’s shame and the world’s revulsion. That is fine by me. The photographs are shocking evidence of shocking behavior — Jerry Springer meets Saddam Hussein — and we should be ashamed they occurred under American auspices But they are not the only story in the world.

Objectively considered, the U.N.’s “Oil-for-Food” scandal is a far bigger story, implicating not one international statesman but about two dozen, and involving not the abuse of suspected terrorists but the starvation of children. Interestingly, the media has been happy to forget it entirely in all their excitement over Abu Ghraib.

Then again, worse rape and brutality than those displayed in Abu Ghraib are known to occur daily in America’s prisons without arousing any media interest at all. Indeed, the newspapers sometimes join D.A.’s in calling for crooked CEO’s to be sentenced to ten year’s hard sodomy. Maybe these jocular remarks about homosexual rape were among the influences that led the Abu Ghraib guards to abuse their victims. Big mistake. This gloating sadism is only a joke when suspected Republicans are the likely victims.

And the photographs of prisoner abuse are not remotely as shocking as the pictures of Nicholas Berg being beheaded by Islamist terrorists. You might imagine that the beheading of an innocent American would be replayed endlessly on the networks and the front pages. But the media suddenly discovered taste. The Berg murder was briskly reported and then confined to the memory hole. And the media hunt for Rumsfeld — that Berg’s beheading had briefly interrupted — resumed in full cry.

As a Spanish writer commented this week: “Tears are shed only from the left eye.”

2. Taking Dictation from Terror. Before we leave Berg, we should note that a vast number of news outlets reported as a fact that he was murdered “in retaliation for” the Abu Ghraib abuses. That was the terrorists’ own justification, of course: They shrewdly judged that the American and Western media would eagerly publish the headlines they had dictated. And they were right. For the “retaliation” explanation transfers the blame for Berg’s death from the actual murderers onto George W. Bush and the U.S. As the sharp-eyed Australian blogger, Tim Blair, pointed out, however, the terrorists abducted Berg about two weeks before the Abu Ghraib scandal surfaced. Was that abduction in retaliation for something else? Or were they simply gifted with astonishing foresight? Incidentally, the media’s behavior in this case — in addition to being bone-headedly biased — is a rare genuine example of “blaming the victim.” But not a single editor seems to have been restrained by the fact.

3. Willing Gullibility. Two newspapers — the Daily Mirror in Britain and the Boston Globe in the U.S. — have published fake photographs of British and American soldiers abusing prisoners. In the British case the fakes were quickly detected once they had been published, and in the American case, they had been detected before the Globe published them. Neither the media’s vaunted “skepticism” nor simple fact-checking on the internet were employed in either case by the papers. The fakes were, in the old Fleet Street joke, “too good to check.” There was a rush to misjudgment. As Mark Steyn argued in the Chicago Sun-Times on Sunday, the journalists wanted to believe that they were real because they hunger to discredit the Anglo-American intervention in Iraq.

Indeed, they still want to believe that the fakes were real — the disgraced Mirror editor claimed to have told the truth on the day the fraud was conclusively established. And since he was fired, he has become a heroic figure in British journalistic circles hostile to Blair and the war. He may be a liar, they feel, but he’s our liar. Or as they would probably put it, the “truth about Iraq” is more important than the facts. You know, at a deeper level.

4. Galloping Inferentialism. The media’s main interest in the Abu Ghraib scandal over the last week — what postmodernists call its principal “narrative” — has been its pursuit of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as an accessory to torture before the fact. Some reports have been, in effect, prosecution briefs for the theory that he either knew about or (better still) actually authorized the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American guards. And since the evidence for this theory is scanty, to say the least, reporters employ the highly dubious technique of building inference upon inference to make the case.

Take, as an example, the widely republished Washington Post report asking “Was Abuse Ordered?” This begins with the case of a Syrian jihadist who was subjected to intense pressures to instill fear into him so that he would give up intelligence data for the fight against the Iraqi insurgents. It then speculates that because a military intelligence officer was involved in this interrogation, this “suggests a wider circle of involvement in aggressive and potentially abusive” techniques by senior officers. It goes on to argue that the Abu Ghraib “abuses could have been an outgrowth of harsh treatment” techniques authorized by the Pentagon. And it finally postulates that “although no direct links have been found between the documented abuses and orders from Washington, Pentagon officials...say that the hunt for [intelligence] data...was coordinated during this period by Undersecretary of Defense Stephen Cambone...long one of the closest aides to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The coincidence in timing....”

Let us review the evidence in this trial by inference. It “suggests” that “potentially” abusive techniques were used that “could have been an outgrowth” of methods that cannot be “directly linked” to Rumsfeld unless the “coincidence” that his aide was in charge of collecting intelligence at the time is the smoking gun.

In opposition to this towering inferno of inferences, there is an actual fact: the statement of one of the abuser guards that the higher-ups would have stopped the abuses if they had known of them. And as the old maxim goes, an ounce of fact is worth a ton of inferences.

5. Hunting the Snark (or Criminalizing Antiterrorism.) What makes this journalistic pursuit of Rumsfeld all the more suspect is that even if all these inferences were borne out by later evidence, they would not convict the Defense secretary of any known crime or misdemeanor. He would have authorized harsh techniques, not in themselves abusive but only potentially so, that others wrongly took to be permission to humiliate and abuse prisoners under their control. There is no crime in that — nor even any major error. Senior Pentagon officials knew that the harsh interrogation techniques they did authorize — for instance, hooding prisoners, interrupting their sleep over several days, and exposing them to cold temperatures — were open to abuse. That is why they stipulated very precisely what the techniques should be — not allowing any physical brutality or sexual humiliation. Why they limited the use of such techniques to those few cases where crucial intelligence was likely to be gained. And why they insisted on the prior permission of the senior U.S. general in Iraq for their use.

Of course, most editors and reporters probably take the view that inflicting even this limited and supervised stress to frighten suspects is impermissible. A Washington Post editorial, for instance, argued that no intelligence gain could possibly compensate for the national embarrassment of having a U.S. secretary of State publicly defend such techniques before the international community.

That is certainly arguable. And in general governments should not carry out acts they are unprepared to defend in public. But is it wholly and always persuasive? Suppose, for instance, that inflicting psychological stress and instilling fear into a terrorist suspect seemed likely to help prevent the beheading of another innocent American like Nick Berg? Or to avert another catastrophe such as September 11? Or even to halt a nuclear attack on an American city? Would we not feel that in such cases the end of saving lives justified the means of inflicting psychological stress?

These are serious moral questions — and serious practical questions when the U.S. is waging a war on terror. They cannot be wished away by pious references to the Geneva Convention. And the media’s attempt to transform serious consideration of these painful dilemmas into a gung-ho criminal prosecution of Rumsfeld is both a partisan disgrace and a shameful evasion of difficult realities.

Let us finally examine the tally sheet. Selective agonizing, taking dictation from terror, willing gullibility, galloping inferentialism, and criminalizing anti-terrorism — not a short list of media failings for a single week. And when all the mistakes are on the side of opposing the liberation of Iraq, and none of the mistakes favor the U.S. or Britain or Bush or Blair, it tells you something. Namely, which side they’re on. Or “tears are shed only from the left eye.”

==============================

The Economics of Media Bias: It may soon be too costly to lean left (NRO, 040623)

A new poll from the Pew Research Center has again raised the issue of liberal bias in the media. A growing body of academic research at top universities supports it. Unfortunately, those in the major media still don’t get it and are unlikely to change their behavior, resulting in further declines in ratings and circulation.

Liberal bias is a tiresome subject, I know. We have been hearing about it for at least 30 years. Although those who work in the media continue to deny it, they are having a harder and harder time explaining why so many viewers, readers, and listeners believe it.

This is the point of the Pew study. Whatever the media think about themselves, there is simply no denying that a high percentage of Americans perceive a liberal bias. The credibility of every single major media outlet has fallen sharply among conservatives and Republicans, while falling much less among liberals and Democrats.

This has affected viewing habits. Conservatives have drifted away from those outlets they perceive as most biased, which has contributed heavily to an overall decline in viewership. Among all Americans, those who watch the evening network news regularly have fallen from 60 percent in 1993 to just 34 percent today. Among Republicans, 15 percent or less report watching the evening news on ABC, CBS, or NBC.

One consequence is that conservatives are gravitating toward those outlets that are perceived as exhibiting less liberal bias. These include Fox News, talk radio, and the Internet. Ironically, academic studies view these not as conservative, but as objective. Apparently, the effect of having a rightward tilt only has the effect of moving “conservative” outlets to the middle, owing to the extreme left-wing bias of the dominant media.

An interesting study in this regard was recently done by Tim Groseclose of UCLA and Jeff Milyo of the University of Chicago. They devised a method of measuring press bias based on the way members of Congress cite various think tanks. By looking at their rating on a liberal/conservative scale based on votes, they were able to determine which think tanks were viewed as conservative or liberal. They then looked at how often these think tanks were cited in the media.

The conclusion of the Groseclose-Milyo study is unambiguous. “Our results show a very significant liberal bias,” they report. Interestingly, they found that the Internet’s Drudge Report and “Special Report” on Fox News were the two outlets closest to the true center of the political spectrum, despite being widely viewed as conservative.

Groseclose and Milyo also look at the political orientation of journalists relative to the population. They note that just 7 percent of journalists voted for George H.W. Bush in 1992 versus 37 of the voting public. This means that journalists are more liberal than voters in the most liberal congressional district in the U.S., the 9th district in California, which contains the city of Berkeley. Even there, Bush got 12 percent of the vote, almost twice his support among journalists.

The curious question is why the media remain so persistently liberal. Economic theory says that conservative news outlets should have come into existence to serve that market. However, Prof. Daniel Sutter of the University of Oklahoma points out that there are severe barriers to entry into the news business that make it very difficult to start a new newspaper or television network, thus allowing liberal bias to perpetuate itself.

Another answer comes from a study by Prof. David Baron of Stanford. He theorizes that profit-maximizing corporations tolerate liberal bias because it allows them to pay lower wages to liberal journalists. By being allowed to exercise their bias, they are willing to accept less pay than they would demand if they were in a business where bias was not tolerated. Conservatives are perhaps less willing to pay such a financial price.

Writing in the summer issue of The Public Interest, Prof. William Mayer of Northwestern suggests that conservatives have adopted talk radio, which is overwhelmingly conservative, as an alternative news outlet. In other words, a key reason for the popularity of people like Rush Limbaugh is that they provide news and information not available elsewhere, not just conservative opinion.

This helps explain why liberal talk radio has been such a dismal failure. Listeners are not getting much they can’t already get in the dominant media. In Prof. Mayer’s words, “Liberals, in short, do not need talk radio. They already have Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, and Tom Brokaw — not to mention NPR.”

The dominant media is finally starting to realize that it has an economic problem from having a perceived liberal bias, even though it steadfastly denies any such bias. Editor & Publisher, an industry publication, is so alarmed that it has begun a study of the problem.

— Bruce Bartlett is senior fellow for the National Center for Policy Analysis.

==============================

Probing ‘Liberal’ Bias (Editor and Publisher, 040610)

The recent Pew survey raises more questions than it answers, and we intend to answer them.

How “liberal” are the nation’s newsrooms? What does “liberal” mean, anyway? Should editors embark on an ideological affirmative action program? All of these questions, and more, grow out of the recent Pew survey that seemed to sustain arguments that newsrooms tilt left, in composition if not coverage.

Or is this mainly bunk? In the months ahead, E&P will attempt to answer all of these questions, and many others, in this very contested, and very important, area.

Conservatives have had a field day with the Pew results, which were announced on May 23. John Leo of U.S. News & World Report wrote a particularly caustic column. Some editors have hinted that they will now go out of their way to hire political “minorities.”

It was amusing, however, to hear Fox News fulminate about the survey when a second Pew study found that more than half of that network’s viewers describe themselves as “conservative” and only 13% liberal. This couldn’t betray some political slant at Fox? Or maybe their typical viewer tunes in because they think Bill or Brit is sexy.

Some conservatives charge that the liberal media has ignored proof that there is a liberal media. That’s not exactly true. E&P was the first to spotlight the Pew newsroom findings, just minutes after they were released, and our story was picked up far and wide.

For the record, the results showed that newsroom personnel (including newspapers, TV and radio) at local outlets self-described their political leanings this way: 23% liberal, 12% conservative, with the vast majority “moderate.” The numbers moved even more to the left at national outlets, with liberal strength growing since the last survey in 1995. Among the public at large, the split is quite different, with 20% calling themselves liberal and 33% conservative.

Still, it’s unclear what it all means, and rather than say much more now, we’ve chosen to launch our own probe behind the numbers. Here’s just a few of the questions we look forward to addressing:

* How accurate are the Pew numbers? It is not purported to be as scientific as Gallup, with no claims of accuracy “plus or minus X percent.” The sample size, 547, is small but Pew did seek out newsrooms of varying size, in different parts of the country, and interview employees at several different levels. What do other surveys show?

* What does “moderate” mean? Many conservatives have charged that anyone calling him- or herself a moderate is actually a liberal, further skewing the poll to the left. So does moderate mean John McCain or Hillary Clinton? The survey did not ask enough issue or values questions to really answer that.

* If the Pew numbers are accurate, why are there so many more liberals than conservatives in newsrooms? Is it due to a certain do-gooder impulse among journalists in general? Or, as some charge, a bias in hiring: liberals won’t hire conservatives? Is there a certain amount of “right flight” after conservatives fail to advance or feel uncomfortable among their peers? Several top editors have acknowledged, for example, that there are relatively few “pro-lifers” in the average newsroom.

* If conservatives were made to feel more welcome, would it make any difference? What if very few of that political persuasion want to become grubby, underpaid, widely dissed reporters? What exactly is the conservative hiring pool out there?

* What would a survey of j-school students show? Are they overwhelmingly liberal already, or does the faculty indoctrinate them, or perhaps the liberal ones feed into newsrooms while the conservatives drift to other forms of journalism or related areas?

* Much has been made of the “values gap” allegedly revealed by the Pew survey’s few questions in that area. For example, only 15% of newsroomers, according to Pew, believe you have to believe in God to be a “truly moral” person, while 60% of the public feels that way -- a stark divide. Is this to be lamented -- or is the ability to be non-judgmental actually a quality that should be encouraged in newsrooms?

* No matter what the answers to all of the above reveal: At the local level, does ideology intrude on coverage and, if so, how? Forget about Peter Jennings and Dan Rather in New York. What’s going on in Peoria?

One guarantee: We will be calling Peoria to find out.

Greg Mitchell (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) is editor of E&P.

==============================

Weapons of Mass Distortion: The coming meltdown of the liberal media (NRO, 040708)

By L. Brent Bozell III

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an excerpt from the introduction of L. Brent Bozell III’s new book, Weapons of Mass Distortion: The Coming Meltdown of the Liberal Media, released today. Bozell is founder and president of the Media Research Center.

In an April 10, 2002, appearance on CNN’s Larry King Live, ABC News anchor Peter Jennings gave a remarkable answer when he was asked about media bias.

“Historically in the media, it has been more of a liberal persuasion for many years,” Jennings said. “It has taken us a long time, too long in my view, to have vigorous conservative voices heard as widely in the media as they now are. And so I think, yes, on occasion there is a liberal instinct in the media which we need to keep our eye on, if you will.”

It was an astonishing statement. For years, media analysts had been pointing out the pervasive liberal bias found in mainstream news coverage. In fact, in 1987 I founded an organization called the Media Research Center specifically to bring balance and responsibility to the news media, and for some fifteen years the center had been carefully and systematically documenting the extent of media bias. But despite all those efforts, news leaders had vigorously denied any charge of bias, no matter how thoroughly documented. Actually, for the most part the Jenningses, Brokaws, and Rathers refused even to acknowledge the charges, which they could get away with at a time when the American public was less attuned to the leftward slant in the press.

But that time had passed. Now, here was Peter Jennings, one of the most important journalists in the country, acknowledging on national television that, yes, the charge of liberal bias was true.

Then again, was the statement really all that astonishing? Well, yes, simply because no one of his stature had ever come close to admitting that liberal bias existed. (Though Walter Cronkite had acknowledged the leftist bias permeating the airwaves, he did so long after he had retired from CBS News.) But if one looks closely at Jennings’s answer, it becomes clear that, to the distinguished anchor of ABC News, media bias really isn’t much of a problem at all. It’s just an “instinct” that is evidenced only “on occasion.” Like a slow leak in a tire, it’s not something that demands an immediate repair. It’s just something “we need to keep our eye on.”

Jennings also betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding of why media bias is a problem. For “too long,” he said, “conservative voices” were not “heard as widely in the media as they now are.” Quite true, but that statement is slippery on two counts. First, who does Jennings mean by “conservative voices” — journalists or their guests? There is no empirical evidence I’ve seen that there has been any marked increase of conservatives in the newsrooms — note that we’re talking about newsrooms, not the pundits’ roundtables — of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, and PBS. Second, if by “conservative voices” Jennings is referencing the opinions of conservatives within news stories, even if journalists are giving more airtime to conservatives, it doesn’t follow that the coverage of those “conservative voices” is any more positive. The implication of his statement is that conservatives now are getting a fair shot in the media, which, as we’ll see in this book, is patently untrue. Even more important, having more conservative voices heard in the mainstream media is just one small step toward balanced news coverage. Liberal bias affects much more than simply how certain political figures are covered and how certain news stories are reported. The media’s pervasive bias determines precisely which stories are (and are not) covered, and in how much detail. Indeed, the media elite deliberately attempt to set the national agenda through their coverage of the news.

I have learned this firsthand in a career spent closely analyzing the news media, but the point was driven home to me several years ago at a meeting with a Los Angeles newspaper. The Media Research Center had just released an exhaustive study regarding liberal bias in the news media, and I was scheduled to meet with the editorial board of the (now-defunct) Los Angeles Herald-Examiner to discuss the report’s findings. When I arrived, however, I was ushered into the conference room and met by a solitary figure, a member of the editorial board obviously pegged with the unsavory assignment of listening to this pesky conservative. The ponytailed hair and the cold body language — he silently pointed me to a chair — hinted that this would be anything but a productive meeting. I made an opening statement, then passed him the voluminous report we were to discuss. Without bothering to open it, the editor shoved it back at me and unleashed a vitriolic harangue against conservatives. Niceties flew out the window as he snarled, “All you conservatives care about is making money!” Clearly we weren’t going to discuss the report, so I asked him what liberals like him cared about. Without bothering to deny my description of his ideological persuasion, he quickly shot back, “You just don’t get it: We are the social conscience of this country and we have an obligation to use the media.”

At least this editor had the decency to admit what so many others steadfastly deny. Yes, the mainstream news media’s view of conservatives is less than flattering — the liberal media see conservatives as “the great unwashed,” as Republican congressman Henry Hyde aptly put it — and that is a big problem. But just as important, and too often overlooked, is the problem of how the media view themselves. The media elites feel they must be the “social conscience of this country”; they seem to have a higher calling beyond objectively reporting what happens on a day-to-day basis. Reporters, editors, and producers routinely display an arrogance driven by an inflated sense of self-worth. They are the enlightened, the elite. This attitude cannot help but distort the way the news is covered.

Media bias is more than just something “we need to keep our eye on.” It is an endemic problem, and even now, when the media have actually come under some scrutiny, the problem is not being seriously addressed. Although media bias has become the subject of debate in this country, the terms of that debate are far too narrow. Usually it is focused on a small subtopic, like the number of conservative commentators on television, when news commentary isn’t even the issue — it is in news reporting that the journalist must strive for objectivity. Or it is focused on a particular statement that galls — say, CNN boss Ted Turner’s insulting Christians — but examining such a statement, while instructive, doesn’t begin to plumb the depths of the problem of liberal media bias.

Peter Jennings might think that the problem of media bias is pretty much solved, but as this book will show, liberal media bias is alive and well. The evidence of such bias is simply staggering.

The Liberal Counterattack

Although overwhelming evidence indicates that liberal bias in the mainstream news media continues unchecked, something important has changed in recent years. It is not just that news leaders like Peter Jennings have been forced for the first time to answer questions about media bias. No, the Left has come to believe that a battle is on and has begun to attack those dreaded conservatives who dare to challenge the authority and legitimacy of the “mainstream” news media. But the liberal counterattack has been bizarre. Some on the Left, refusing to admit to the longtime liberal dominance over the mainstream news media, go so far as to claim that there is actually a conservative media bias. According to a series of books released in 2002 and 2003, the vast right-wing conspiracy has somehow managed to conquer the news media as well. It is important, and won’t take long, to demolish this mythology.

First out of the gate was The Nation’s Eric Alterman with the book What Liberal Media?: The Truth About Bias and the News, a response to the number one bestseller from former CBS newsman Bernard Goldberg, Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News. (In his book Alterman condemns me for praising the media’s powerful, if short-lived, patriotism in the days following the September 11 horror.) The New York Observer’s Joe Conason followed with Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth, in which he tries to “debunk conservative mythology,” devoting a whole chapter to the “palpably ridiculous argument” that “liberals control the media.” (It’s instructive that Conason says of this writer that the “belligerent, red-bearded Bozell, a nephew of William F. Buckley Jr., scarcely pretends to be anything more than an instrument of the Republican Party’s conservative leadership,” an extraordinary accomplishment given that I’m not even a Republican.) Finally we got comedian Al Franken’s Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. A quick review of Franken’s book begs the question: Is this man serious? And a related question: Just how serious is a movement that relies on this man as its spokesman? We will spend more time with Mr. Franken later in the book.

The Conason/Alterman/Franken argument that the media are conservative revolves around four major points, all of them fallacious:

1. Liberal bias? Just look at all those conservatives in the media! By far the most common trick of the Left is to focus on the “media,” not the “news media.” How many times do we hear liberals cite Rush Limbaugh, William F. Buckley, Robert Novak, Cal Thomas, Sean Hannity, and so on, as evidence of the conservative “dominance” of the media? What these liberals know full well is that all of these conservatives are commentators, not reporters; their work appears in opinion columns and on TV or radio talk shows — not in news stories in our newspapers or on radio or television news programs. None reports news, but rather they all react to it analytically and, by necessity, with prejudice. More: No conservative on talk radio denies his conservative stance, which puts every one of them in almost perfect juxtaposition with the liberals in the news media, almost all of whom deny their own bias. It is impossible to contend that conservatives dominate the news media — which is why liberals play with the terminology.

2. Who cares about liberal reporters? It’s all about those dastardly conservative media owners. Alterman has a chapter titled “You’re Only As Liberal As the Man Who Owns You.” This is the stuff of Berkeley coffee klatches. Contrary to the Marxist stick-figure caricature, corporate CEOs cannot be automatically stereotyped as supply-side right-wingers dressed in three-piece Armani suits smoking oversized stogies and swigging martinis at the Knickerbocker Club. And if you don’t believe me, ask Michael Eisner or Ted Turner.

Even if we suspend our disbelief for a moment and go along with Alterman that the owners of media corporations are all right-wingers, what does that really tell us? Nothing, as CNN’s Tucker Carlson rightly pointed out when Alterman tried to claim that right-wing media owners control “what gets on the news.” On the February 5, 2003, edition of Crossfire, Carlson swiftly rebutted Alterman’s argument: “Actually, having worked in media corporations all my adult life, I can tell you, as I think you already know, most reporters don’t take orders from the owners of their companies. Most reporters don’t know who the owners of their companies are and have zero contact with them. So that’s not a plausible claim.”

The corporate ownership argument is closely linked to point #1. Liberals like to point out that a majority of newspaper editorial pages normally endorse Republicans in presidential campaigns, as if somehow this validates their theory that the owners are calling the shots. But these are editorial writers — not owners, and not reporters — making this call. Moreover, theirs is a one-day story in the editorial page; this tells us nothing about a paper’s slant 365 days per year in the news section, which is all that matters.

3. Don’t believe us liberals; just listen to what some conservatives say about this silly “liberal media” accusation. Conason quotes former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed mouthing this analysis of the press: “My sense is that it’s probably never as good as you think and it’s never as bad as you think.” But what does that mean? It is not content analysis; it’s conjecture. And yet Conason believes that in saying this, Reed “acknowledged” that “the media have turned to the right.”

Alterman misuses Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol in the same way. Kristol once told The New Yorker that “the liberal media were never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures,” a point with which most conservatives would disagree, but also a point focusing on the impact of liberal media bias, not its existence, which Alterman seems not to realize is a given for Kristol. Alterman also quotes Pat Buchanan suggesting that the media had been fair to him on the presidential campaign trail, but in no way was Buchanan denying the existence of a liberal media bias. In fact, over the years Buchanan has denounced the liberal media probably hundreds of times, but Alterman has somehow missed all of these quotes. I wonder if he also missed Buchanan’s dismissal of What Liberal Media? In a column in June 2003, Buchanan called Alterman a poor judge of bias and averred that there is indeed a “liberal press,” which includes “all three major networks, PBS, NPR and virtually all major U.S. papers — Boston Globe, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, Washington Post, Atlanta Constitution, Miami Herald, Chicago Tribune, Denver Post, Los Angeles Times. . . . Not only are the editorial pages of most major papers liberal, the news staffs are overwhelmingly so.” Buchanan concluded that “Big Media remains a fortress of liberalism,” which is not exactly a ringing endorsement of Alterman’s thesis.

Franken, meanwhile, relies on an ex-conservative to guide him through the world of conspiratorial conservative media politics. But the ex-conservative in question, David Brock, is a highly suspect source, to say the least, for he is an accomplished liar. (Incidentally, Franken, he who condemns “liars” in his book, was forced to confess that he lied in writing the book. In July 2003 he wrote a letter of apology to Attorney General John Ashcroft, admitting that he had not been truthful when he had earlier asked for Ashcroft’s views on abstinence for what he had claimed, falsely, was a book on the subject.)

4. Gore had the election stolen from him and this proves the media’s conservative bias. Conason finds a conspiracy here: “For eight years, the nation’s largest mainstream news organizations devoted substantial resources to bringing down a Democratic administration. Investigative units at ABC News and NBC News chased scandal stories so zealously that they became virtual adjuncts of the prosecutors and conservative groups attacking the White House. . . . That same enmity infected the coverage of Democratic nominee Al Gore during the 2000 presidential election. False stories designed to ruin Gore’s reputation, including phony and distorted quotes, found their way from the Republican National Committee to the conservative media and seeped into the mainstream press.”

That accusation packs quite a wallop — except Conason doesn’t offer a single example to support his case.

Franken devotes an entire chapter to the 2000 presidential election, claiming that it “disproved” the argument that the media display a liberal bias. This thirteen-page study in incoherent ramblings offers no serious content analysis and beats to death one or two utterly irrelevant anecdotes (the media’s handling of Al Gore and the Love Canal issue — stop the presses!).

Alterman devotes a chapter to the 2000 election and another entire chapter to the postelection standoff in Florida. Most of it is a rather hysterical tirade against George W. Bush’s camp for being evil and Al Gore’s camp for not being as clever as the evil Bush camp. Here and there, however, he slips in a quote or factoid as “evidence” of this conservative, anti-Gore bias. For example, he cites The Press Effect, a study by Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Paul Waldman which found that “in the five Sunday shows aired by the three networks [on December 3], the word ‘concede’ appeared in twenty-three questions.” In twenty of them, Alterman points out, “the hypothetical conceder was Al Gore.” Somehow he finds this to be rather damning evidence, but he does not consider that perhaps this was so because recount after recount continued to validate Bush’s victory while Gore’s attempts to overturn the election results were rebuffed time and again.

Since all three of these authors seize on the 2000 presidential election as “evidence” of their wacky claims, this book will address the topic in depth, in Chapter 11.

Strangely, even when denying a liberal bias in the media, these writers don’t deny that most reporters are liberal. Alterman admits, “I concur that the overall flavor of the elite media reporting favors gun control, campaign finance reform, gay rights, and the environmental movement” — and he could have easily added abortion, tax hikes, big government, and a host of other liberal policies — though he does feebly submit, “I do not find this bias as overwhelming as some conservatives do.” Franken spends a chapter ridiculing Bernard Goldberg and Bias but also writes, “I think Goldberg’s most valid point is that reporters tend to have more liberal views than the public on social issues.” His argument is reduced to this: Okay, so the media are liberal on social issues, but they’re conservative on economic issues, which are what really matter. But even that is not true. To prove his point that “journalists are economically conservative,” Franken cites a 1998 survey of Washington-area reporters by Virginia Commonwealth University professor David Croteau, who often performs studies for the Far Left (and misnamed) group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). Yet Franken omits the most important numbers from Croteau’s survey — because these numbers contradict his conclusion: When asked to characterize their political orientation on social issues, only 9 percent of the journalists said “right” while 87 percent said “left” or “center”; on economic issues, only 19 percent said “right” while 75 percent said “left” or “center.” Despite what Al Franken would have us believe, few reporters are conservative on either social or economic issues. Interestingly, Joe Conason cites the same Croteau survey, but even he does not try to make the bogus Franken claim that it reveals journalists to be economically conservative.

The Coming Meltdown

The liberal argument about a conservative media bias is so flimsy as to be amusing. But the Left’s counterattack is serious, and calculated.

Several times during the Clinton years, when some in the media threatened to depart from liberal orthodoxy by focusing on Clinton scandals — Gennifer Flowers, Troopergate, and Monica Lewinsky come to mind — Team Clinton lashed out at the media for being mouthpieces of the vast right-wing conspiracy. The charge was always preposterous, and deliberately so: It was a preemptive strike designed to intimidate the press into compliance. And it worked every time, as the mainstream media responded by either turning their guns on Republicans (the Lewinsky scandal) or dropping the story altogether (Flowers, Troopergate) to prove their liberal bona fides.

No serious liberal believes that a conservative bias dominates the news media. Liberals know what this book will prove: Like the old Outer Limits television series, the Left still controls the transmission, still controls “all that you see and hear.” Television is not the only domain of the liberal news media: The Left still dominates with the printing presses, and yes, still dominates the “news” programming on radio.

So why the hysterical claims of conservative domination of the media? Because liberals fear that their monopoly on news coverage is in jeopardy. For decades, the liberal hegemony over the news media has provided the political Left with the ability not only to slant news coverage portside but actually to control the public conversation, both political and cultural, in America. Being the “social conscience” of the nation — having the ability to direct the national agenda — is quite a power. Liberals don’t want to lose that.

In fact, they are right to be scared. The liberal news media are headed for a meltdown. To be sure, even today the vast power of the liberal media cannot be underestimated. But the days of liberal spin always prevailing are coming to an end. This has nothing to do with some sinister right-wing conspiracy. Rather, the problem lies with those in the liberal news media themselves. So dismissive are they of any claim of liberal bias, no matter how well documented, that they regularly allow this bias to seep into news stories. Even when poll after poll reveals that Americans have lost confidence in the news media, the liberal media elites do not deign to cleanse their industry of the bias that plagues it.

Something else is changing that will speed the collapse of the liberal media’s monopoly on news coverage in this country. Conservatives have traditionally accepted liberal bias in the mainstream news media as a fact of life; it has been a given that the Left controls the news industry just as it holds sway over academia and the arts. But this has bred a certain complacency toward the press that has spelled disaster for one conservative initiative after another. Remember the Contract with America?

But conservatives are learning. No longer do we merely have to accept the liberal agenda of the so-called objective news media. Nothing made this point more clearly than a startling statement by President George W. Bush in October 2003. Fed up with the way the national media were covering the rebuilding efforts in Iraq, Bush stated in a Hearst-Argyle interview that he was going to bypass them. “I’m mindful of the filter through which some news travels,” the president said, “and sometimes you just have to go over the heads of the filter and speak directly to the people and that’s what we will continue to do.” The liberal press, predictably, fainted in disbelief. As John Roberts of CBS News put it, “It was the public relations equivalent of a declaration of war aimed at the national media.” Many who read this book will have an altogether different perspective. They’ll wonder why it took the Bush administration so long.

==============================

Christian Citizens and the News Media--Part 1 (Christian Post, 040928)

How should Christians engage the news media? The expanding controversy over CBS News reports on President George W. Bush’s National Guard service--and the network’s acknowledgement that it used faked documents in its report--raises a host of issues about truth-telling, media credibility, and evangelical responsibility. Let me suggest ten principles for responsible evangelical engagement with the news media. Our responsibility is to consider the news--and the making of news--from a Christian worldview perspective. That makes a huge difference in how we analyze, assimilate, and judge media reports.

Principle One: In a fallen world, everyone is biased. There is no such thing as absolute objectivity. As a matter of fact, everyone comes to the news with some bias. We are all creatures of our own limited experience and information, and we all come to the issues of the day--controversial or otherwise--with a specific worldview. Even research scientists acknowledge that absolute objectivity is an impossible achievement. This is especially true when dealing with issues of worldview consequence. As Christians, we recognize that bias is not merely a matter of political interest or ideological conviction; it is evidence of sin. In a sinful world, bias creeps into every discussion, every judgment, and every news report. Evangelical Christians therefore have no excuse for being surprised when bias appears--we should expect it, and judge accordingly. At the same time, we should be aware of our own bias and submit our own assumptions to careful analysis. Every single individual confronts the issues of the day from specific worldview commitments. There is no escaping this reality.

Principle Two: News reports are heavily filtered--and the filters matter. The news we receive on televised broadcasts, in newspapers, and in virtually any other form, come to us only after passing through numerous filters. All along the process, reporters, editors, producers, executives, and others are making judgments about what stories are important, how stories should be reported, what sources should be used, and what perspectives should be included. These filters are extremely significant, and the news reports we receive are but a fraction of what could be published and presented. Someone is making those decisions, and the worldview of those decision-makers is of the utmost importance. The decision about what to cover is as important as decisions about how to cover any given issue or event. If we are unaware of these filters, we will assume that the news presented to us reflects what is ultimately most important. Actually, it may reflect only what individuals in the filtering process want us to see, read, or hear. As Marvin Olasky argues in Prodigal Press, “Many scholars suggest that journalists have their prime influence on society not so much by coverage of particular stories as by the choice of what to cover; journalists are sometimes called ‘gate-keepers’ or ‘agenda-setters.’ Readers and viewers should keep asking: Why was this story considered newsworthy?”

Principle Three: The media are driven by commercial interests. The vast majority of media outlets are commercial enterprises, driven by a bottom-line desire for profit. This has a great deal to do with how the news is presented, how the readers or audience are addressed, and how issues are framed. As Neil Postman and Steve Powers explained, much of what we see on television news is designed “to keep viewers watching so that they will be exposed to commercials.” Thus, producers and news directors are driven to cover stories that offer visual interest, regardless of news value. As the old newsroom adage goes, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Images often displace words, and a distorted picture of reality results. Furthermore, the commercial interest of broadcast news means that viewers must be held over a period of time by enticements. That is why news anchors advertise upcoming stories and, as C. John Sommerville of the University of Florida explains, “string us along.” As Sommerville argues, “The techniques of stringing us along show that the news industry is not as interested in satisfying a hunger as in creating an addiction.” The media have a commercial product to sell, and that product is television commercials.

Principle Four: The media elite is demographically and ideologically removed from the world inhabited by most Americans. As researchers S. Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman, and Linda S. Lichter argued over two decades ago, the news business is now largely in the hands of a “media elite.” As these researchers made clear, this media elite is comprised of persons from a very thin slice of the American population. They are highly educated, socially mobile, metropolitan in focus, and overwhelmingly liberal in terms of ideological bias. They have often attended America’s most prestigious universities, they were often radicalized by the 1960s, Vietnam, and the Watergate experience, and they see the news media as an opportunity to revolutionize society. As Robert and Linda Lichter and Stanley Rothman described the media elite, “In their attitudes toward sex and sex roles, members of the media elite are virtually unanimous in opposing both governmental and traditional constraints. A large majority opposes government regulation of sexual activities, upholds a pro-choice position on abortion, and rejects the notion that homosexuality is wrong. In fact, a slight majority would not characterize adultery as wrong.” Does the coalescence of leading journalists into a media elite make a difference? Bernard Goldberg, a long-time veteran of CBS News, poses the questions this way: “Do we really think that if the media elites worked out of Nebraska instead of New York, and if they were overwhelmingly social conservatives instead of liberals, and if they overwhelmingly voted for Nixon and Reagan instead of McGovern and Mondale . . . do we really think that would make no difference? Does anyone really believe that the evening newscast would fundamentally be the same?” No sane person can believe this would make no difference, and in the case of media bias, naivete is deadly.

Principle Five: Headlines often lie and language often misleads. Readers of newspapers are often unaware that the reporter usually has nothing to say about the headline of an article or report. Headlines emerge from the copy-editing process, and are used to draw attention to a story and attract readers. Furthermore, the headlines are powerful editorial devices, casting a story in a particular context of meaning, even before the article is read. But headlines often lie--and careful readers will often discover that the claim made in the headline is completely undermined by the content of the article. Some newspapers are particularly offensive in this regard, showing clear bias in their headlines and article contexting. Similarly, language and terminology within an article or broadcast can be used to mislead the public. What words are used to describe principle figures in a story? Will the reporter describe a suicide bomber as a terrorist, or as a freedom-fighter? Will an individual be identified as a presidential aide, or a political operative? Will a spokesperson be identified as an opponent of same-sex marriage, or as a defender of traditional marriage? These decisions amount to both distinction and difference, and can often mean the difference between understanding or misunderstanding. The choice of language is of vital importance, and with the culture of political correctness now invading newsrooms across America, this usually means that those arguing for an overthrow of moral restraint are referred to in a positive light, while defenders of traditional morality are referred to as repressive and negative. Beware the power of words!

Christian engagement with the news media requires intelligence, thoughtfulness, and an awareness of how the media elite really think. As always, knowledge is power.

Christian Citizens and the News Media--Part 2 (Christian Post, 040928)

We are living in an age of unprecedented media access and almost every American home has access to multiple media options. Cable news channels provide a constant stream of reports even as the Internet erases the final geographic barriers to information transfer. Newspapers, talk radio, and the older network news broadcasts must be added to the mix, providing citizens with an overload of information and images.

Most Americans never even stop to recognize how revolutionary this level of information access really is. Previous generations relied on word of mouth, handwritten communications, the Pony Express, the telegraph, or radio broadcasts. Those over 40 years of age can remember the limitations of a black-and-white television with news packaged in the form of 30-minute network broadcasts, supplemented by occasional special reports. If you missed the nightly broadcast, you were out of luck and uninformed. No longer. Now, the older networks are just trying to stay relevant in the news universe.

The really important question is this: Are we any wiser? The explosion of media access has provided some real benefits for viewers. Competition has led to improvements in both style and substance, and the expanding number of news organizations has added new checks and balances to the system. Still, much of the additional coverage is more concerned with “infotainment” than information or analysis. Furthermore, many citizens feel as if they are drowning in an ocean of competing reports and programs.

Is there a way toward media sanity? Here are five more principles for Christian engagement with the news media.

Principle Six: The likelihood of being uninformed and misinformed increases as the number of news sources decreases. Dependence on just a few media sources, whether newspapers, Internet sites, or television news programs, is dangerous. We can grow far too comfortable with familiar faces, trusted reporters, and patterns of habit. The reduction of news sources means that the filtering process poses an even greater danger, and viewers or readers are far more susceptible to influence and bias. This is also true when it comes to the form of media input. Television reports must be visually interesting, fast paced, and energetic--regardless of the story. Furthermore, television news broadcasts tend to rely on reductionism, making it more likely that bias can creep into a reporter’s summarization without notice. Christian citizens should develop the discipline of wide reading and selective viewing--checking reports against each other for accuracy and bias. Do not trust just one network, one cable news program, one newspaper, or one commentator.

Principle Seven: Beware the error of following the crowd. As a commercial business, the media industry must produce a mass audience and must compete for viewer attention. Thus, the network or program that offers the most drama, controversy, and excitement often draws the largest viewership. Similarly, the newspaper that is most salacious, most sensational, and most superficial may well draw the largest readership. In other words, the crowd is often drawn to a spectacle, just as the ancient Romans demanded bread and circuses. As the crowd grows larger and larger, the content may grow smaller and smaller, and the opportunity for thoughtful engagement with the issues of the day may virtually disappear. When this phenomenon takes place, celebrities often replace specialized authorities in matters of public debate, energy substitutes for information, and the whole enterprise produces far more heat than light. As your parents warned you long ago--beware of following the crowd. Far too many Americans rely on superficial reports and on news wrongly packaged as entertainment.

Principle Eight: Those who get their news only from broadcast media are missing much of the story, and much of its significance. Limiting news intake to television programming is a special danger. Televised news reports tend to be image-driven, more superficial, and more simplistic than the print media. Now, television news broadcasts tend to be framed as conversations, producing “talking heads” who often provide more drama than content and information. This produces an artificial understanding of reality. As Sommerville explains, “It turns out that being informed really means knowing what the people around you are talking about. Our reality is the news, not the world.” There is no substitute for reading, and a diet limited to broadcast news will impoverish the mind. As Postman and Powers argue, “anyone who is not an avid reader of newspapers, magazines, and books is by definition unprepared to watch a television news show, and always will be.” There is no substitute for careful and thoughtful reading. The visual medium is given to entertainment and visual dependence over content and careful analysis.

Principle Nine: When it comes to issues of importance, turn off the tube and think. As veteran newscasters sometimes lament, matters of grave and great significance are often strung together on the news and mixed with unimportant and inane items with the familiar formula, “and now this.” A report about genocide in Sudan can be followed by the latest development in reducing auto emissions, which can be followed by a story about a talking parrot. This leveling of significance produces a distortion of reality. Christians must learn to think about the issues covered in media reports, and resist the temptation to be narcoticized by an endless stream of disconnected reports of unequal significance. This requires discipline and focus, which in turn require silence--which means turning the television off.

Principle Ten: Use the news media as material for worldview analysis. When watching the news or reading the newspaper, Christians should learn continually to reframe the question. Thinking in explicitly Christian terms, armed with the full measure of Christian conviction, the Christian must reason from biblical truth to the issues of the day. We cannot accept the issues as framed for us by the news media, but we must continually reframe in light of Christian truth. For example, controversies about everything from the economy and abortion to the environment and animal rights must be reframed in terms of a biblical perspective. Otherwise, we will commit the error of attempting to reason to a Christian worldview from a secular premise. We must reverse the question, reframe the issue, and subject every controversy and question to careful worldview analysis. This is important for all Christians, but is especially important for parents as careful engagement with the news media affords an excellent opportunity for training children in Christian worldview thinking. They will be engaging the media for the rest of their lives, and faithful Christian parents will prepare their children for media engagement that is genuinely Christian.

As with every dimension of life, our engagement with the news media reveals our deepest convictions and our true beliefs. Christians must engage the news media as Christians, ready to think, to analyze, to make judgments, and to draw accurate conclusions. Inevitably, Christians will either lead or be led.

_____________________________________

R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

==============================

Why we don’t believe you (Townhall.com, 060828)

By Mary Katharine Ham

Does the mainstream press ever wonder why conservatives distrust them so much?

If so, they need look no further than the “fauxtography” scandals of the last couple of weeks. Conservative bloggers have been hard at work sniffing out suspected fakery and staging in the photos sent back on the newswires from the Israel/Hezbollah conflict, and the investigation got pretty smelly.

First, there was Reutersgate, in which the international news organization had to pull a photo and fire a freelance photographer because he clumsily Photoshopped thicker smoke into the skyline of Beirut.

This incident got bloggers wondering what other photographic evidence of Israeli aggression had been Photoshopped or staged into existence, and just how complicit the news media was in the fakery. They came up with a photo by the same Reuters photographer, in which he had added flares to a photograph of an Israeli plane, and called them missiles.

But that was just the beginning. There was Green Helmet Guy, who seemed to be ever-present at the sites of Israeli “atrocities,” always making the most of the evidence of civilian casualties. He even played director to international news crews and photographers, showing them how to get the best shots of Lebanese casualties.

Then there was the “Passion of the Toys,” in which brand-new toys—poignant symbols of childhood innocence—seemed to keep popping up, perfectly framed by the destruction of war, yet strangely unscathed by it.

Oh, but it doesn’t stop there. Later came the “unluckiest multiple home owner in Lebanon,” photographed on several occasions, weeping in front of her several homes, bombed by several Israeli airstrikes. Then, we have the New York Times’ pieta, in which a rescue worker was carelessly identified as a victim of an airstrike when, in fact, he had been injured while working in the area. And, the flaming tire atrocity. And, the time Hezbollah bombed an Israeli ship in Australia.

Finally, this week, there was the ambulance attack that maybe wasn’t. There’s strong evidence to suggest that the two ambulances allegedly hit by Israeli airstrikes on July 23 were not exactly pulverized by missiles, as we were led to believe.

Reuters fired its fake photographer, which was the correct response to such deception. But, beyond that, there has not been much comeuppance for photographers and reporters involved in airbrushed, faked, and staged news.

The mainstream media’s response to the allegations from blogs has been more along the lines of Greg Mitchell’s, editor of Editor & Publisher, a trade magazine whose mission it is to cover “all aspects of the North American newspaper industry, including business, newsroom, advertising, circulation, marketing, technology, online and syndicates.”

Mitchell’s response to accusations from bloggers—instead of answering the charges and refuting evidence—was to get very defensive, claim that “rightwing bloggers” were only attempting to smear photojournalists as a group, and then proceed to smear rightwing bloggers as a group for daring to point out the dishonesty of some photojournalists, and raise questions about how business is conducted in the Middle East.

You can see Mitchell’s response to the accusations and you can see the deconstruction thereof, on the web. All are worth a read to really understand how the mainstream media deals with accusations of fraud, and how cavalierly it tosses aside some of its most avid consumers’ concerns. Here’s a typical paragraph from one of Mitchell’s pieces:

Time does not permit a point by point documentation of the dozens of ludicrous, or at least completely unproven, examples of doctored or staged or otherwise manipulated photos on the Web. Have no fear, I will soon return to this subject, but in the meantime, feel free to plunge into the blogosphere. If you go deeply enough, you may feel you are back on the Grassy Knoll. One of the most-linked sites in this controversy, EU Referendum, goes so far as to suggest that a kind of Hollywood “film-set” was improvised at the site of the Qana killings “for the benefit of both Hezbollah and the media.”

I would highly recommend you go through the links I’ve listed above and decide for yourself whether the accusations are “ludicrous,” particularly the video of a Hollywood film-set improvised at the site of the Qana killing, “for the benefit of both Hezbollah and the media.”

Instead of addressing concerns and refuting evidence, Mitchell calls bloggers a bunch of Grassy Knoll-ers intent on discrediting “the media as a whole.” This is not the way to win trust with your audience.

Mitchell then went on to discredit himself within the space of just a couple hours.

On Friday, the Confederate Yankee blog brought attention to a column Mitchell had written in 2003, in which he confessed to making up news as a young reporter. He had been sent out to do a story on Niagara Falls, and found himself unable to talk to tourists to get quotes. So, he sat on a bench and made the quotes up. He confessed his journalistic sin in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal.

Many other blogs picked up on the 2003 column, suggesting that Mitchell might be sympathetic to faked news because he himself had been a faker.

Several hours after Confederate Yankee’s post went up, that blogger noticed the text of the 2003 article had been changed. The lede had gone from this:

Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days, I want to finally come clean. Back when I worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette), our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally “turned off” the famous cataracts, diverting water so they could shore up the crumbling rock face. Were visitors disappointed to find a trickle rather than a roar? Or thrilled about witnessing this once-in-a-lifetime stunt?

To this (additions in bold):

Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days, I want to finally come clean. Back in 1967, when I was 19 and worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette) as a summer intern, our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally “turned off” the famous cataracts, diverting water so they could shore up the crumbling rock face. Were visitors disappointed to find a trickle rather than a roar? Or thrilled about witnessing this once-in-a-lifetime stunt?

The column had been edited, without notation, within a couple of hours of bloggers calling attention to it, to emphasize Mitchell’s youth and inexperience at the time of his ethical faux pas. Luckily, several bloggers and the Internet preserved the original piece.

So, it seems someone went back and altered a three-year-old column to reflect more positively on Mitchell, once it got a bit of attention from the “Grassy Knoll,” “rightwing bloggers.” Makes all those “ludicrous” accusations of dishonesty of the mainstream press seem not so ludicrous, doesn’t it?

Mitchell now has not just his industry’s malfeasance to answer for, but his own malfeasance, which he admitted to in a 2003 column, and which was then compounded when someone altered his three-year-old copy to protect him.

Changing copy three years after it has been published, without providing a “correction” or “clarification” note, is entirely unethical by the very standards of the newspaper industry Mitchell is charged with covering. Dan Riehl, another blogger, has evidence that Mitchell may have been altering copy in his latest E&P column, as well.

Rightwing bloggers are predisposed to distrust the media, as are most conservatives. The fauxtographers and defenders like Mitchell are giving us no reason to be encouraged. The mainstream press’ stock is in credibility. The right course is to answer, quickly and thoroughly, any credible charges against them, so as to preserve that stock.

Instead, with the notable exceptions of David Perlmutter and Jim Pinkerton, the mainstream media seems content to blame it all on the Grassy Knoll while half of its readers find news coverage is greener on the other side.

This is why we don’t believe you.

==============================