Sunday, September 21, 2008
Owning partisan leanings - good or bad?
Would the U.S. public be better or worse served if our mainstream news outlets were explicitly partisan? In my opinion - and at the risk of sounding non-committal, yes and no. I think for transparencies sake, it would be one way to be more up front with readers, instead of having columnists attempt to project a non-partisan view, when they don't have one. That said, by identifying which way your columnists lie, you also run the risk of attracting readers that only agree with the columnist's point of view. People tend to tune into the news that is telling them what they want to hear, with the slant at which they want to hear it. It's a tricky point and I am not convinced there is a right thing to do in this case. I look forward to the discussion about it.
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I lean towards having the cards on the table, as it were. By saying where their bias lies mainstream news outlets can give up the illusion of being "fair and balanced" with all the issues they have to cover, and get away from the 'he said, she said' constrictions discussed in the readings. It appears that readers/viewers are already turning to sources they want to believe anyway: Fox News and its right wing bias is the most watched network and, despite considerable evidence that their news is more even- handed, the label of "elite media" with its own liberal bias still sticks to organizations like the NYT and CBS. And PBS! Partisan declarations create a clear difference that may encourage more debate between different sides- not just two sides- of issues. Attracting more readers/viewers this way may be just what mainstream news outlets need to compete with the many new journalism sources on the web which very often make their biases pretty clear. There is also a possibility of a chaotic free for all, of course. Except isn't that what we have now?
I'd like to know more about how the European models work- how are they perceived by the readers/viewers/listeners? Does it make a difference if this declared bias concept is different in print vs broadcast? How do they handle fact-checking?
I'm looking forward to the discussion also!
At the risk of ignoring the question at hand, and as someone who believes that years of accusations from the right about liberal media bias has contributed to the current state of "He Said/She Said" journalism, I just wanted to share a snippet from What Liberal Media? an article by Eric Alterman in the Feb. 6, 2003 issue of The Nation:
They know mau-mauing the other side is just a good way to get their own ideas across--or perhaps prevent the other side from getting a fair hearing for theirs. On occasion, honest conservatives admit this. Rich Bond, then chair of the Republican Party, complained during the 1992 election, "I think we know who the media want to win this election--and I don't think it's George Bush." The very same Rich Bond, however, also noted during the very same election, "There is some strategy to it [bashing the 'liberal' media].... If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is 'work the refs.' Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack on the next one."
Bond is hardly alone. That the media were biased against the Reagan Administration is an article of faith among Republicans. Yet James Baker, perhaps the most media-savvy of them, owned up to the fact that any such complaint was decidedly misplaced. "There were days and times and events we might have had some complaints [but] on balance I don't think we had anything to complain about," he explained to one writer. Patrick Buchanan, among the most conservative pundits and presidential candidates in Republican history, found that he could not identify any allegedly liberal bias against him during his presidential candidacies. "I've gotten balanced coverage, and broad coverage--all we could have asked. For heaven sakes, we kid about the 'liberal media,' but every Republican on earth does that," the aspiring American ayatollah cheerfully confessed during the 1996 campaign. And even William Kristol, without a doubt the most influential Republican/neoconservative publicist in America today, has come clean on this issue. "I admit it," he told a reporter. "The liberal media were never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures."
Stacy - I think you made your point very well and really pulled out the 'big gun' by quoting Alterman's article.
However, I'd like to go back further. Doesn't the whole "eastern liberal elite" (be it press or otherwise) really go back to the Nixon administration where so many the Republicans in the current administration got their start?
Also, another point that really doesn't get brought up enough is how liberal can a large media organization really be when they are owned, in many cases, by large, conservative corporations? Besides Fox News how many news organizations does Rupert Murdoch own????
To a point, it is nice to know where the news outlet trends and where their bias stands. But I think it leads to too much division among what the audience for each side gets. As Robyn pointed out, people are already trending to only tune into what they want to hear. In my opinion, we need to either confess biases and disseminate messages accordingly or be impartial and go after everyone.
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