Here's a piece on bias in the media. First is Howard Kurtz's piece from the Post followed by the link to the article he references.
Liberal Media Conspiracy Falls Flat
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 28, 2002; 8:25 AM
Liberal media detractors – you know who you are – take note.
The conventional wisdom is that the mainstream liberal media helps, well, mainstream liberal politicians. That conservatives can't catch a break from the big media companies. That journalists have their thumb on the scale, tilting it to the left.
Those on the right, in this view, have to scramble to get their voices heard but are drowned out by the libs, who don't even know they're libs, since everyone they know in the media is lib.
Maybe so. But there's another theory.
That the conservative press is purely partisan, while the mainstream weenie press is concerned with issues like fairness and balance – and, in fact, often criticized Bill Clinton and other Democrats.
That it's not really an even fight, heavyweight boxers versus high school debaters.
That Democrats are actually hamstrung because they try to play to the major editorial pages, while the Republicans, with knives in their teeth, couldn't care less.
That's the argument mounted by Washington Monthly Editor Paul Glastris in a piece titled "Why Can't The Democrats Get Tough?"
It's got a great cover – a menacing-looking Joe Lieberman, Tom Daschle and George Stephanopoulos, in muscleman T-shirts, wielding stillettos, chains and truncheons.
First, the premise: "The Bush team can attack Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), lose $4 trillion of the surplus, and meet with campaign contributors whose company stock they own, and Democrats just watch. ... And then there's Enron. Is there any doubt that if the situation were reversed, Republicans would be exploiting the scandal more aggressively? Would they have hesitated, as Democrats have, to frame Enron as a political scandal, or to bombard the White House with subpoenas? Democrats can't afford to go all wobbly, especially now."
Now the media critique: "The difference in partisan intensity also reflects the different media outlets to which the parties play. Democrats in Washington focus incessantly on the establishment press: The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, CBS, CNN, NPR. That is where their worldview is shaped, and where they look for validation of their ideas and status. Republican leaders are hardly indifferent to the establishment outlets. But they increasingly take their cue from the expanding alternative universe of conservative media: The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal editorial page, talk radio, Fox News Channel.
"Needless to say, these two media worlds are governed by radically different rules. Yes, there is a certain amount of liberal bias in the mainstream press. But on balance, the big national papers and broadcast networks take seriously the traditional journalistic strictures of fairness, accuracy, and independence of judgement.
"The conservative press, by and large, does not labor under these constraints. It does not pretend to be in the business of presenting all sides fairly, but of promoting its side successfully. 'The conservative press is self-consciously conservative and self-consciously part of the team,' observes conservative strategist Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform (who, like most conservatives I spoke with, doesn't buy the idea that Republicans fight more ruthlessly than Democrats). 'The liberal press is much larger, but at the same time it sees itself as the establishment press. So it's conflicted. Sometimes it thinks it needs to be critical of both sides, to be nonpartisan.'
"You see this all the time. The editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times supported or kept silent about the Republican Senate's strategy of blocking votes on Clinton judicial nominees. Now these papers cry foul when Democrat senators try to do the same to Bush. The New York Times and Washington Post editorials, on the other hand, have been consistent in their condemnation.
"But to the conservative press, intellectual consistency is for, well, intellectuals. What's more important is to stiffen the resolve of GOP lawmakers to fight the Manichaean battle against liberalism. If the mainstream papers want to undermine the will of Democrats with a lot of high-minded consistency, that's their business. Let 'em get medals for fair play. We'll get the federal judiciary.
"The same dynamic plays out among TV pundits. Conservatives such as Robert Novak, Kate O'Beirne, and Jonah Goldberg are ideological warriors who attempt with every utterance to advance their cause. Their center-left counterparts, people such as Juan Williams, Margaret Carlson, and E.J. Dionne, simply don't have the same killer instinct. While their sympathies are obvious, liberal pundits are at heart political reporters, not polemicists, who seem far more at ease on journalistic neutral ground, analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of both sides, rather than in vigorously defending Democrats."
Maybe James Carville and Paul Begala can help even the score now that they've signed on as co-hosts for "Crossfire."
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