Media Realism - How the GOP should handle increasingly biased journalists
NRO | April 6, 2009 | EDWARD W. GILLESPIE
Over the past few months, a steady stream of journalists from mainstream-media outlets — at least eight, led by Time Washington-bureau chief Jay Carney — has abandoned journalism for positions in the Obama administration or with congressional Democrats. Fortunately for them, the difficult transition from objective reporting to ardent advocacy of a party’s agenda was made easier by the head start they got in last year’s campaign. Though there have long been concerns about liberal bias in the media, 2008 was the year the referees took off their striped shirts and donned a team’s jersey.
Some say it’s a shift forced by the rapidly changing business model of journalism; others say longstanding liberal bias has simply become more apparent in a media culture that demands quick and constant content. But there are very few who deny that a marked change occurred. In a December dispute with the New York Times over an incredibly biased story on the root causes of the housing crisis (Guess what? It was all Bush’s fault!), I put it this way: “I don’t know if the New York Times’s shoddy reporting is a result of its junk-bond status, or if the New York Times’s junk-bond status is a result of its shoddy reporting.”
As a conservative who has worked with reporters for 25 years and generally enjoyed friendly relations with them, it’s a dispiriting change — one to which Republicans must adapt, and soon. Despite witnessing the media’s evolution firsthand, I was slow coming to this conclusion.
In 1985, at the age of 23, I became the press secretary for a newly elected congressman from Texas named Dick Armey. I began working for Armey, an unknown economics professor who’d upset a well-known Democratic incumbent in the 1984 Reagan reelection landslide, less than a month after he was sworn in. This began a long journey dealing with various and changing media, from regional press to the national Bigfoots, as I worked my way up to being chairman of the Republican National Committee and counselor to Pres. George W. Bush.
I cut my teeth working with the Texas press corps, which at the time had a strong presence in the nation’s capital. Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio were all two-paper towns with Washington bureaus; the Fort Worth Star-Telegram had a big Washington office as well; and mid-sized cities like El Paso, Amarillo, and Beaumont had D.C. stringers. The big metro-area TV stations had their own Washington bureaus, too, and the Associated Press had a full-time reporter covering the Texas delegation.
Even as a junior member in the minority, Armey generated news, and I established a good working relationship with the Texas beat reporters. There were times when I gave them a friendly brush-back over instances of bias — they were prone to describing Armey as right-wing, though you’d never see a Democrat like Jim Wright described as left-wing — but for the most part they quoted Armey accurately, described his efforts fairly, published his op-ed pieces from time to time, and engaged in spirited editorial-board discussions.
When Armey entered the House Republican leadership as conference chairman in 1993, in the wake of Bill Clinton’s election, I also interacted with reporters for national outlets covering Congress — the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, network-news correspondents, etc. After we captured the majority in 1995, these interactions became constant.
In this role, I found my objections over biased coverage more frequent and more pronounced than they had been with the regional press, and I generally felt that we were swimming against the tide. But I also felt that reporters tried to give Republicans a fair shake, and I enjoyed the give-and-take in the Speaker’s Lobby off the House floor and up in the House Radio-TV Gallery.
As RNC chairman in 2003 and 2004, I grew increasingly frustrated with the political media and their obsession with process (rather than substance). To report about process — to predict what’s going to happen rather than describe what already has happened — is to obtain a license for injecting opinion.
When I joined the White House in June 2007, I was still naïvely hopeful that we could get an honest hearing from the MSM. It did not take long for the scales to fall from my eyes. The national press corps loathed the president — not personally, I don’t think, but politically. Their reporting dripped with disdain, and their stories were frequently riddled with negative adverbs and adjectives. On issues like the Iraq War, the environment, and life, there was often little distinction between our treatment in liberal blogs and our treatment in major daily newspapers.
As I wrote in my book Winning Right: Campaign Politics and Conservative Policies, I hate the media, but I happen to like reporters. This is a sentiment shared by many Republicans who deal with the media as part of their jobs, but the fact is that Republicans interact socially with members of the media far less frequently than Democrats do.
I have a lot of friends on the Democratic side of the aisle, and I’m frequently struck by their mentions of having had a national news editor over for dinner last night, or having been to a school event with a network correspondent over the weekend. It’s always a little disconcerting to be in the Green Room with a Democrat with whom you are about to joust on the air, only to have the journalist on the panel come in and gush, “That was a lot of fun last week, wasn’t it?” The truth is, Democrats and national reporters swim in a social pond that few Republican streams feed into.
Today, newspapers are folding, Washington bureaus being shuttered. And as the national media have become smaller, they have become even more homogeneous — and that makes it easier for them to indulge their cultural biases and be swayed by liberal blogs. The recent mainstream-media flap over Rush Limbaugh, generated and fueled by the Obama political machine, is only the latest evidence of the changed media dynamic.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs helped move the story along by suggesting that reporters ask Republican members of Congress whether they agree or disagree with Limbaugh’s comments.
Now, this is the kind of suggestion that operatives from both parties give reporters from time to time, but it’s usually whispered at a campaign event, or after half a bottle of wine at one of those painful black-tie press dinners. President Obama’s press secretary can say it right out loud from the White House podium. And instead of being insulted, or asking Gibbs whether it’s proper for a public official paid with taxpayer dollars to say such a thing, the reporters carry out the hit.
So, what are the lessons for Republicans?
First, when a White House press secretary presumes to be the assignment editor for the national news media, be prepared to respond to reporters following their marching orders.
Second, understand that the media will play the role of attack dog for Democrats, but not for Republicans. The media will stay on a negative story for days and continue pressing for answers when it involves a Republican. But, as a rule, when a story arises that is damaging to Democrats, the media will report or repeat it only if Republicans make it an issue, in which case they’ll frame the story as a Republican “attack.” Though most Republican candidates would rather not “wield the knife” themselves, these stories don’t get much attention unless they do. (Later, of course, the media go after the Republican for going negative.)
In 2006 the Left perfected the cycle: A blog posts an attack on a Republican candidate one day, the local daily paper runs a story two days later based on the blog account, and two days after that, a national Democratic campaign committee launches a “ripped from the headlines” attack ad citing the dailies. No Republican should be caught off-guard by this phenomenon again.
Third, be willing to call out the media on instances of blatant bias. This can be uncomfortable, because there’s generally still a rapport between Republican officials, their flacks, and reporters. Yet it was smart of the McCain campaign to make an issue of the New York Times’s ridiculously slanted coverage last year. It was also necessary for the White House to make public a letter I wrote to NBC News, in which I challenged the network’s refusal to acknowledge that Iraq was not in a civil war and objected to the deceptive editing of a Richard Engel interview with President Bush. Both of these disputes went public only after repeated, discreet objections had no effect on the news organizations in question.
Reminding voters that the media often have their own agenda can help offset bias. For example, in the 2004 South Dakota Senate race between John Thune and Tom Daschle, the pro-Daschle bias of the state’s major daily newspaper was broadly recognized. Many people looked at a campaign story in the Argus Leader as skeptically as they would a Daschle campaign mailing. There is ample empirical evidence for Republican campaigns to emphasize: National reporters identify themselves as liberal over conservative by a margin of four to one, according to the 2008 Pew Foundation survey. And that’s with 53 percent identifying themselves as “moderates,” which may very well be a conditioned response for journalists who are actually liberal.
Fourth, go around the traditional news outlets. Ronald Reagan was famously able to address the American people directly, and technology makes it remarkably easy for today’s Republicans to follow his lead. Social-networking sites, blogs, Internet and telephone town-hall meetings, campaign websites, and e-mail lists are all ways to get around the media’s filter.
Fifth, and perhaps most important, accept the reality of today’s mainstream media. Too many Republican officials and candidates operate in a mindset that was formed more than a decade ago, when the mainstream media strived for seriousness and objectivity. Those days are gone.
The day I sent the letter to NBC News, Chris Matthews discussed it on Hardball. He asked an MSNBC contributor, a leading reporter for one of the nation’s major dailies, to comment on my criticism. “That’s completely disingenuous,” replied the reporter.
I was surprised to be called “disingenuous” on the air by someone for whom I’d been a trusted source for more than a decade — someone who hadn’t even called me to get my perspective. I shot him an e-mail to that effect. He sheepishly told me that he didn’t know my letter would come up during his segment and had not even seen it. That, of course, didn’t stop him from making a sneering comment to please a TV-news host now famous for the tingle Barack Obama sent up his leg.
And that’s a big problem with “news” today. Too many reporters no longer report; they comment. The lines between news and “news analysis,” and between “news analysis” and opinion, have been all but washed away in the 24/7 Internet-and-cable news environment. That’s not to say there aren’t still many reporters who strive to be fair, report the facts, and avoid commentary. Indeed, one successful media outlet, the relatively new Politico, seems intent on hiring every “old school” reporter in Washington.
At present, Democrats use the media to their distinct advantage: The mainstream press favors them, and they are better than Republicans at using alternative outlets. It was Barack Obama, after all, who proved that a candidate has the ability to disseminate facts and a message to millions of voters directly. Republicans need to turn this tide, and fast.
Mr. Gillespie is a former chairman of the Republican National Committee. He served as counselor to Pres. George W. Bush. |
