Preface

I admit it.  It's a little embarrassing, but I used to buy into the whole "liberal media" idea.  Well, sort of.  I believed in the objectivity of the press.  I thought that journalists were probably, on the whole, more liberal than not, but that any biases would be subtle.  On the whole I thought the press was "pro story."  That is, if a story was big, it would get reported, probably over-reported.  Thus when the big story was that Clinton might be able to unseat a sitting Republican president, unheard of in over a decade, they ran with it and gave him a lot of coverage.  The same held true with the Lewinski scandal and impeachment.  In retrospect, seeing what I see now, this attitude is naïve in the extreme.  But the scales have now fallen from my eyes and I see things as they really are.

The catalytic event for me was Election 2000.  I didn't actually pay that much attention to the campaign or the coverage of it, because (a) as a former Texan, I knew that Bush did not meet my minimum standards for president, (b) I disagreed with just about every Bush political position, and (c) as a scientist, I felt that Al Gore would probably have a positive effect on science funding.

But I paid attention on election night and then was transfixed by the recount saga.  I formed some basic opinions about what had and should have happened in Florida: that punch card ballots are inherently erroneous; that the margin of "victory" in Florida was considerably smaller than the margin of error in counting the ballots; that the only way to obtain any certainty in the election results would be through a hand count; that hand counts could be fair as long as both parties had observers (acting in good faith) overseeing the work of the election officials.  In the absence of a specific conflict, these opinions are apolitical.  They could potentially benefit a Republican or a Democrat depending on the circumstances.  They should qualify as "objective" observations.

During the 36 days following election night I slavishly watched the TV and read the papers, but I never saw these "objective" observations made by the mainstream media, or even the political pundits.  The pervading attitude was that Bush "deserved" the election and that Gore was trying to steal it.  They somehow managed to ignore the fact that Gore had a popular vote lead as of election night that only grew as states refined their vote totals.  They somehow managed to ignore the fact that outside of Florida, which essentially couldn't make up its mind, Gore earned the majority of the electoral votes.  They somehow managed to ignore the fact that the Palm Beach County butterfly ballot fiasco, which had no remedy in court, nevertheless meant that a clear plurality of Florida voters had intended to vote for Gore.  Had these facts applied to a favored candidate, they would have been repeated over and over by the media to apply pressure to the opposition candidate to count all the votes.  But Gore was clearly not the favored candidate.

Instead what we got was unsubstantiated reports of "mischief" by allegedly biased election officials - which, if true, should have resulted in felony indictments.  (In fact, since the votes were never officially hand-counted, these officials were never given the opportunity to commit mischief.)  What we got were reports that Gore was trying to "change the rules in the middle of the game" when in fact he was rigorously following Florida election protest and contest rules, and, in fact, abdicated some of his legal rights unilaterally out of his own sense of fairness.  What we got was endless repetition of Gore's unfortunate words "I'll do anything to win," unsupported by his actions, coupled with simultaneous suppression of the fact that Bush, who never happened to utter the words publicly, clearly was willing to do anything to win.

I developed more opinions: Bush's strategy was clearly to suppress the counting of ballots that were legally cast under Florida law; Gore was less than fair in requesting recounts only in Democratic counties; Bush freely engaged in hypocritical conduct to prevent new Gore votes and produce new Bush votes; the Florida Secretary of State (and Florida co-Chair of the Bush campaign) behaved in a unashamedly biased manner.  Guess which of these opinions you could find in the media?  Any remotely negative opinion of Bush was buried.  Any remotely negative opinion of Gore was given the spotlight.

The topper was the media reaction to the Supreme Court rulings stopping and then ending the Florida vote counting.  The United States Supreme Court, which had historically conducted itself above the political fray, voted in a 5-4 majority to undermine the foundation of our democracy by preventing the counting of the votes which should have determined the presidency.  The majority used a perversion of the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution, violated their own judicial philosophies of anti-federalism and anti-activism, and cast a decision that no legal scholar has deemed possible were the parties reversed.  Thus they violated their oath to make decisions "without regard to person" and chose our president for us.  The only justifiable reaction was outrage.  The only visible media reaction was relief that the recount ordeal was over.

The Media Fails the Test

My theory that the press was "pro story" had been put to the test.  The cable news networks had been covering the controversy 24 hours a day.  And people were watching.  The media was making money, and lots of it.  If my assumptions had been correct, they would have been working to extend the saga as long as possible.  As it stood, the story lasted 36 days, ending essentially on December 12 with the Supreme Court decision.  But consider this: the Court did not completely close the door on Al Gore.  Officially, they sent the case back to the Florida Supreme Court for stricter standards.  They also said the Constitutional deadline was "upon us" so, oops, we guess its over.  But most legal scholars scoff at the safe harbor deadline.  There is precedent for a state turning in its slate of electors mere days before Congress was to count the electoral votes.  There was still plenty of time.  The media could have extended the story, and thus their profits, by encouraging Gore to keep fighting.

Depending on the standards employed, Gore could have easily won the Florida vote count.  The Republican-dominated Florida legislature was poised to send its own slate of Bush electors to D.C.  Missing the safe harbor deadline would have forced Congress to decide which slate to accept.  Some have tried to call this a "Constitutional crisis" in the making, but in reality, we would have been merely exercising parts of our Constitution that normally lie dormant.  The Constitution is actually quite clear on what is to happen in such a situation: Congress is supposed to clear up Electoral College questions, not the Supreme Court.  While I question the wisdom of the Electoral College itself, there is certainly wisdom in making a political body (consisting of elected and thus accountable members) the final arbiter of a political controversy, rather than the Supreme Court (consisting of unelected and unaccountable members-for-life).

Should this have been permitted or encouraged to happen, the normally boring and predictable Electoral College would have become exciting, demanding cable TV coverage.  Gore could have cast the tie-breaking vote for himself in the Senate.  A big story would have become even bigger.  People would have actually watched the proceedings.  More profits could have been made by the news channels.  But there was not the slightest peep from the media in this direction.  Their goal was to put Bush in the White House, and discourage any talk of "illegitimacy," regardless of how the goal was achieved.

Looking Elsewhere for Credible Opinion

I believed that my view was a reasonable one: that the only way to achieve a legitimate democratic outcome in Election 2000 was to hand count all the Florida ballots.  Yet this view was reflected nowhere in the mainstream media.  This glaring omission forced me to check alternate forms of media to find people who were like-minded, mainly the Internet and some published books.  Bush biographies reveal that the media had intentionally glossed over many aspects of Bush's history that would have alienated the voting public.  Two books on the Supreme Court decision, The Betrayal of America by Vincent Bugliosi and Supreme Injustice by Alan Dershowitz, eliminate any doubt that the Supreme Court majority made even the slightest attempt to act ethically in coming to their decision.

The excellent book Sound and Fury by Eric Alterman, which describes the birth and evolution of America's political "punditocracy," was a real eye-opener.  Today's pundits, which were originally conceived as journalist allowed to express opinions, usually have no journalistic qualifications.  Many make it into the field because they have previous or current government experience, which more often than not constitutes a conflict of interest.  And almost all of them are conservative: George Will, William Safire, John McGlaughlin, Charles Krauthammer, Pat Buchanan, Cokie Roberts, Sam Donaldson, Robert Novak, Chris Matthews, Bill O'Reilly . . . all conservative.  The occasional moderate (cast as the "liberal") is allowed into the club to provide "balance" but this skews the political spectrum to the conservative's advantage, making what used to be right wing extremism now appear centrist.

In this book, Alterman claims that McLaughlin once referred to all the pundits (himself included) as whores.  This description, no doubt, inspired the creation of the web site Media Whores Online, which takes "an in-depth look at the astonishingly vast and growing myriad of whores who call themselves 'journalists.'"  And while the site's authors acknowledge that they are simply using the techniques of the conservative media  against it, and thus often (and entertainingly) cross the line, on the whole what they demonstrate is just how far from "fair and balanced" (as Fox News so tellingly protests) the mainstream media is.

But mere bias is not the worst of it.  Modern-day journalists simply fail to do their jobs.  They have great resources at their disposal, and yet they routinely fail to check up on even the simplest facts.  They repeat verbatim quotes made by newsmakers and allow that alone to stand as reporting.  They provide no context and they never tell their audience when their source is lying, even if it is easy to verify.  Another web site, The Daily Howler, conducts media critiques by exposing this type of reporting, by journalists and pundits alike.  Many pundits will determine a desired result and then make up "facts" to support it.  Or worse, they will suppress inconvenient exonerating facts.  Not only is our media failing its Constitutional duty as the Fourth Estate to provide a check on our government; it is adding to the corruption.

The Current Landscape

The Fox News Channel is an excellent example of this.  To any objective observer, FNC has a clear conservative bias.  It is owned by Rupert Murdoch, whose political bias is no secret.  It is run by Roger Ailes, best known for conducting political tricks campaigns for Richard Nixon and George H. W. Bush.  Its senior journalist is Brit Hume, also unabashedly conservative.  Its premier pundit is Bill O'Reilly, who somehow believes that one viewer's letter in a thousand that condemns his "liberalism" proves his objectivity.  Statistics show that for every Democratic guest panelist on a Fox show, two Republicans make an appearance.  Yet the channel's two slogans are "We report, you decide," and "Fair and balanced."  Its audience is without a doubt far right of center, yet the network cannot own up to its own bias.  Its very self-description, its mission statement, if you will, is a complete and utter lie and yet Fox celebrity journalists will defend this self-characterization with their last breath.

The first "big" story after the 2000 Election was the disappearance of Washington intern Chandra Levy and the subsequent revelation that she had had an affair with Democratic Congressman Gary Condit.  With a couple of notable exceptions, cable news channels and other outlets played up this story well beyond its importance during the politically slow summer news months.  Fox, for one, could be counted upon to carry the occasional news item scattered in among the 24-hour Condit coverage.  Since very little new developments happened during the case, this primarily consisted of so-called experts offering opinions.  What emerged was a media-acceptable version of events in which the accusers (Chandra's family and those Condit mistresses willing to come forward) were deified and the accused (Condit plus those who would offer objections to the preordained story) were vilified.  Accusers could be wildly inconsistent in their statements and never fear being questioned about it.  The accused would be held to ridiculous standards where innocent misstatements or misunderstandings would be condemned as lies.  Unprovable "facts" would be repeated ad nauseum.  How, for example, could a reporter know that a missing woman left her apartment with no money in her pocket?  It is impossible to know what she had in her pockets, yet the contents of her pockets (or lack thereof) were reported repeatedly because, according to the press, it made Condit look guilty.  At the same time, inconvenient facts would be suppressed.  Did you know that the Levy family knew from the beginning that Chandra was not pregnant?  Don't expect the mainstream press to tell you, because her alleged pregnancy provided a motive for Condit.

This inexcusably unprofessional behavior by the American media belies its conservative nature.  Condit is a Democrat.  His behavior with an intern echoes Clinton's least admirable traits.  By crucifying Condit, the press could continue their attacks on Clinton even though he had left office.  As a bonus, the expanded coverage would provide cover for stories which might otherwise expose Bush's ineptness.  This story was pursued with no expense spared while similar stories involving Republicans were ignored.  For example, during the same time period, the 2000 Republican Senatorial opponent to Joe Lieberman was arrested for indecency with two pre-teens.  Also, an intern was found dead in the local office of a retiring Republican House member from Florida.  In this second case, a number of facts presented themselves that were not available in the Levy case: an actual dead body of a healthy young woman, a questionable autopsy from a discredited coroner, and an unexplained retirement announcement by the Congressman in question.  The primary factual difference, though (as it pertained to media coverage), is the political affiliation of the Congressman.  Attacking a Republican apparently afforded the media no political advantage.  Either that or Democrats are held to different moral standards.

Whence Liberal Bias?

As I look at the media today, I have to search hard for any liberal influences. Molly Ivins of the Fort Worth Telegraph definitely qualifies, as does Michael Kinsley of Slate.com. Joe Conason of Salon.com and Gene Lyons of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette are also must-reads for any progressive.  E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post is perhaps too even-handed to be called liberal. But these are writers, and unless you get them in your local paper, you have to hunt for them.  Those on TV you might think of as liberal due to their pedigrees (Tim Russert, George Stephanopolus), don't actually provide much in the way of the liberal perspective and more often than not attack Democrats.  Which raises two questions in my mind:  why is the media conservative and why do we think it is liberal?

The first question is not too difficult to figure out.  Almost all of the mainstream media is now owned by large corporations that (1) want to make money, (2) tend to be conservative, and (3) don't give a flip about journalistic integrity.  Even if you are a liberal reporter (and I believe many if not most journalists get into the business due to liberal motivations), there is always the threat of retaliation from your conservative superiors.  Add to this the myth of the liberal media, which causes those reporters who wish to appear objective to overcompensate in the opposite direction.  As for the pundit shows, clearly the corporations have found an effective way to skew the political spectrum as described above.  Finally, many celebrity journalists and pundits find themselves making a great deal of money, which often has the power to corrupt a liberal into becoming a conservative.  No wonder they are called whores.

So why do we think the media is liberal?  Ever since Watergate and the success of Woodward and Bernstein in pressuring a presidential resignation, conservatives have railed against the liberal media.  Maybe it actually was liberal for a time.  But as Sound and Fury makes clear, the conservative media was firmly in place by the beginning of the Reagan era.  It was simply useful for the conservatives to continue complaining about a liberal bias that didn't exist.  It made them the victims in cases where victimhood could be exploited and it provided cover against the true nature of the media, which, if widely acknowledged by the public, would work to the conservatives' disadvantage.

I think, however, there is more to it.  Outright lies such as the insistence that the media is liberal tend to become transparent over time.  This lie has had over 20 years to be exposed, but without success.  My theory is that when the conservatives say "liberal media," the public thinks of all of popular culture, not just journalists and pundits.  Today's movies, TV shows and books with increasing sex and violence are perceived as liberal, even though they have no actual political bent.  This provides a broad canvas of "liberalism" against which to complain, without providing any real political opposition to conservatives.

More focused, and perhaps more important, are those elements of popular culture that actually deal with politics.  This form of entertainment actually does have a liberal bias, and with good reason.  Imagine the NBC show The West Wing with a conservative, rather than liberal president.  Episodes would depict staffers and aides running around the White House trying to implement policies such as reducing environmental protections, cutting taxes for the rich, eliminating bankruptcy rights, scaling back welfare programs and protecting big corporations from individuals who want to sue them.  It is impossible for a writer to make such characters sympathetic.  In the shorthand of pop culture, such people are always immediately identified as the villains (as they should be).  If you are going to create a TV drama, movie or novel where the protagonists are politicians, there is no way to avoid making them liberal.

This pattern can also be seen in the movie The American President, where the Commander-in-Chief is involved in a love story, requiring that the audience like him, thus mandating that he be liberal.  The opposite side of the same coin is employed in Clear and Present Danger, where the president and his staff are the villains, and the audience must ultimately accept their downfall, mandating that they be dislikable and thus conservative.  Both sides of this coin are played in Dave, where a detestable conservative president is replaced by a likable liberal look-alike.  I have mentioned only recent examples, but the pattern persists back through our pop culture history.  When Mr. Smith goes to Washington, his climactic filibuster is over a liberal cause.

Thus liberalism actually does have its own small territory staked out in the American media.  And perhaps "small" is the wrong word.  My guess is that more people watch and are influenced by the shows mentioned above than watch and are influenced by Hardball or the O'Reilly Factor.  But this is a media segment controlled by Hollywood writers and producers, not by politicians and not by those who report or pontificate about the news.  There need be no connection between the characters and plots of these programs and reality.  Any political debate that occurs within these shows, no matter how accurate, is ultimately only pretend debate.  And they can't address most of the specific issues that cause voters to vote the way they do.  For example, they can't refute the exaggerations that are required to paint Al Gore as a serial exaggerator.  When a big news story hits, people don't go to the movies or even tune into The West Wing to get the latest breaking details.

Influence of the Conservative Media

As I look back at Election 2000 with my newfound perspective, it is clear to me that the news media exerted great effort to get George W. Bush elected.  The debates, which were an obvious turning point in the campaign, provide a good example.  Despite immediate post-debate commentary that criticized Bush for being a little petulant at times, the approved media story became Gore's sighs and displays of disrespect.  Gore was actually criticized for having a better grasp of facts and policy and after roughly three days of this inexplicable media harping, public opinion turned on him slightly to where Bush could be declared the winner.  Bush's actual shortcomings as a politician, obvious to any non-conservative who watches him on TV, were thoroughly (and intentionally) suppressed by the media, while Gore's perceived shortcomings were blown out of proportion.

What will happen when the Republicans get wise and realize if they nominate an intelligent and competent candidate, that the conservative media won't have such a hard time selling him (or her) to the public?  The Democrats would be looking at being buried under a landslide.  The situation is simply too precarious for liberals to effectively fight both the conservative media and an appealing conservative candidate.

The Democrats have to devise a strategy and implement it soon.  Democratic politicians have to appear more frequently on cable pundit shows.  They have to become more adept at speaking the sound bite language.  They need to create more liberal think tanks to give losing candidates a place to go and still affect public policy.  And they have to create a true liberal media, where their ideas can be expressed without being filtered by conservative bias.