Crisis mounting for the liberal media.
As a liberal, I have long understood, recognized, and not denied that liberals, not conservatives, are in charge of the American media. The exception of Fox News proves the rule. Conservative commentators dominate talk radio, but they are commentators. They do not pretend to give the news objectively. Where the news is given as news, nearly invariably, the journalists who find the news and give the news to the people are liberals of the most orthodox sort.
Liberal media organizations today face a mounting crisis, perhaps the most serious one they have faced for decades. It is a crisis of their own manufacture. The mask is coming off. Americans are becoming more aware than ever of the starkly liberal slant of Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, CNN, the local newspaper, and just about every other major media organization in the country, as Brent Bozell observes. (*)
Outwardly, all reputable journalists claim that their ideal is to give the news objectively—without any bias or spin. Privately, most reputable journalists calmly claim to be “the conscience” of the country. Presenting the facts objectively, however, is different than being “the conscience.”
The argument about the impossibility of true objectivity in news coverage is a red herring. The liberal media has swung far away from even an attempt at objectivity.
Bozell notes the insufferable smugness of the media elites.
[T]he 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.
The liberal media elite’s deep suspicion of the Iraq war effort and of the Global War on Terrorism has driven it to energetically spin coverage of these major events. As most Americans are not in tune with the media’s mistaken suspicion, but rightly see the war in the context of the national interest, people can’t help but notice the discrepency between the media’s claim to objectivity and the reality. Why so much coverage of the isolated incidents at the Abu Ghraib prison and so little of our military triumphs? The only answer is bias against the war effort.
The mounting crisis of the liberal media is one of their own credibility. As they make their money by providing facts to people, trust is the only thing of real value they have, and now, sadly, they are frittering that away.
At a level of greater depth, however, the crisis of the liberal media reflects the crisis within orthodox liberalism, a static set of ideologies that deserve to be called paleoliberalism. (†) This is the liberalism of the past. As no “next-generation” version of liberalism has come forward, the death of paleoliberalism as a working set of political principles presents a sizable challenge for those who expect to rely on them.
Fundamentally, the crisis of liberal politics in America, and around the world, is not one of being out-hustled politically or of being the victim of dirty tricks. It is a crisis of imagination, a crisis of vision.
As an unorthodox liberal, I look forward to a day with both a more objective media and an invigorated liberalism.