Great Newspaper Myth No. 2

Continuing with our series on Great Newspaper Myths:
Myth No. 2: Newspapers are media, which are run by liberals and therefore follow a liberal agenda.

Truth: You're right about the "newspapers are media" part, and getting warm on the rest, but only enough not to freeze. But, hang on -- it's worse than you think. Much worse.

Myth No. 2 is a conclusion jumped to, but there are reasons why, and we'll break them down here.

A couple years back the Project for Excellence in Journalism, as part of its continuing study of media, asked newsroom staffers in all media forms to rate themselves as concerning political preference.

Even among people trained and exhorted to be objective, a fair amount of fudging was to be expected, and it's not unwise to believe so in this case. Still, the majority of people in the newsrooms were willing to categorize themselves as politically liberal -- more likely to lean toward Democrats than Republicans, etc.

Well, there you have it, you say; what more proof do we need?

But that doesn't prove the case. In order for it to be true, liberal politics has to be the standard from top to bottom. And it isn't. In fact, the Project found that the higher up the corporate ladder they went, the conservative outlook was found more often.

And there's another point, although it's minor: Liberalism is kind of an occupational disease with journalists, and it isn't because they see and parse so much information they thereby become liberals under the weight of the truths they uncover. No; they're people, just like the rest of us, so they can be wrong, and for various reasons.

It's just this simple: The kind of people who are likely to be attracted to a career that puts a hard-earned college degree to work to write and edit news for less pay than people with similar backgrounds are akin to, say, college professors, social workers, career politicians, etc. -- the folks who seek satisfaction in a calling rather than a simple, money-earning vocation. Such people tend to be politically liberal because, in basic terms, they can tend to believe their dedication to the calling is their reward, and are less likely to regard generous compensation -- however ardently hoped for -- as a primary goal. So they often bring the basic attitude with them to the job.

Columnist Cal Thomas said it, and he was right: You don't find a lot of Republicans in newsrooms because as a group, they tend to be more interested in making a living first, however they might best achieve that, and then seek to achieve social and political goals by using the means they have earned.

And that's the sort of person we're likely to find owning or running a fair-size newspaper or television station. So we find the media is not necessarily run by liberals, and that presents a dilemma, because it conflicts with a broadly held conclusion.

OK, let's back up. There has to be another way to prove the media is a liberal machine. Oh, yes -- here it is. It's because every time you fire up most of the big-time networks that cover news -- NBC, CNN, ABC, CBS -- all you ever hear them talk about is something that's bad news for the White House which, at this time, happens to be inhabited by a conservative Republican president.

And if you open the paper to read, it's the same thing, especially if it's the New York Times or the Washington Post. And they just seem to love any liberal politician who has something nasty to say about the president.

Well, you can't deny that dissenting voices seem to get a lot of media attention. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich certainly did back when he laid siege to Bill Clinton while he was in the White House. And talk about bad news -- remember when even conservative Americans were getting sick of hearing about Whitewater?

And Gennifer Flowers? And Paula Jones? And Monica Lewinsky?

The media back then were pretty much a train wreck, collectively. They all but ruined themselves in a full assault that seemed to press Clinton to confess in a rush of self-recrimination, to mewl and puke and then slink away from the White House into oblivion. Which might have made a fine spectacle, but he denied them that satisfaction -- and you can judge for yourself on that matter.

But, doesn't that sound familiar? "Mr. President (Bush), have you ever made any mistakes as president?" How many times was George W. Bush asked that? And for what reason?

OK, think. Let's go back to basics. How do the media make money? By getting attention. If they can't get your attention, they can't get you or advertisers to pay them. Simple as that. So getting you to look -- and, better yet, to spend time with them -- is their bread and butter.

Now, when was the last time the media had just about the fullest attention they could get? When was the last time people couldn't wait to pick up a newspaper, or turn on the TV news? (To give you a hint, it was long before the Web.)

Give up? OK, what news coverage event was so great, so full of impact, that all other similar -- and certainly lesser -- events since then have been compared to it?
Now I bet you know it: Watergate -- the fall the the presidency of Richard Nixon.

Now, is this to say that the media -- newspapers included (and it was a newspaper that led the investigative efforts that uncovered and detailed the Watergate scandal) -- are seeking to bring down another president?

Not necessarily. What it means, in simple terms, is that the media seek out controversy because that's what gets attention, and they will pursue whatever they find that might lead them again to that golden mountaintop upon which they sat back in the mid-1970s.

If they can get that kind of attention again, the reasoning goes, they can regain much of what has been lost -- and is still being lost -- in readership, viewership and, of course, advertising.

Do politics have anything to do with it? Only as a means to an end, and that end is controversy.

It's not to say there's no story when, say, everybody in town agrees that the old city hall should be torn down and replaced. But it's more interesting if Politician A and Politician B are at loggerheads over how to do it. So the media look for controversy, difficulty and uncertainty, and promote them.

Is that bad? Yes. It's very bad. Here's why.

Because with your daily force-feed of controversy and trouble, you get very little context on the side. We are told daily how many people died from sectarian violence in Baghdad, but receive only occasional reports of civic and social progress in most Iraqi cities.

It can seem logical -- we need to know what stands in the way of our goals in Iraq, and if things are going fine in a minor Iraqi city, it's hard to justify print or air time for it. That makes sense, as far as it goes.
But the key is to remember that media are masters of attention-getting, and not of presenting information logically and contextually in the broadest sense. We know that because they commit daily what philosophers and logicians call the "error of conflation."

Let's take a case study. Recently we've heard a lot about alleged criminal behavior by American troops in Iraq. Five separate incidents have been raised to the attention of military investigators, including the alleged massacre in Haditha and the rape and murders that occurred in Mahmoudiya.

The total number of suspects among soldiers and former soldiers amounts to fewer than 30 out of a hitherto consistent American military population in Iraq of more than 130,000. To add the number of soldiers charged and convicted in previous criminal acts, such as the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, would bring the total still to much fewer than 100, far less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the average military population in the country.

But it isn't a matter of mere numbers (although news services would have you so believe with their constant updates on the American death toll -- again, without context). Articles have been published about how troops are engaging with Iraqi civilians to aid social and civic progress -- not to mention to broaden the network of informants against the so-called insurgency (a questionable term because of the number of foreign fighters involved) -- but not included with or promoted on the same level with the controversies over the alleged crimes. Some military officials or troops have been quoted on their critical regard for the actions of the troops involved, but not enough to supply the contrast that help us to appreciate what context might be drawn from the coverage.

Because the media do have an agenda, and that is to get your attention. And, to all appearances, the ultimate cost does not matter.

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