The Media Elite
Rothman, Stanley & Lichter, S. Robert & Lichter, Linda S.
T n an important essay in the May 1 1981 issue of Commentary, the late Joseph Kraft described some critical changes that had affected journalism since the 1960s. Print and television journalists, he...
...We have enjoyed a huge rise in income, in status, and in power...
...use of resources immoral...
...The authors' goal is to examine "the life situations of these newspeople and the nature of their product, to determine whether or how the two are linked...
...And, unfortunately, it is anything but a limited edition...
...In practice, most might take a government bailout before a mistress, but they have largely forgot-Journalists—Joseph Kraft said they had become a kind of lumpen aristocracy—are the vanguard of the lumpen middle class...
...Ideas and cultural styles do not change history—at least, not overnight...
...In the four presidential electionsnearest the survey, the journalists voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic candidates...
...Nevertheless, the first quarter of the book reports the authors' findings, and numerous other studies, virtually all to the point that in their own ideological self-descriptions as well as on most topical issues journalists are well to the left of the business elite and the general public...
...As a check on their findings, the authors sent random samples of 30 journalists' and 30 businessmen's TAT stories to a clinical psychologist, who knew nothing of the professions of the respondents nor of the nature of the study...
...Johnson received 94 percent of the journalists' votes in 1964...
...This is not earth-shattering news, partly because the authors have previously published much of their data in journals such as the American Enterprise Institute's Public Opinion...
...News & World Report, and the three major television networks...
...In each instance, media coverage gives short-shrift to expert opinion, proclaiming nuclear power more dangerous, busing more salutary, and the oil industry more culpable for price increases andshortages than would most experts...
...The first chapter that describes the findings of this test is unquestionably the weakest in the book...
...We have ceased to be neutral in reporting events...
...Six out of ten thought that less regulation of business would be good for the U.S., while only 13 percent thought "big corporations should be publicly owned...
...For example, 86 percent agreed with the statement that "people with more ability should earn more," and 70 percent think private enterprise is fair to workers...
...McGovern, 81 percent in 1972...
...The authors devote almost all of the last third of the book to media coverage of three topics: nuclear power, school busing, and the oil industry...
...This is the cultural dilemma of capitalist society: it must now acknowledge the triumph (albeit tempered) of an adversary "ideology," the emergence of a new class which sustains this ideology, and the collapse of the older value system which was, ironically, undermined by the structural transformation of capitalism itself...
...As Daniel P. Moynihan put it in the Michael A. Scully's articles and reviews have appeared in Harper's, Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, and many other publications...
...The authors insist that media bias is not the issue...
...The so-called "yuppies," whom most journalists instinctively despise for their acquisitiveness, have views on matters of morality and religion far 42 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1987 closer to journalists' attitudes than to those of the bourgeoisie of even a single generation ago...
...and Carter, 81 percent in 1976...
...Nearly half the respondents believe the government should guarantee jobs...
...exploits the Third World and causes poverty...
...Furthermore, numerous surveys of business leaders disclose that they profess laissez faire views regarding both economic and personal behavior...
...The businessmen have significantly stronger achievement needs and a slightly greater capacity for personal intimacy...
...His anthology, The Best of THIS WORLD, containing twenty-seven articles from the journal's first five years, was recently published by University Press of America...
...The face in the picture is none other than man in his naked, shivering modern condition...
...Print and television journalists, he wrote, had undergone a "startling transformation," and become "among the principal beneficiaries of American life...
...In the process we have edged away from roles and standards hallowed by tradition...
...Fifty-seven percent consider the U.S...
...Add to these findings that 50 percent of the journalists surveyed described themselves as having no religion, and 49 percent believe "the structure of society causes alienation," and the last brush strokes are in place...
...Indeed, they argue, "the whole notion of bias has become a straw man that obscures the far less obvious (and less nefarious) processes THE MEDIA ELITE: AMERICA'S NEW POWERBROKERS S. Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman, and Linda S. Lichter Adler & Adler/$19.95 Michael A. Scully THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1987 41 that mediate between journalists' perspectives and their product...
...The businessmen, by comparison, "seemed to her emotionally 'flat' or self-controlled, brit also more at ease with themselves...
...The value system of capitalism repeats the old pieties, but they are hollow because they contradict the reality, the hedonistic life-styles promoted by the system itself [Emphasis mine.] To read Lichter, Rothman, and Lichter's findings in light of Professor Bell's thesis is to begin to grasp the depth of his understanding of our cultural predicament...
...Ninety-three percent of those interviewed graduated from college, and 55 percent studied at the postgraduate level...
...The journalists] seem more fearful that others may gain control over them...
...In a later chapter, however, the authors describe how answers to the.TAT made it possible to compare a generalized journalistic personality type with that of businessmen, who were also asked to respond to the TAT...
...Nine out of ten journalist-respondents agreed with the statement that a "woman has a right td decide on abortion," while only one in four agreed with the statement that homosexuality is wrong...
...On the page following this description, the authors offer what may well be the most important paragraph in their book: The divergent motivational patterns of these two competitors for social influence may have significance for the future development of American civic culture...
...Humphrey, 87 percent in 1968...
...Fifty-six percent believe the U.S...
...Two more volumes of the authors' findings, based on their decade-long research into the views of a variety of American elites—including business, military, and religious leaders—will be published in the next two years...
...T he authors seek, with mixed results, to probe the underlying presuppositions of the journalists by means of a personality test called the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT...
...When people use their imaginations to structure an ambiguous situation," say the authors, "they inadvertently reveal what is on their minds...
...An imposing 40 percent of the sample of 238 journalists had fathers who were in "professional" occupations...
...In this strong section, they first describe the views of experts in the field under discussion, and compare the experts' consensus, such as there is one, with media coverage of the subject...
...The TAT involves showing a picture of an ambiguous scene to the respondent, who then interprets it, much as would someone taking a Rorschach ink-blot test...
...early 1970s, "Journalism has become, if not an elite profession, a profession attractive to elites...
...The inimical ideology is . . . the cultural chic of "modernism" which retains its subversive thrust however much it is absorbed by the system...
...In the latter, Bell describes perfectly the journalists' milieu, and explains why—indeed—Lichter, Rothman, and Lichter are correct to think that the problem of journalists' perceptions is far deeper than can be encompassed by such buzzwords as "liberal bias...
...Slightly under half (47 percent) said that "adultery is wrong...
...In The Media Elite, S. Robert Lich-ter, Stanley Rothman, and Linda S. Lichter exhaustively examine the views and preconceptions of reporters and others employed by America's most important media outlets: the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, U.S...
...The authors describe their findings as follows: The media elite scores significantly higher than the business group in their power needs, fear of power, and narcissism...
...We no longer represent a wide diversity of views...
...The authors cite in a note the first chapter of Professor Bell's The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, and a section at the end of his earlier work, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society...
...We have moved from the sidelines to a place at the center of the action...
...This is not to suggest that the data are not fascinating...
...If you think media bias is something to worry about, wait until those five-year-olds now being reared on MTV start taking out your daughter...
...Daniel Bell has argued that America's economic and cultural elites represent different sensibilities, with the former more oriented toward achievement and the latter toward self-expression...
...undoubtedly, the percentages in all these cases would be even higher today...
...But they are the necessary preludes to change, since change in consciousness—in values and moral reasoning—is what moves men to change their social arrangements and institutions...
...On questions of economics, the journalists' attitudes, though leaning toward statist policies, are far short of being radical...
...Now consider the same journalists' responses to questions involving "personal freedom...
...This new class, which dominates the media and the culture, thinks of itself less as radical than "liberal," yet its values, centered on "personal freedom," are profoundly anti-bourgeois...
...She concluded, after writing clinical portraits of the subjects based on their answers, that the journalists were "people with rich emotional lives who were, however, highly narcissistic and conflicted...
...A mere 15 percent agreed that "homosexuals shouldn't teach in public schools...
...Furthermore, these data were collected in 1979 and 1980...
Vol. 20 • January 1987 • No. 1
