POLITICS: Pooh-Pewing
Fund, John H.
POLITICS JOHN H. FUND Po oh-Pewing IBERAL COMMENTATORS WERE QUICK to dismiss the new Pew Research Center study that ¡¡ found that five times more journalists say Jthey are liberal...
...But when asked to identify a liberal news source, a staggering 62 percent of national journalists couldn't think of one...
...The Pew study shows conclusively that those conservative-dominated vehicles only represent a form of equal time that helps balance out the dominant media culture...
...You'd think these findings might be explosivenews to national media outlets...
...It tabulated the views of 547 journalists around the nation, of whom 247 worked at national-level outlets...
...That's why folks like Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge have gone out and made use of new mediums such as talk radio and the Internet to get their message out...
...Almost half, or 48 percent, felt there had been "too little" coverage of its achievements...
...He noted the difficulty that journalists have in keeping their own views out of the stories they produce and pointed out "it's harder to do that if there is a group mind set or group think that is going on...the problem here is that the preference can seem so one-sided...
...Incredibly, only 2 percent thought that National Public Radio should be identified as a liberal organ...
...All it did was mail them a survey form...
...Among the general public only 40 percent share that view...
...He says surveys that show liberals overwhelmingly dominate newsrooms aren't important because "very rarely, if ever, have conservatives shown that the personal opinions of journalists affect the content of what they write...
...CNN and MSNBC ignored the Pew study, while Fox News devoted two segments to it...
...All things considered, if this isn't evidence of how the "group mind set" that Pew describes affects the world view put out by the media, what is...
...He said that someone would have to be "an idiot" to think the Pew study refuted his arguments...
...Indeed, Bernard Goldberg, the former CBS News correspondent whose bestselling books Bias and Arrogance provided insider tales of media distortion, says the situation may be worse than the Pew survey found...
...Indeed, the Pew survey found that almost half of the journalists it surveyed admitted that they often lettheir ideological views color their work...
...Pew seemed to have no trouble finding evidence...
...Journalists are also increasingly skeptical that the general public can make the right decision about who should lead them...
...They don't feel good about our profession in many ways," says Andy Kohut, the director of the Pew Research Center...
...When asked about the 54 percent of national journalists in the Pew survey who called themselves "moderate," Goldberg noted that "some reporters answer survey questions and say they're moderate because they don't want to admit they're liberal and fuel the public's anger...
...Nation columnist Eric Alterman, author of a book called What Liberal Media?, claimed the Pew Study reinforced his book's thesis that "for reasons of ownership, economics, class or outside pressure" the media are actually "more sympathetic to conservative causes than to liberal ones...
...David Brock, the author of The Republican Noise Machine, warned C- SPAN viewers that the authors of the Pew study have warned readers "not to over-interpret" their findings...
...Tom Rosenstiel, who co-sponsored the study as director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, noted that the percentage of journalists working at those national outlets who identified themselves as liberals has grown from 22 percent in a similar 1995 Times Mirror survey to 34 percent today...
...Only 8 percent of the national press believes the media are being "too critical" of President Bush...
...Over nine in ten don't believe it is necessary to believe in God in order to be moral...
...This is something journalists should worry about," he says...
...Rosenstiel is asking anyone not to "overinterpret" the Pew findings...
...Doesn't sound like Mr...
...That's a switch from how they felt in 1995 when Bill Clinton occupied the White House...
...USA Today only mentioned its findings on how journalists felt about newsroom cutbacks and accuracy...
...Maybe diversity in the newsroom needs to mean more than ethnic and gender diversity," concludes Mr...
...Could the presidency of George W. Bush have something to do with that...
...i4 John H. Fund is a columnist for Opinion JournaLcom...
...Nearly half think the media are too timid in covering stories...
...So I think the Pew survey undercounts the number of liberals in newsrooms...
...But ideological diversity seems to be the only kind that liberals think isn't necessary in today's media...
...Pointing to the fact that only 7 percent of national journalists call themselves conservative he concluded: "We clearly need to think about getting more conservatives in the newsroom...
...Only half of the general public feels that way...
...A Times Mirror survey found that only 2 percent of the national media felt that there had been "too much" coverage of the Clinton administration's accomplishments...
...A full 88 percent of journalists think society should accept gays...
...The clear implication [of the Pew findings] is that many media people feel superior to their customers," says Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post's media critic...
...Liberals would want to refute them if they weren't true and moderates would recognize Pew as a respected organization whose findings shouldn't be dismissed...
...Nearly seven times as many, or 55 percent, think the media are "not critical enough" of Bush...
...But coverage of the Pew study was scanty...
...D ESPITE THEIR DOMINANCE in the American news media, liberals are unhappy with the coverage of the Bush administration, even with the knocks it's taken on Iraq and the economy...
...Only 31 percent expressed a great deal of confidence in the public's election choices, down from 52 percent during the Clinton years...
...Let's go to the Pew survey itself...
...POLITICS JOHN H. FUND Po oh-Pewing IBERAL COMMENTATORS WERE QUICK to dismiss the new Pew Research Center study that ¡¡ found that five times more journalists say Jthey are liberal than say they are conservalive...
...Two-thirds of national media types think the profit motive is seriously hurting the quality of news coverage...
...asks Eric Alterman in his book...
...There is no other way to describe the views of national journalists on social issues as anything but one-sided...
...A fifth offered up the New York Times, with 4 percent naming the Washington Post...
...Rosenstiel, a cosponsor of the Pew study...
...They had no trouble fingering the Fox News Channel when asked if they could name a news source that tilted to the right: 69 per cent could detect Rupert Murdoch's thumb on that news scale...
...But when it comes to ideology and bias, the only problem they can articulate is that there isn't enough Bush-bashing...
...He added, "Others really believe their positions aren't liberal at all, they think all decent, fair-minded people have such views...
...What Liberal Media...
...The Pew study detected an undercurrent of unhappiness and disaffection among a majority of journalists it surveyed...
...Carroll Doherty, the editor of the Pew Research Center study, says the findings "raise concerns for a lot of newsroom executives and editors...
...Those are the same vehicles that liberals today point to as evidence of a conservative media bias...
...The New York Times couldn't be bothered to cover the study, although the Washington Post devoted an entire feature to it...
...Media types certainly believe that they have a superior ability to detect what bias does exist in print and TV outlets...
...Journalists are also much more accepting of gays than the general public, as evidenced by the celebratory nature of much of the coverage of the gay weddings in Massachusetts and San Francisco...
...Hmmm...
Vol. 37 • July 2004 • No. 6
