Conservatives constructed myth about liberal media.

Hellinger, Daniel

The myth of a liberal media is based mostly upon survey evidence suggesting that reporters fall to the left of the American public. And no one has done more to cloak that myth with respectability than S. Robert Lichter.

Lichter was initially recruited by Stanley Rothman to serve as assistant director of a team assembled to complete a research project, launched in 1977, to gauge the role of "new elites" in shaping social and cultural change. Lichter, Rothman and Linda Lichter, whose specialization is content-analysis of entertainment programs, purported that since the 1960s a new elite has emerged to challenge traditional American values.

In 1980, Lichter became director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA), a well funded conservative think tank. While reactionary media critics like Reed Irvine and his Accuracy in Media (AIM) fanned the flames of mass resentment against media elites, it fell to Lichter and his colleagues to "document" the liberal biases of the news media in a form more palatable to the better educated corporate elite and sympathetic academics.

Lichter summarized his argument in his 1986 book, "The Media Elite, America's New Powerbrokers." The preface asserts that there had emerged a new elite based on "the public interest movement, a vastly expanded federal bureaucracy, and a national media network that serves as watchdog over other social institutions." These were just the institutions that the Reagan Revolution intended to roll back.

Lichter carried out a random survey of journalists in the U.S. He submitted his data to a social psychologist who determined that the media elite was indeed infected with the zeal of social reform and idealistically ambitious to instigate social change. These social and psychological pre-dispositions "structure journalists' interpretations and descriptions of reality in ways that are powerful, if subtle." The Lichters and Rothman attempted to show via content analysis how these attitudes have biased the liberal media against nuclear power and the oil industry, and for school busing and the environment.

Lichter also claimed that his data demonstrated that journalists are more liberal than the general public. Lichter's results and other studies making similar claims were published by the CMPA's house organ, Public Opinion, founded by David Gergen, who had supported George Bush for president in 1980 but subsequently enlisted in the Reagan Revolution. In his co-authored textbook on American government, Lichter claimed that only 23 percent of the public classified themselves as liberal, in contrast to 55 percent of news and editorial staff members at 621 daily newspapers. The survey purported that the public was more conservative than journalists on three of four economic issues and all six of social issues they were asked about. Lichter concluded, in language from the "power elite" school of thought, "A small group of media outlets, largely centered in New York and Washington, increasingly determined how the world was presented to Americans."

Lichter's findings were quickly contested, most notably by the distinguished Columbia sociologist Herbert Cans, who contended the authors selectively reported only results favorable to their hypothesis and misrepresented responses to make reporters seem much more radical than the public. Cans, also charged that Lichter had failed to show that the mass of data he had collected on the backgrounds, opinions and values of journalists actually affected how they reported the news.

Critics of the liberal bias theory have tended to emphasize the organizational and professional factors that prevent a liberal bias from appearing in news. Given the financial leverage of advertisers and the predilections of ownership, on what foundation could a cadre of reporters present a world view much at odds with corporate elites? How could news raise any fundamental critique of a capitalist society--the profit motive, defense of American hegemony abroad, privatization as reform, globalization?

Muffled liberalism

Research comparing American reporters to counterparts overseas shows Americans rate themselves the most free in the world, yet they made the most narrow range of choices in how to cover a hypothetical event. As one moves up the organizational table of media, attitudes become more conservative. Editors and reporters generally work together in a consensual manner, but the hierarchical nature of corporate media ensures reporters adhere to what Edward Jay Epstein in his study of wire services called "news from nowhere." Editors, according to a study by Frederick Schiff perceive their readers largely in terms of their own business and upper class interests. Reporters are trained to avoid injecting personal viewpoints into their work. "Under the conventions of journalism prevailing today," New York Times columnist Tom Wicker once declared, "it is impossible for a reporter to step in and refute a false statement in his own voice."

Those reporters who would break out of the ideological straightjacket encounter not a glass ceiling but a steel curtain blocking their careers. Research shows non-conformists have difficulty retaining jobs. Edwin Diamond showed that reporters feel the greatest need to conform to editorial standards when they break away from the pack.

Consider, for example, how editors and journalists passed along, without question or later apology, the contentions of Republicans in 1994 that the GOP "Contract with America was supported by 60 percent of the American public. Michael Traugott and Elizabeth Powers found that reporters never checked the claim against readily available national opinion data. The American Association for Public Opinion Research later censured the GOP pollster for violating its standards, but the 1994 election was over and the Republicans had seized control of Congress. Traugott and Powers concluded, "The contract was a construct of political elites cast in terms of mass support--to appeal to the public and to the journalists who would cover the campaign."

Consider by contrast the treatment meted out to Gary Webb, who broke the story in the San Jose Mercury News alleging the CIA had deliberately instigated the crack epidemic in central Los Angeles as part of its efforts to fund the Nicaraguan contras with drug money. Although the series, "Dark Alliance," was flawed, its central contention that CIA operatives were actively engaged in drug trafficking has never been shaken. Yet media attention focused almost exclusively on the journalistic shortcomings of the piece, notably Webb's reliance on sources compromised in the criminal activity. For his indiscretions, Webb was forced out of his job.

The lesson is clear. When the pack follows the lead of mainstream elites and fails to check their facts independently, reporters need not fear sanctions. When they break a story with scandalous implications for the ruling class as a whole, their research will be examined minutely and their careers will be in jeopardy. The effect is hardly "liberal."

More liberal or neoliberal?

In reality, the working media are much less liberal than generally portrayed. While the results of the Lichter studies, despite methodological shortcomings, are widely known and regularly amplified by Public Opinion, the careful research of Virginia Commonwealth Professor David Croteau has received little attention. Croteau's "Examining the Liberal Media" claim is published on the web site of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR).

FAIR certainly is a liberal think tank, but Croteau's studies have enjoyed the support of respected foundations, including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

For his 1998 study of the "liberal media" Croteau sent questionnaires to more than 400 national reporters and bureau chiefs in Washington and received 141 back. This is a respectable return. Measured against known characteristics of the entire pool (type of media, race and gender, job category, etc.), those who returned Croteau's questionnaire seemed representative of the Washington media establishment.

Croteau found that these "liberal" reporters most often rated "business oriented news outlets" of highest reliability, more than any other kind of news media. A substantial majority rated themselves centrist on both social issues and economic issues. These results show less sentiment for the right than found in the general population, but they are consistent with the pattern for those in the highest income brackets. On the whole, the Washington press corps is more liberal than the general public on social issues, notably abortion, and more conservative on economic issues.

Crouteau asked his sample a series of questions about policy preferences, closely modeled on those used in surveys of the general public. It is difficult to sustain the myth of a "liberal" reporter in the face of data indicating that 56 percent of Washington-based journalists felt the need to slow the rate of increase in spending for Medicare and Social Security. Only 35 percent of the public felt similarly in a poll by Greenberg Research Inc. While 77 percent of the pubic thinks "too much power is concentrated in the hands of a few large corporations," only 57 percent of the journalists agreed.

Nearly half of the journalists thought Clinton's 1993 plan to raise tax rates on the wealthy was about right, but 72 percent of the public thought it didn't go far enough. Only 43 percent of journalists felt government should force employers to provide medical care, and even fewer (35 percent) thought it was government's responsibility to guarantee access to health care. A February 1996 New York Times survey found that almost two-thirds of the public support federal guaranteed health care. The only issue for which reporters showed a more decidedly liberal slant was on the environment.

In a separate study, Croteau took on the myth that the Public Broadcasting Network is disproportionately liberal. That proposition holds only because conservative critics focused on PBS documentaries. Guests and sources utilized on PBS news programs are disproportionately from white, male elite circles. Furthermore, the myth of liberal dominance can be sustained only by ignoring the presence of highly conservative panel programs like Firing

Line and The McLaughlin Group.

As far as their view of the world, reporters might also best be called "liberal internationalists." That is, they have assimilated more thoroughly than the general population a worldview that embraces the supposed virtues of economic globalization. This orientation cuts across partisan lines. Certainly former President George Bush and President Clinton are virtually indistinguishable from one another in this regard. Journalists seem to echo this consensus. For example Croteau reports that nearly a quarter of reporters in his sample rated expansion of the North American Free Trade Agreement to other Latin American countries as a top priority, a sentiment shared by only seven percent of the general public.

In St. Louis, KMOX's Charles Jaco may be perceived to be "liberal" in the eyes of many. But he operates by the rules of "objective" journalism that at least ensure access for conservative points of view to his program. By contrast, the preceding three hours of the area's most highly rated radio station is given over to the reactionary politics of Rush Limbaugh, who makes no pretense to objectivity.

In short, what the public has been led to believe--that there exists a wide ideological gap between reporters and the American public--is best understood as successful myth-building by conservatives. It is part of their strategy to tar liberalism and tame the independence of journalists whose reporting conservatives saw as the reason for the political defeats of Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon, not to mention the defeat in Vietnam and the granting of civil rights to African Americans.