Re: Fox News sinks to new low

On Jun 17, 2:14 pm, JerseyMike <mork4...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jun 17, 4:54 pm, RickNBarbInSD <rickdowl...@xxxxxxx> wrote:

On Jun 17, 6:58 am, JerseyMike <mork4...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The majority of
the media leans left

Bull***.

Rick

See, there's another classic RMGD hit-and-run.


Everybody seems to know this is a pure myth by now but you. It's been
thoroughly bebunked over and over and over!!! The only ones who still
believe it are those that CHOOSE to believe it. Like people who want
their hometown sports announcer to be prejudiced for the home team.
Objective coverage pisses them off.


http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2447


Examining the "Liberal Media" Claim
Journalists' Views on Politics, Economic Policy and Media Coverage

6/1/98

[See the Extra! magazine report on this study: Challenging the
"Liberal Media" Claim: On economics, journalists' private views are to
the right of public (July/August 1998) by David Croteau—Adobe reader
required.]

Executive Summary

The conservative critique of the news media rests on two general
propositions: (1) journalists' views are to the left of the public,
and (2) journalists frame news content in a way that accentuates these
left perspectives. Previous research has revealed persuasive evidence
against the latter claim, but the validity of the former claim has
often been taken for granted. This research project examined the
supposed left orientation of media personnel by surveying Washington-
based journalists who cover national politics and/or economic policy
at US outlets.

The findings include:

On select issues from corporate power and trade to Social Security and
Medicare to health care and taxes, journalists are actually more
conservative than the general public.

Journalists are mostly centrist in their political orientation.

The minority of journalists who do not identify with the "center" are
more likely to identify with the "right" when it comes to economic
issues and to identify with the "left" when it comes to social
issues.

Journalists report that "business-oriented news outlets" and "major
daily newspapers" provide the highest quality coverage of economic
policy issues, while "broadcast network TV news" and "cable news
services" provide the worst.

I. INTRODUCTION

The idea that the mainstream media have a "liberal bias" has long been
conventional wisdom. At various times, public figures from Richard
Nixon to Newt Gingrich have all taken refuge in the claim that the
"liberal" media were out to get them. A legion of conservative talk
show hosts, pundits and media-watch groups pound away at the idea that
the media exhibit an inherently "liberal" tilt. But the assertion is
based on remarkably little evidence and is repeatedly made in the face
of contradictory facts.

In particular, the conservative critique of the news media rests on
two general propositions: (1) journalists' views are to the left of
the public, and (2) journalists frame news content in a way that
accentuates these left perspectives. Researchers and analysts have
discovered persuasive evidence against the latter claim. Content
analyses of the news media have, at a minimum, shown the absence of
any such systematic liberal/left tilt; some studies have found a
remarkably predictable press usually reflecting the narrow range of
views of those in positions of power, as well as a spectrum of expert
opinion that tilts toward the right.

But even some progressives have been willing to cede to conservatives
the first point: that journalists' views are to the left of the
public. Professionals in general, they observe, often have "liberal"
leanings on social issues and there is no reason to expect journalists
to be any different. However, they have also argued convincingly that
the norms of "objective journalism" and the powerful corporate
interests which own and sponsor the news media ensure that news
content never strays too far, for too long, from protecting the status
quo. You don't understand the corporate ideology of General Motors by
studying the personal beliefs of the assembly-line workers, the
argument goes. Ideological orientation is introduced and enforced by
those high in the organizational hierarchy who have the power to hire
and fire, to reward and punish. Working journalists, despite their
sometimes high visibility, usually do not call the shots in the
nation's media corporations. (The documentary "Fear and Favor in the
Newsroom" provides vivid illustrations of this situation.)
Consequently, the private views of individual journalists often matter
little.

Such an analysis of organizational dynamics is fundamental to
understanding the news process. It, indeed, is a crucial argument that
kicks the legs out from the conservative critique and gets at the more
fundamental structural elements that set the news agenda. Still, this
approach begs the question: are journalists really to the left of the
public? This element of the conservative critique has not been
adequately addressed; it's one reason why the "liberal media" charge
gets repeated without serious scrutiny.

The small amount of current data on this issue may be due, in part, to
journalist's resistance to answering surveys lest results somehow
compromise their professional stance of objective "neutral" observers.
This presents a challenge for researchers. Still, despite the
methodological hurdles, this question is an interesting one and this
report describes the results of one effort to examine this essential
underpinning of the "liberal media" claim.

II. METHODOLOGY

In consultation with the Survey and Evaluation Research Laboratory at
Virginia Commonwealth University, a 24-question self-administered
survey was sent by mail to Washington-based journalists (n = 444) as
specified below. The initial mailing was followed by a reminder
postcard. A second copy of the questionnaire was later sent to non-
respondents. Finally, reminder phone calls were placed to remaining
non-respondents and replacement surveys were mailed as requested. Data
was gathered from late February through April 1998.

A. The Survey

Journalists were asked a range of questions about how they did their
work and about how they viewed the quality of media coverage in the
broad area of politics and economic policy. They were asked for their
opinions and views about a range of recent policy issues and debates.
Finally, they were asked for demographic and identifying information,
including their political orientation. (Complete survey questions and
summary results can be found in Appendix B.)

B. The Target Population of Journalists

This survey was targeted at Washington bureau chiefs and Washington-
based journalists who cover national politics and/or economic policy
at US national and major metropolitan outlets. The intent was to
represent the breadth of available media outlets, while realistically
focusing on the largest and most influential of these national and
major metropolitan outlets.

The journalists surveyed (who were not bureau chiefs) were chosen
based on the following criteria:

1. They were listed in the Spring 1998 News Media Yellow Book.

2. They were listed in the "Assignment Index" portion of the Yellow
Book under one or more of the following categories: "Congress,"
"federal government," "national affairs," "politics," "White House,"
"business," "consumer issues," "economics," or "labor."

3. They were based in the Washington, DC area as indicated in their
Yellow Book listing by a telephone area code of either 202
(Washington), 703 (northern Virginia), or 301 (Maryland).

4. They worked for a national or major metropolitan US news
organization that potentially reaches the general public.

The bureau chiefs surveyed in this project were chosen based on the
following criteria

1. They were listed in the Spring 1998 News Media Yellow Book.

2. Their position was listed as "bureau chief" or its equivalent.

3. They were based in the Washington, DC area as indicated in the
Yellow Book listing by a telephone area code of either 202
(Washington), 703 (northern Virginia), or 301 (Maryland).

4. They were at a US news organization that potentially reaches the
general public and that has a listing in the Yellow Book with at least
10 staff people (including the bureau chief). These criteria yielded a
targeted population total of 33 bureau chiefs and 411 other
journalists (total n = 444). Questionnaires were mailed to the entire
targeted population.

C. Media Organizations Represented

The targeted population represents a broad range of news outlets,
while at the same time focusing on the largest and most influential of
these outlets. The criteria used for targeting journalists meant that
smaller and less influential news outlets were not over-represented, a
problem found in earlier research on Washington-based journalists. The
criteria outlined above were successful in both generating significant
breadth (journalists at 78 different news organizations were surveyed)
while keeping the emphasis on the largest and most influential media
(half of the surveys were sent to journalists at 14 news
organizations).

The 14 news organizations that received more than 10 surveys each were
(in alphabetical order):

1. ABC News /ABC Radio
2. Associated Press /AP Broadcast News
3. Bloomberg News
4. CNN
5. Knight-Ridder Newspapers/Tribune Information Services
6. Los Angeles Times
7. NBC News
8. New York Times
9. Reuters America, Inc.
10. Time
11. USA Today/USA Weekend
12. Wall Street Journal
13. Washington Post
14. Washington Times

Appendix A contains a list of all media organizations to which surveys
were mailed. For confidentiality reasons, exact numbers of surveys
mailed are not indicated, but ranges are listed to give the reader a
clear sense of the final distribution of surveys.

D. The Respondents

Of the 444 questionnaires mailed, 141 were returned for a response
rate of 32%. In terms of type of position held by the journalist, type
of media outlets, and general size of media outlet, there was no
statistically significant difference between respondents and non-
respondents.

As Table 1 shows, the percentage of bureau chiefs, editors/producers,
and journalists among the respondents was similar to their percentage
in the targeted population as a whole. Thus, each level of the
organizational hierarchy was adequately represented among the
respondents.


*Some individuals hold more than one title. They were classified in
the response numbers based on their self-identification (see Question
#18). They were classified in the sample numbers by the "higher" of
the positions in their title. (For example, an "editor and chief
correspondent" was classified as an editor.)

Similarly, as summarized in Table 2, there was no significant
difference between the types of media outlets (the news organization
at which the journalist worked) represented among the respondents
compared to their percentage in the targeted population as a whole.
Thus, each type of media outlet was adequately represented among the
respondents.



Finally, because of their larger staffs, larger news organizations had
more journalists who received surveys than did smaller news
organizations. The number of journalists receiving a survey at a
particular news outlet serves as a rough indicator of the size of that
news organization. Based on the rough breakdown used in Appendix A and
summarized in Table 3, there was no significant difference between the
respondents and the targeted population in terms of the size of their
news organization.



These results indicate that, on the dimensions examined here, there is
no statistically significant difference between respondents and non-
respondents. Thus, the respondents are a good representation of the
targeted population as a whole.

Other demographic characteristics of the respondents include:

Male journalists (66%) outnumbered female journalists (34%) by about
two-to-one.

89% of respondents were White, 5% Black, 3% Hispanic, 2% Asian, and 2%
chose the category "other" when describing their race.

Only 5% of the respondents were not college graduates. 50% had
bachelor's degrees, 14% had some post-graduate training, and a full
31% had post-graduate degrees.

Only 5% of respondents reported annual household incomes under
$50,000. 43% had household incomes between $50,000 and $99,999; 21%
were between $100,000 and $149,999; 17% were between $150,000 and
$199,999; and 14% had household incomes of $200,000 or more.

III. RESULTS

This section reviews select results of the survey, including some
comparisons with previous surveys of the general public. A full
summary of results may be found in Appendix B. For a summary of
results comparing journalists' responses to the public's response on
similar policy questions, see Appendix C.

A. Views on the Quantity and Quality of Media Coverage

Journalists responding to the survey report high levels of
satisfaction with the amount and quality of economic policy coverage
provided by their own news organization. A full 76% of the journalists
thought that their news organization provided "excellent" or "good"
quality coverage in terms of giving the public information they need
to make informed political decisions (Q#3a). Another 14% thought it
was "fair" and 9% said it was "poor." A similar majority—75%—thought
their own organization provided "about the right amount of coverage"
of economic policy issues and debates, while 23% thought there was
"too little coverage" and only 1% thought there was "too much" (Q#1).

Their assessment of other news media, though, was more varied (Q#3b).
"Business oriented news outlets" received the highest grade for the
quality of the information they give to the public; 80% thought it was
"excellent" or "good." "Major daily newspapers," too, received a
positive assessment, with 65% saying their coverage was "excellent" or
"good." However, for every other type of media less than half of the
respondents rated its coverage as "excellent" or "good."

A full 92% of responding journalists said the quality of economic
policy coverage on broadcast TV networks was only "fair" or "poor,"
with just 6% saying it was "good" and not a single respondent saying
it was "excellent." (Even of those journalists working in television,
a full 83% rated broadcast TV networks as "fair" or "poor.") Cable
news services were judged by 63% of journalists to provide only "fair"
or "poor" coverage of economic policy issues. (As a whole, journalists
were still uncertain about internet sources with over half of them
saying they didn't know or were not sure about the quality of their
coverage.)



Choosing from a list of possibilities, journalists thought that
business misconduct (58%) was the topic to which the media overall
paid "too little" attention (Q#2). This was followed closely by
international trade agreements (53%) and labor misconduct (50%). The
stock market (22%) was the item that journalists most often cited as
being covered "too much."

B. Work Routines and Information Sources

Technology changes have clearly had an impact on the work routines and
information sources of journalists. With contemporary technology, the
news cycle is quite short for a large number of journalists. More than
a quarter of them (26%) reported having a deadline more than once a
day (Q#4). Another 55% usually had daily deadlines.

Electronic data services have become a staple source of information
for journalists. 72% reported that they consulted Internet or other on-
line services during a typical work day (Q#5). This was surpassed only
by wire services (94%) and cable TV news (79%).



Responding journalists rely most often on government officials and
business representatives as sources for their stories on economic
policy issues (Q#6). Labor representatives are consulted far less
frequently than business representatives and consumer advocates are
even less likely to be consulted.



Most journalists (70%) said they had never been cut off from
communication by a source upset because of something they or their
news organization had reported about economic policy issues (Q#7a).
Within the minority who had been cut off, it was government officials
(76%), followed by business representatives (55%), and then labor
representatives (32%) who were most likely to have given them the
silent treatment (Q#7b).

C. Economic Policy Issues: Comparing Journalists' Views and the
Public

Journalists were asked a series of questions regarding recent policy
debates. Most questions were taken from, or very closely modeled
after, questions that had been asked in national random surveys of the
general public. That way, rough comparisons could be made between how
journalists and the general public saw these issues.

1. Political Orientation

One of the basic findings of this survey is that most journalists
identify themselves as being centrists on both social and economic
issues. Perhaps this is why an earlier survey found that they tended
to vote for Bill Clinton in large numbers. Clinton's centrist "new
Democrat" orientation combines moderately liberal social policies
(which brings criticism from conservative anti-gay, "pro-life" and
other activists) with moderately conservative economic policies (which
brings criticism from labor unions, welfare rights advocates and
others). This orientation fits well with the views expressed by
journalists.



When asked to characterize their political orientation on social and
economic issues, most journalists self-identify as centrists (Q#22 and
Q#23). Of the minority who do not identify with the center, most have
left leanings concerning social issues and right leanings concerning
economic ones. This is consistent with a long history of research on
profit-sector professionals in general. High levels of education tend
to be associated with liberal views on social issues such as racial
equality, gay rights, gun control and abortion rights. High levels of
income tend to be associated with conservative views on economic
issues such as tax policy and federal spending. Most journalists,
therefore, would certainly not recognize themselves in the "liberal
media" picture painted by conservative critics.

2. State of the Economy

The Washington press corps has often been accused of being an "elite"
that is out of touch with mainstream Americans. As reported in the
methodology section, journalists responding to this survey certainly
did have very high household incomes, with over half living in
households with $100,000 or more in income, and one-third in
households with $150,000 or more income. Perhaps it should come as no
surprise, then, that journalists have a much more positive assessment
of the state of the economy than the general public (Q#9). Choosing
from a list of options, 34% of journalists said they thought economic
conditions were "excellent" and another 58% said "good." Only 4% saw
it as fair, and 1% rated it "poor."

When pollsters ask the same question of the general public—where the
benefits of economic growth have fallen unevenly—far different views
are found. A March 1998 Gallup/CNN/USA Today poll discovered that only
20% of the general public see economic conditions as "excellent,"
while 46% say "good." A full 27% describe it as "only fair" and 7%
believe it is "poor."

3. Economic Priorities

When asked about a series of possible economic priorities for the
federal government, 56% of journalists saw the need to "reform
entitlement programs by slowing the rate of increase in spending for
programs like Medicare and Social Security" as "one of the top few"
priorities (19% said it should be the single highest priority)
(Q#10b). Only 35% of the public felt similarly when polled by
Greenberg Research Inc. in November 1996 (just 10% of the public saw
this as the single highest priority.).

Instead, 59% of the general public identified the need to "protect
Medicare and Social Security against major cuts" as "one of the top
few priorities" (a full 24% of the public saw this as the single
highest priority). Only 39% of journalists felt the same (with 13%
identifying it as the single highest priority) (Q#10a). While 12% of
the public put reforming and slowing Social Security and Medicare
"toward the bottom of the list," only 4% of journalists did (Q#10b).
Journalists' emphasis on slowing entitlements contrasts sharply with
the general public's emphasis on protecting entitlements.

When it came to health insurance, 32% of journalists felt that
requiring employers provide health insurance to their employees should
be "one of the top few priorities," while a larger 47% of the public
did (Q#10d).

By far the biggest gap between the public and journalists, though,
came with the issue of NAFTA expansion (Q#10c). Of journalists, 24%
thought it was among the "top few" priorities to "expand the NAFTA
trade agreement to include other countries in Latin America." Only 7%
of the general public agreed. Indeed, a whopping 44% of the general
public—compared to just 8% of journalists—put NAFTA expansion "toward
the bottom of the list" of priorities.

In these issue areas, the claimed economic centrism of journalists is
belied by a series of economic priorities that are actually to the
right of the public, and which would bring opposition from groups on
the left: labor unions, health care advocates, senior citizen
advocates.

4. Environmental Laws

The one area in the survey where journalists could be considered
slightly to the left of the general public was regarding environmental
regulation (Q#11). When asked to choose between whether stricter
environmental laws and regulations "cost too many jobs and hurt the
economy" or "are worth the cost," 79% of journalists said such laws
were worth the cost, while 21% disagreed. However, in an October 1996
poll by the Pew Research Center, only 63% of the public said such laws
were worth the cost, while 30% disagreed. This result may not be very
surprising since the economic cost of environmental regulation is
often perceived to be carried by workers in the form of lost jobs—a
problem which may not be of immediate salience for professional
journalists.

5. Corporate Power

The general public is more critical of the concentration of corporate
power in the United States than are journalists. When asked whether
they felt "too much power is concentrated in the hands of a few large
companies," 57% of the journalists agreed, while 43% felt they did not
have too much power (Q#12). The numbers were quite different, though,
when the Times Mirror Center asked the same question of the general
public in October 1995. A full 77% of the public felt that
corporations had too much power, with only 18% feeling that they did
not.

6. Taxes

The centrist orientation of journalists comes through clearly when
assessing Clinton's 1993 economic plan which modestly raised tax rates
on the wealthy, countering the trend of reduced tax rates that they
had enjoyed in previous years (Q#13). Nearly half (49%) of journalists
thought this policy was about right, while 14% thought it went too
far, and 18% thought it didn't go far enough. In stark contrast, when
the public was asked a similar question in an ABC News/Washington Post
poll in April 1993, 15% of the general public felt Clinton's policy
went too far and a huge 72% felt it didn't go far enough. (10%
volunteered that they thought it was about right.) Here again, the
relative economic privilege of the Washington press corps may partly
explain this contrast with the public.

7. NAFTA and "Fast Track" Authority

Compared to the general public, journalists have a distinctly more
positive assessment of NAFTA's impact and are more likely to support
granting the President "fast-track" authority to negotiate new trade
agreements. 65% of journalists feel that NAFTA has had more of a
positive impact on the United States, while only 8% feel it has had
more of a negative impact (Q#14). But in a Hart-Teeter/NBC News/Wall
Street Journal poll in July 1997, only 32% of the public thought
NAFTA's impact was more positive, while 42% felt NAFTA's impact on the
country has been more negative.

Perhaps as a result of these differing assessments of NAFTA's impact,
journalists are more likely to favor granting "fast track" authority
to the President to negotiate new trade agreements—authority opposed
most forcefully by unions (Q#15). A full 71% of journalists favor such
a policy, while only 10% oppose it. According to an October 1997 Hart-
Teeter/NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, the rate of opposition to
"fast-track" amongst the general public is over five times that of the
rate amongst journalists. Only 35% of the public says it favors "fast-
track." A full 56% oppose it. In the debate over trade, most
journalists tend to agree with the corporate position on the issue,
while most members of the public side with the critical views of labor
and many consumer and environmental groups.

8. Medical Care

As indicated above under "Economic Priorities," journalists are less
interested than the general public in requiring that employers provide
health insurance to their employees. Journalists are also less likely
than the public to believe that the federal government should
guarantee medical care for those who don't have health insurance
(Q#16). While 43% of journalists felt that the government should
guarantee medical care, a similar 35% felt that this was not the
responsibility of the government. In contrast, a February 1996 New
York Times/CBS News poll found that the general public supports
government guaranteed medical care by more than a two-to-one margin
(64% to 29%).



IV. CONCLUSION: BEYOND THE "LIBERAL MEDIA" MYTH

This survey shows that it is a mistake to accept the conservative
claim that journalists are to the left of the public. There appear to
be very few national journalists with left views on economic questions
like corporate power and trade—issues that may well matter more to
media owners and advertisers than social issues like gay rights and
affirmative action.

The larger "liberal media" myth has been maintained, in part, by the
well-funded flow of conservative rhetoric that selectively highlights
journalists' personal views while downplaying news content. It also
has been maintained by diverting the spotlight away from economic
issues and placing it instead on social issues. In reality, though,
most members of the powerful Washington press corps identify
themselves as centrist in both of these areas. It is true, as
conservative critics have publicized, that the minority of journalists
not in the "center" are more likely to identify as having a "left"
orientation when it comes to social issues. However, it is also true
that the minority of journalists not in the "center" are more likely
to identify as having a "right" orientation when it comes to economic
issues. Indeed, these economic policy views are often to the right of
public opinion. When our attention is drawn to this fact, one of the
central elements of the conservative critique of the media is exposed
to be merely sleight of hand.

This illusion has not been exposed here merely to replace it with an
equally false mirror image of the conservative critique. Painting
journalists as the core of the "conservative media" does not do
justice to the complexity of the situation. Like many profit-sector
professionals journalists tend to hold "liberal" social views and
"conservative" economic views. Most of all, though, they can be
broadly described as centrists. This adherence to the middle is
consistent with news outlets that tend to repeat conventional wisdom
and ignore serious alternative analyses. This too often leaves
citizens with policy "debates" grounded in the shared assumptions of
those in positions of power.

Which brings us back to the conservative critique. It is based on the
propositions that: (1) journalists' views are to the left of the
general public, and (2) that these views influence the news content
that they produce. Having now exposed the first point for the myth
that it is, we are left with the issue of personal views influencing
news content.

There are two important responses to this claim. First, it is sources,
not journalists, who are allowed to express their views in the
conventional model of "objective" journalism. Therefore, we learn much
more about the political orientation of news content by looking at
sourcing patterns rather than journalists' personal views. As this
survey shows, it is government officials and business representatives
to whom journalists "nearly always" turn when covering economic
policy. Labor representatives and consumer advocates were at the
bottom of the list. This is consistent with earlier research on
sources. For example, analysts from the centrist Brookings Institution
and right-wing think thanks such as the Heritage Foundation and the
American Enterprise Institute are those most quoted in mainstream news
accounts; left-wing think tanks are often invisible. When it comes to
sources, "liberal bias" is nowhere to be found.

Second, we must not forget that journalists do not work in a vacuum.
It is crucial to remember the important role of institutional context
in setting the broad parameters for the news process. Businesses are
not in the habit of producing products that contradict their
fundamental economic interests. The large corporations that are the
major commercial media in this country—not surprisingly—tend to favor
style and substance which is consonant with their corporate interests;
as do their corporate advertisers.

It is here, at the structural level, that the fundamental ground rules
of news production are set. Of course, working journalists sometimes
succeed in temporarily challenging some of those rules and boundaries.
But ultimately, if they are to succeed and advance in the profession
for any length of time, they must adapt to the ground rules set by
others—regardless of their own personal views.

Appendix A: Media Organizations Where Journalists Received Surveys

News organizations with more than 10 journalists receiving
questionnaires (n= 223; 50% of total)

ABC News /ABC Radio
Associated Press /AP Broadcast News
Bloomberg News
CNN
Knight-Ridder Newspapers/Tribune Information Services
Los Angeles Times
NBC News
New York Times
Reuters America, Inc.
Time
USA Today/USA Weekend
Wall Street Journal
Washington Post
Washington Times

News organizations with 5 to 10 journalists receiving questionnaires
(n= 152; 34% of total)

Baltimore Sun
Boston Globe
Bridge News (formerly Knight-Ridder Financial News Service)
Business Week
CBS News/ CBS Radio
Chicago Tribune
Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report/ CQ Monitor
Copley News Service
Cox Newspapers/Cox Broadcasting
Dallas Morning News
Dow Jones News Service
FOX News Channel/ FOX News Sunday
Gannett News Service
Hearst News Service
Investor's Business Daily
National Journal /Congressional Daily/Government Executive
National Public Radio
NET-Political NewsTalk Network
Newsday
Newsweek
PBS
United Press International /UPI Radio
U.S. News & World Report

News organizations with 3 or 4 journalists receiving questionnaires
(n= 23; 5% of total)

Christian Science Monitor
C-SPAN /C-SPAN 2
Newhouse News Service
Scripps Howard News Service
UNIVISION Television Network
Washingtonian
Westwood One

News organizations with 1 or 2 journalists receiving questionnaires
(n= 46; 10% of total)

American Publishing Corp.
American Spectator
American Urban Radio Networks
Black Entertainment Television, Inc.
Capitol News Service
Chicago Sun-Times
Columbus Dispatch
Congressional Digest
Conus Washington/Communications
Cook Political Report
Daily News (New York)
Detroit Free Press
Evening News Broadcasting Company/Willis News Service
Fairchild News Service
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
The Hill
Houston Chronicle
Human Events/Eagle Publishing
Inside the New Congress
Jack Anderson Confidential/Muckracker's Inc.
Marketplace/USC Radio
McClatchy Newspapers
McClendon News Service
The Nation
Public Interest/National Affairs, Inc.
Roll Call Inc.
Rolling Stone
St. Petersburg Times
Southern Political Report
SRN News
Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
U.S. Chamber of Commerce/Biz Net
Village Voice
WTOP-AM/Evergreen Media



*****************************************************************************************************************

http://www.webpan.com/dsinclair/myths.html

"I admit it -- the liberal media were never that powerful, and the
whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for
conservative failures."
William Kristol, as reported by the New Yorker, 5/22/95
"In the west, 10 or 20 years, there has been massive research
documenting the fact that the media are extraordinarily subordinated
to external power. Now, when you have that power, the best technique
is to ignore all of that discussion, ignore it totally, and to
eliminate it, by the simple device of asserting the opposite. If you
assert the opposite, that eliminates mountains of evidence
demonstrating that what you are saying is false. That's what power
means. And the way we assert the opposite is by just saying that the
media are liberal."
Noan Chomsky, in FSTV's documentation The Myth Of The Liberal Media

Based on its recent direct-mail campaign, one of the [Leadership
Institute's] primary fund- raising strategies is to convince
conservative donors that its graduates can neutralize what it regards
as left-leaning news media.

"Liberal media bias is out of control," said the letter, which was
mailed over [Rep. J.C.] Watts's signature, but which [the institute's
founder and president] Mr. Blackwell said was written at the
institute. "It's indecent. It's time you and I did something about
it."

When asked for examples of how bias by news organizations was
undermining the presidency of George W. Bush, Mr. Blackwell complained
about what he described as excessive press attention paid to Mr.
Bush's critics, like Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona.

An alumna of the institute, who was recommended by Mr. Blackwell,
found it difficult to cite cases of "out of control" liberal bias in
recent news coverage.

"I have been in local TV newsrooms in Phoenix, Seattle and Pittsburgh,
and I don't think there is bias, either liberal or conservative," said
the alumna, Tallee Whitehorn, 27, an assistant news director at WTAE-
TV, an ABC affiliate in Pittsburgh. "This is not really a place for
it, unless I wanted to get a lot of hate mail, which I don't."

The young people in Mr. Montini's class were also hard-pressed to come
up with examples of the news- media bias mentioned in Mr. Watts's fund-
raising letter.

Mr. Tietz said he had been sensitized to such matters in recent months
by reading conservative books, including Whitaker Chambers's
"Witness." That book, Mr. Tietz said, "explains the deep-down meanness
of the left."

But as for seeing that meanness in coverage of President Bush, Mr.
Tietz said, "Honestly, I haven't noticed it one way or another."

from a June 11, 2001 New York Times article on the Leadership
Institute (a training camp for conservative journalists) titled "In
Virginia, Young Conservatives Learn How to Develop and Use Their
Political Voices"

"Throughout 2000, with less pretense of objectivity than ever, [Tim]
Russert dutifully echoed the Republican theme that the Democratic
nominee was “dishonest”. Week after week, the topic on Meet The Press
was the “repeated lying” of Al Gore. One lowlight of Russert’s descent
into shameless propagandist occurred when it was revealed that George
W. Bush had been convicted of drunk driving in Maine, thereby proving
that the Republican candidate had been deceitful when he was
questioned about whether he had ever been arrested.

Russert’s immediate response on national television was, “The question
on everybody’s mind is, ‘Did the Gore campaign have something to do
with the release of this information?’” That was not the question on
everybody’s mind; a poll taken immediately after the revelation showed
that most Americans did not believe that Gore was involved.

It was, however, the question being faxed nationally by the
Republicans in a memo circulated to their operatives who were
responsible for diverting attention from the fact that their candidate
was guilty of, for want of a better term, “repeated lying”.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Russert established a link
between Meet The Press and the G.O.P. opposition research team that
was responsible for digging up dirt/manufacturing dirt on Al Gore. On
election night, after conferring with Welch, Russert demanded that
Gore quit the race before the legally mandated recount took place in
Florida. The next morning, on the Today Show, he repeated the demand.

(...) He exaggerates Democratic wrongdoing, going to the extreme of
inventing criminal behavior. Conversely, he has been unrelentingly
oblivious to all Republican scandals; his infinite fascination with
the missing intern in the case of Democrat Gary Condit was accompanied
by total disinterest in the dead intern who was found on the office
floor of Republican Joe Scarbrough. Russert spent years obsessing
about an ill fated land deal called Whitewater that involved a couple
of hundred thousand dollars, but he remains indifferent to the multi-
trillion dollar taxpayer funded kickbacks that George W. Bush has been
ladling out to his campaign contributors. "

from a January 9th, 2002 article on GE's leading media whore, Tim
Russert



For conservatives of every persuasion, it is a self-evident truth that
the mass media are liberally biased. As a proud liberal myself, I wish
it was true: where are those liberal TV channels? Could I please sign
up for them? All I get on my satelite system are center-right channels
such as CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, and far-right channels such as the "we
distort, you deride", Fox News, owned by equally far-right media
tycoon Rupert Murdoch, and assorted christian nutball channels such as
the Trinity Broadcasting Network or Pat Robertson's The 700 Club,
carried by Fox Family.
Believing in freedom of speech, I do not mind that far-right
viewpoints are presented on TV on a daily basis. What I strongly
object to is that these viewpoints are not balanced by equally far-
left viewpoints. Tune to CNN's Capital Gang, and you'll see a centrist
TIME columnist (Margaret Carlson) and a socially liberal but
economically conservative Wall Street Journal Editor (Al Hunt) debate
two rabid right wingers, Kate O'Beirne and Robert Novak. Progressive
voices are completely shut out from the program. Or tune to Fox News'
Hannity & Colmes which is nothing but a thinly veiled solo show for
far-right firebrand Sean Hannity who is so "balanced" by the tame
Colmes that he might just as well be opposed by a scarecrow made to
look like Colmes. College dropout Hannity does almost all of the
talking; he introduces guests from the "Family Research" Council as
"our good friend from the FRC", habitually refers to his own views and
those of regular guest Jerry Falwell as "christian" without any
qualifier (ignoring the fact that religious right views are not
representative of mainstream christianity), and treats liberal guests
as mere props to get his own point of view across, which usually
involves interrupting and screaming. Fair and Balanced?

Hardly. But by Fox standards, Hannity & Colmes is about as fair and
unbiased as it gets. Usually, Fox News' idea of fairness and balance
involves having a center-right conservative disagree with a far-right
conservative, and calling that travesty a debate, or letting a
conservative (but never a liberal) have his own show altogether. How
come that everytime Bill O'Reilly takes a break from The O'Reilly
Factor, his substitute is someone from the far right of the political
spectrum, such as former congressman and now syndicated radio host Bob
Dornan or hard-right nitwit Michael Reagan (who left the GOP because
it was not radical enough)? And why is it that 8 years of unrelenting,
non-stop demonization of Clinton and his wife by these people is okay,
but suggesting that Bush is illegitimate is "partisan rancor"? The
answer is of course that Foxnews is a conservative news outlet, even
though its on-air personel asserts the contrary ("fair and balanced")
like a mantra.

But the situation is hardly any better on the other (supposedly
liberal) cable news channels. Liberals or centrists may not be on
unless their viewpoints are 'balanced' by conservative viewpoints (as
in CNN's Capital Gang or Crossfire), while hard-right pundits such as
Christ Matthews get their own shows. ABC's 20/20 regularly features
the views of pro-corporate extremist John Stossel, but does not bother
to balance those views by a progressive perspective. Commenting on a
1998 Stossel piece which made the case that greed is good, FAIR
demanded "to see an equally outspoken progressive journalist given an
hour to explain why greed is a serious problem in American society".
Needless to say that that demand went unanswered. Stossel, despite a
documented history of using deceptive statistics, one-sided witness
testimony, distortions and outright lies to promote an extremist
agenda is still on the job at ABC.

To make matters worse, it is not just the conservative punditocracy
which is less than fair and impartial. The mass media as a whole are
seriously biased - the conservative way. It was the mass media that
have co-opted and thus legitimized the Republican code phrase
"marriage penalty". There is no tax in the tax code that is called
"The Marriage Penalty Tax", yet the media have been using this
propagandistic phrase without any qualifiers, making "the marriage
penality (tax)" an objective fact of life, just as they routinely
report on "partial birth" (instead of "late term") abortion.
Similarly, they have been using the right-wing codephrase "death tax"
to con a significant fraction of the population into thinking that the
inheritance tax concerns ordinary people (as opposed to the super-
rich).

The mass media's coverage of the presidential race 2000 was slanted in
favor of Bush from day one. As early as 1999, the media had picked
their winner, George W. Bush, and started to tell the public that W's
victory was a foregone conclusion. Throughout the campaign and the
Florida aftermath, they stayed "on message": that Gore was a lier and
exaggerator, while Bush was a "different kind of Republican", a
likeable guy, and a real pal. They put every real or alleged
inappropriate behavior, inaccuracy or exaggeration from Gore under the
magnifying glass, and simultaneously ignored W's big lies and
blunders: that he weaseled himself out of jury duty to cover up a DUI
arrest, that he refused to admit to being a recreational drug user and
that he went AWOL while in the national guard. All of it with impunity
of course, thanks to Daddy's connections.

The mass media never found it worth mentioning that this man who in
the debates prided himself on being a succesful businessman and
Washington outsider had in fact driven several oil companies into
bankruptcy, one after an other, and was bailed out every single time
thanks to his family connections. As a son of wealth and privilege,
Bush had never had to work for anything, and got away with acts that
would have gotten anyone else into jail. Bush's dirty tricks, both
against McCain and against Gore, were revolting even by Republican
campaign standards, but the media never challenged Bush to explain
himself. Only when Gore pointed these out, they blasted him for
"negative campaigning".

As the campaign drew to a close, it became even more apparent that the
mass media would go to any lengths to discredit Gore while giving Bush
a free ride. In the presidential debate in Boston, on October 3, 2000,
Bush had the audacity to claim that

"[Gore] has outspent me, the special interests are outspending me
(..)"

while the truth is that Bush broke all spending records in US history
and outspent everyone, including the Republicans who ran before him by
a wide margin! It was a flat-out lie, but the "liberal" mass media let
him get away with it. This hypocrisy of the mass media has been well
documented by a FAIR article titled Serial Exaggerators: Media's
double standard on political lying. I also recommend Rolling Stone
Magazine's article The Press vs. Al Gore.

Then, on election night, Fox News dropped all pretense of being
unbiased and let Bush's cousin John Ellis call Florida for Bush at
2:16 am, prompting the other four networks to do the same within
minutes. From that point onward, Gore had to fight an uphill battle
against the perception that Bush had won Florida, which we know today
he has not.

After election day, the pro-Bush campaign of the media only
intensified. Chris Matthews, who only days before the election had
found the idea of Gore losing the popular vote but winning the
electoral one wholly unpalatable, developed selective amnesia and was
now arguing for Gore, the winner of the popular vote, to concede! The
rest of the punditry joined into this rousing chorus of "concede,
concede", ominously warning that simply counting the votes in Florida
would create a constitutional crisis. They even rewrote history in the
process, popularizing the myth that Nixon conceded gracefully in 1960
without putting up a legal fight (the opposite is true).

Naturally, the transparent hypocrisy of the GOP's position went
unnoticed or was downplayed. Hand-counting, which is universally
accepted as more accurate than machine-counting (even by Bush himself,
and by his lawyers in New Mexico, who demanded a hand-recount at the
same time that Baker was succesfully discrediting the method in
Florida) now became unreliable. That House Majority Whip Tom DeLay was
behind the GOP mob that shut down the Miami-Dade recount: hardly worth
reporting. The paid republican rioters with their professionally made
"Sore Loserman" signs and t-shirts: reported as grassroots protestors.
That minority voters had been intimidated from voting by GOP
operatives: not worth any headlines. That Katherine Harris had 12,000
predominantly black voters falsely removed from voter rolls as
convicted fellons: reported in the British Newspaper Observer, but
ignored by the US media.

The day after the GOP majority on the Supreme Court had installed
Emperor Bush on the throne, the mass media started to echo
conservative calls for "unity" and "healing". The good of the nation,
we were told by the corporate media outlets, required us to support
President "elect" Bush. How that healing is supposed to take place
when the dagger is still firmly lodged in the wound, they did not say.
John Gibson, guest-hosting the O'Reilly Factor on Fox News on
12/15/00, even suggested that the Florida ballots should be locked
away for eight years or burned, because the legitimacy of George W.
Bush's presidency is a higher good than the truth. Is it even
conceivable that a Fox pundit would suggest that Clinton should not
have been investigated, to preserve the public's respect for the
office of president?

The sad and morally repugnant story of coup d'etat 2000 continues to
this day. The truth - that Bush lost the election and has not one iota
of legitimacy to push his far-right agenda - has become a non-fact for
the mass media. That Bush jettisoned all pretense of being a
"different kind of Republican" with his hard-right cabinet
appointments was dismissed as slander from the usual liberal special
interest groups and never examined in detail. Ashcroft and Norton got
a free pass. They were dutifully referred to as "controversial", but
the mass media were silent on exactly how and why these people are
controversial. The protests against His Fraudulency's inauguration
were downplayed and protestors marginalized as "fringe groups", while
commentators were drooling over inauguration trivia.

As President Bush is preparing to ram his tax cut for the wealthy
through congress, the mass media are silent on the fact that Governor
Bush's tax cuts in Texas have left the state unable to pay its bills,
leaving the republican state legislature and governor no choice but to
raise taxes again. But try to call in on some of the political shows
on the cable news channels and mention the inconvenient fact that the
American people elected Al Gore to be their president, and you will be
chided by the pundits for being a complete moron - get over it, will
you?

On November 12, 2001, the pro-Bush bias of the mass media reached a
level that can only be characterized as Orwellian. The media recount
study had just shown that by the only legitimate standard (clear
intent of the voter), the majority of legal votes in Florida had been
cast for Gore, by a margin of tens of thousands of votes. But the
headlines said the exact opposite! It was one of those "IBM
commercial" moments - for the past 11 months, you had already gotten
used to the mass media slanting their coverage in favor of Bush and
the Republicans, but you were still clinging to the sentimental notion
that they could not outright fabricate the news. And then it hit you -
they can, and they do! The degree of deceptiveness varied depending on
the outlet. While the Drudge Report - incredibly! - gave a completely
objective assessment of the situation ("Gore topped Bush if all under/
over votes counted; legal strategy destroyed chances"), the supposedly
liberal New York Times and Washington Post both reported Bush as the
recount winner in their headlines.

But it fell to supposedly leftist CNN to deliver the most brazen
example of pro-Bush reporting. On the evening of Sunday, 11, 2001, CNN
ran a report (click on video, then "Study suggests Bush still winner")
by CNN's senior political correspondent Candy Crowley that made me
want to vomit. She first discusses irrelevant hypothetical scenarios
under all of which Bush would have won, then makes an oblique
reference that Gore would have won if overvotes had been counted as
well, but does not see fit to mention that those overvotes were legal
votes because they left no doubt as to the intent of the voter. She
then makes the following, incredible appeal to blind, mindless
patriotism:

Now, try to remember the kind of September we just had. (pictures of
World Trade Center ruins, then George W. Bush with his arm around a
firefighter, people shouting "USA,USA") What consumed us last December
is a paragraph for history now. A recent poll shows that if the
election was held today, George Bush would beat Al Gore by 21 points.
But the election cannot be held today, and we cannot, would not hold
last year's election again. (video shows Al Gore speaking, "George W.
Bush is my commander in chief") Maybe the best thing of all is that
the messy feelings of the Florida ballot box have really only proven
the strength of democracy.

To link the terrorist attacks to the 2000 election in this manner is
not journalism, it is propaganda. The suggestion that the current
office holder would beat a former opponent by a wide margin if the
election was held just after a national disaster is a no-brainer, and
does not prove anything. That CNN would run such transparantly
partisan advocacy masquerading as journalism shows one thing - CNN's
bias is not a liberal one.

But enough anecdotal evidence. Maybe I'm just suffering from selective
perception of reality, seing what I expect to see? Objective data is
required to substantiate the claim that the bias of the media is in
fact a conservative one, and FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting)
has been compiling just that kind of data for 15 years now. FAIR has
documented that conservative or right-leaning "think" tanks (like
Heritage, Cato, RAND or our favourite, the "Family Research" council)
received more than 50% of media citations in 1998 and 1999, while left-
wing and progressive think tanks overally received less than 13%.
FAIR's issue collection reveals, among other things, how the mass
media

have helped create the myth that social security is failing, paving
the way for the realization of one of the right's political wet
dreams: privatization of social security
perpetuate conservative myths about wellfare and simultanously turn a
blind eye to corporate wellfare
sensationalize street crime and ignore corporate crime
treat religious right groups such as the Promise Keepers with kid's
gloves and thus help legitimize them in the public perception
generally avoid reporting on the lunatic fringe of the right, such as
militias, neo-Nazis and anti-abortion terrorists, and in particular,
avoid examining the personal and ideological connections these groups
have to the Republican party
created the perception that there is widespread popular opposition to
affirmative action when in fact most people support it
all but ignore waste, mismanagment and corruption in the military-
industrial complex, especially as it relates to the planned missile
defense system
downplayed protests against the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO by
portraying protestors as leftist fringe groups, communists and
anarchists
report corporate PR as legitimate scientific research.
Given these facts, the claim of the liberal media bias is shaky enough
as it relates to major newspapers and television networks. But when
one admits radio stations into the picture, the claim becomes wholly
preposterous. Conservative hate radio has been carpet bombing the
nation with hard-right ideology, unbridled hatred towards liberals and
Clinton, distortions, lies and bogus science for years. Hate radio
hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Gordon Liddy, Michael Reagan and Oliver
North are heard by millions of people every day, and they have no
progressive counterparts of any significance. Not exactly surprising,
considering that corporate sponsors have a vested interest in
supporting pro-business voices, and suppressing progressive ones.

In a June 30,2002 Commentary in the Eugene, Oregon Register-Guard,
Edward Monks writes about the demise of the Fairness Doctrine,

Talk radio shows how profoundly the FCC's repeal of the Fairness
Doctrine has affected political discourse. In recent years almost all
nationally syndicated political talk radio hosts on commercial
stations have openly identified themselves as conservative,
Republican, or both: Rush Limbaugh, Michael Medved, Michael Reagen,
Bob Grant, Ken Hamblin, Pat Buchanan, Oliver North, Robert Dornan,
Gordon Liddy, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, et al. The spectrum of
opinion on national political commercial talk radio shows ranges from
extreme right wing to very extreme right wing - there is virtually
nothing else.

On local stations, an occasional nonsyndicated moderate or liberal may
sneak through the cracks, but there are relatively few such
exceptions. This domination of the airwaves by a single political
perspective clearly would not have been permissible under the Fairness
Doctrine.

Eugene is fairly representative. There are two local commercial
political talk and news radio stations: KUGN, owned by Cumulus
Broadcasting, the country's second largest radio broadcasting company,
and KPNW, owned by Clear Channel Communications, the largest such
company. On local stations, an occasional nonsyndicated moderate or
liberal may sneak through the cracks, but there are relatively few
such exceptions. This domination of the airwaves by a single political
perspective clearly would not have been permissible under the Fairness
Doctrine.

KUGN's line-up has three highly partisan conservative Republicans -
Lars Larson (who is regionally syndicated), Michael Savage and Michael
Medved (both of whom are nationally syndicated), covering a nine-hour
block each weekday from 1 p.m. until 10 p.m. Each host is unambiguous
in his commitment to advancing the interests and policies of the
Republican party, and unrelenting in his highly personalized
denunciation of Democrats and virtually all Democratic Party policy
initiatives. That's 45 hours a week.

For two hours each weekday morning, KUGN has just added nationally
syndicated host Bill O'Reilly. Although he occasionally criticizes a
Republican for something other than being insufficiently conservative,
O'Reilly is clear in his basic conservative viewpoint. His columns are
listed on the Townhall.com web site, created by the strongly
conservative Heritage Foundation. That's 55 hours of political talk on
KUGN each week by conservatives and Republicans. No KUGN air time is
programmed for a Democratic or liberal political talk show host.

KPNW carries popular conservative Rush Limbaugh for three hours each
weekday, and Michael Reagan, the conservative son of the former
president, for two hours, for a total of 25 hours per week.

Thus, between the two stations, there are 80 hours per week, more than
4,000 hours per year, programmed for Republican and conservative hosts
of political talk radio, with not so much as a second programmed for a
Democratic or liberal perspective.

For anyone old enough to remember 15 years earlier when the Fairness
Doctrine applied, it is a breathtakingly remarkable change - made even
more remarkable by the fact that the hosts whose views are given this
virtual monopoly of political expression spend a great deal of time
talking about "the liberal media."

Political opinions expressed on talk radio are approaching the level
of uniformity that would normally be achieved only in a totalitarian
society, where government commissars or party propaganda ministers
enforce the acceptable view with threats of violence. There is nothing
fair, balanced or democratic about it. Yet the almost complete right
wing Republican domination of political talk radio in this country has
been accomplished without guns or gulags.

And yet, the conservative agenda is and remains singularly unpopular
with the population at large, as evidenced by the fact that the GOP
can only win elections by hiding its true objectives and playing
moderate, running scorched-earth campaigns of personal destruction,
smear and slander, intimidation of minority voters and other means of
depressing voter turnout - and even then only barely. As Rush Limbaugh
gets never tired of telling his white, male and angry audience - it
must be someone else's fault. Unable to face the fact that a majority
of the population simply does not want theocracy, social darwinism and
corporate supremacy, they had to find a scapegoat - or invent one if
needed. Thus The Liberal Media myth was born.
The Liberal Media myth is a propaganda tool employed by conservative
radio hosts, columnists and pundits as a convenient excuse why after
20 years their ideology has failed to convince the public at large,
and as a memetic inocculation of the public against the evidence that
the media bias is in fact a conservative one.

Not only does the liberal media claim have no basis in fact, it also
does not make sense considering the issues of media ownership and
influence of advertisers. Most media outlets are owned by a handful of
conservative corporations and individuals, and funded by usually
economically conservative advertisers who have no need for an
educated, alert, independent and critical citizenry. What they need is
a dumb, bored, cynical and apathetic public that has abandoned all
critical faculties and is easily distracted by celebrity gossip and
mindless sports games. A public that will believe anything it is told,
or nothing at all, which amounts to the same end result. This pro-
corporate conservative bias of the media is well-documented and shows
itself in consistent under-reporting or ignoring of any information
that would lead people to question the fundamental status quo.


***************************************************************************************************************


http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/stories/2000/votestudy.html


Lies, Conservatives and Statistics
A study that questions the alleged liberal bias of the media gets
trashed, but conservatives' favorite study on the issue has problems,
too.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 9/18/2000

When, in late July, a study was released suggesting that George W.
Bush was getting more positive presidential election coverage than Al
Gore, the Media Research Center wasted no time in bringing out the
long knives.

The study was conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism
and the Committee for Concerned Journalists ("funded by the liberal
Pew Charitable Trusts," MRC wants you to know) and was based on one
sample week each month over five months in early 2000, focused on
media coverage of specific character-related "themes" of the Bush and
Gore campaign. It concluded that coverage of Gore tended to focus on
negative themes, while coverage of Bush tended to focus on positive
themes.

The MRC hit first with a July 31 "Media Reality Check" criticized the
study's methodology, its narrow focus and the way the study's results
were reported on CNN. MRC chief and Bush apologist L. Brent Bozell III
followed up in an Aug. 24 column; the study, he wrote, "skipped entire
weeks, even months, when Governor Bush took high and inside fastballs
from the national press."

"This study is about as comprehensive with statistics as James
Carville has hair," Bozell adds.

More importantly, Bozell notes, this study was publicized "while
ignoring nearly every scientific study proving a liberal bias." And
who has generated the vast majority of those studies? Why, the Media
Research Center, of course.

Conservatives' favorite "proof" of media bias, however, doesn't have
the MRC taint. In 1996, the Freedom Forum with the Roper Center
released a survey of reporters who cover the federal government that
revealed, among other things, that 89 percent of respondents voted for
Bill Clinton in 1992.

Because it was done by a group that isn't an obvious right-wing shill
like the MRC, the study got, and continues to get, a lot of play. The
survey has been cited so much by conservatives that it threatens to
become apocryphal. This year alone, Bozell himself mentioned it in a
June 8 speech in New York, and the Wall Street Journal's Robert
Bartley mentions it in a Sept. 11 column.

Fortunately, the study has been dissected -- and it reveals some
serious questions, not unlike the ones MRC raised about the above PEJ
study.

Robert Parry of Consortium News reported back in 1997 that out of 323
surveys sent out, only 139 were returned -- a little over one-third.
The list of recipients was complied from the press credentials list of
the Congressional Press Gallery. And there are a lot more than 323
journalists covering Washington.

The problem? Many conservative journals are organized as non-profit
corporations so they can accept tax-deductible donations, Parry
writes. And non-profits have difficulty getting credentials from the
Congressional Press Gallery.

The result of this was clear when Consortium examined the names of
news organizations represented on the the original mailing list and
the number of questionnaires they received. Missing from the list were
many major conservative journals; The Washington Times got four
questionnaires, Human Events one, and The New York Post one. "The
other big-name right-wing publications got zero," Parry writes.

The survey "appears to have dramatically undercounted the scores of
conservative journalists in Washington, despite their significant
influence in setting the national agenda," Parry writes. "Many of
these conservatives appear regularly on TV pundit shows and their
opinionated columns resonate across the country through conservative
radio hosts and on the op-ed pages of newspapers."

This revealed another problem: "Only 60 questionnaires -- or less than
20 percent of the total -- had gone to the likes of The New York
Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Wall Street
Journal, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, PBS, National Public Radio, Time,
Newsweek, US News, The Associated Press and Reuters," Parry writes.

"The bulk of the newspapers on the list were regional dailies," Parry
writes, "such as The Modesto Bee, Boston Globe, Denver Post, Dallas
Morning News, Atlanta Journal/Constitution, Richmond Times Dispatch
and San Jose Mercury News." News services for newspaper chains such as
Knight Ridder and Newhouse are counted here as well.

But, Parry reveals, "more than 80 of the list's newspapers -- roughly
a quarter of the total -- were much smaller, often with only one
reporter or 'bureau chief' in Washington." This includes papers like
the Sheboygan (Wis.) Press, the Grand Junction (Colo.) Daily Sentinel
and the Thibodaux (La.) Daily Comet. Also included here are specialty
and obscure journals like Indian Country Today and El Pregonero.

The survey, Parry concludes, "gave much greater weight to the voting
choices of reporters from small publications who have next to no
influence in the nation's capital. These work-a-day reporters rarely,
if ever, appear on TV and their stories concentrate on the humdrum
actions of local members of Congress, not on national affairs."

So, to sum up, the Freedom Forum study uses a small sample from a pool
not representative of the total Washington press corps, and the vast
majority of the reporters who responded focus their coverage mostly on
local issues and have no influence on the national political agenda.

But you won't hear that from the MRC. Why? The study's results
dovetail nicely with the MRC's agenda, and to analyze it would kill
the goose that laid the golden, non-right-wing-sourced egg.

In his Aug. 24 column, Bozell writes: "Simply judge these studies by
whether they prove what they claim, and you'll find what any serious
journalist examining them knows: the evidence isn't there." Too bad he
only uses that principle to attack what he doesn't agree with.


*********************************************************************************************


Rick

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