Double Standard

While bitching about the domination of the media by liberals, conservative media stars continue to live by a different set of rules than they advocate for others. First it was Joe Scarborough, using a vacation day from his five-days-a-week Scarborough Report on MSNBC to raise money for President Bush's re-election campaign. Now it's Sean Hannity, raising money for Rudolph Giuliani while singing the candidate's praises on Fox News's air.

Of course, Hannity has already done this kind of thing for Senator Rick Santorum.

Can you imagine the outcry if a liberal did the same thing? Imagine what would happen if, say, Kieth Olbermann appeared at a Hillary Clinton fund raiser? Conservative talk radio would erupt with sanctimonious outrage. O'Reilly would make the case that it was proof that Olbermann is really the worst person in the world.

But when a conservative does it...silence. The reason for that is, of course, the mythology of the liberal media. The idea that the media are overwhelmingly biased against conservatives and Republicans is basic faith on the right. In fact, it's absolutely critical to the maintenance of Bush-era conservatism because it enables the right to ignore reality. Bad news can be dismissed without consideration as biased; anything out of Iraq, for example, that doesn't absolutely support the Administration line is evidence that the media are so against Bush that they'll root for the enemy rather than delivering good news.

There's another powerful advantage to believing that the media are biased, and that is it enables the right to operate without regard for honesty or ethics. Because the media are so biased against Republicans, Republicans can do whatever they want to level the playing field. If that means newscasters raising money for their favored politicians, well so be it. It's not like those politicians are Democrats, after all.

Comments

[Lee]

Actually, MSNBC did a tally of journalists who contributed money in 2006.

Of the 143 journalists they listed, 125 gave to Dems or libs, 16 to the GOP, and 2 to both.

While I can't say if the list is truly complete, a pattern is clearly indicated.

PS: Check out the reaction of Gideon Yago. Talk about high horse.

[Tom]

The Bureau of Labor Statistics notes that nearly 1 million people are employed by newspapers, television and radio in the United States. Not all of these are journalists, of course, but then not all the people in MSNBC's tiny sample were political journalists, either. The sample includes riffraff like food writers and graphic artists.

The larger point is that there are restraints on liberals that there simply aren't on conservatives. Liberals at least have to conform to the procedural standards of objectivity. That is, they have to make a point of giving both sides of the story. Conservatives don't.

Anyone out there have an example of a liberal commentator who has been allowed to take an active roll in a campaign that commentator covers?

[Scott]

The larger point is that there are restraints on liberals that there simply aren't on conservatives. Liberals at least have to conform to the procedural standards of objectivity.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Confirmation bias, much?

Look, the simple fact that these so-called journalists are biased one way or another is completely acceptable to any rational, objective human being. What's not acceptable, and generates howls of outrage/laughter, is the ridiculous idea that we're supposed to accept as confirmed fact that they would never in 1 trillion years allow that bias to show as they go about their soon-to-be-disintermediated jobs.

Anyone out there have an example of a liberal commentator who has been allowed to take an active roll in a campaign that commentator covers?

"Fake but accurate" ring a bell? How active is active? Of course, that bastion of journalistic integrity was tricked somehow, and probably thought he had a real, live news story, right? He wasn't out actually raising funds, right? So it doesn't count as "active."

I love journalists. Endless amusements.

[Scott]

Here ya go - active role, blah-blah:
Dan Rather, the longest-serving and most 0utspoken of the major network news anchors, recently served as the star attraction at a Democratic Party fundraiser.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34557-2001Apr3

Excuse me, but is Sean Hannity anchoring a broadcast network's news-half-hour these days somewhere? Or is he just a puffed-up toad from NYC that draws ratings on the cable teevee?

I happen to remember the outrageous outcries about Gunga Dan since it was in Texas, in Travis Co., which just happens to house the overwhelming majority of Democrats here, as well as the State Capitol and all of the attendant worker bees (completely unsurprising that government teat-suckers might be Dems, BTW).

My thought was, "People are surprised by this?" It was echoed by the various rummy barflies I queried that week. Blogs hadn't been invented yet, so I failed to note this non-reaction at the time, being more interested in booze and golf and work.

But there ya go...again.

[Tom]

How did I know someone would bring up Dan Rather?

Oh, that's right: He's the only actual example anyone has, and he didn't do what Hannity and Scarborough have done, which is raising funds for a candidate in a race they're actually covering. He showed up at a Podunk, Texas, county meeting and there is at least some doubt whether he knew it was even a fund raiser.

Now's the time when all you conservatives out there point out how hard the media are on President Bush and how President Clinton got a free ride.

Dogma is, if nothing else, utterly predictable.

[Squidley]

Stop it, Tom--yer killin' me!

Conservative bias in the MSM? What are you smoking?

Here's a wee example: The Media Research Center (quoted, excerpted, and linked here: http://www.willisms.com/archives/2007/05/trivia_tidbit_o_441.html) reported that a whopping ninety-seven percent of all the news stories it tracked supported Al Gore's anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis.

And on that issue, the highly-credulous newshounds have, in general, failed to follow up on the news that NASA's figures for the hottest years on record were flawed. As it turns out, four of the ten hottest years on record were in the 1930s--1934 was hottest--and 1921 ends up as third-hottest. As it so happens, pro-AGW scientists believe that's before humans had their alleged impact on global temperatures. (http://michellemalkin.com/2007/08/09/hot-news-nasa-fixes-flawed-temperature-data-1998-was-not-the-warmest-year-in-the-millenium/, with lotsa links to original stuff there.)

We love ya, Tom--you write well, frequently stimulate the grey matter, and often provide us with mirth and chuckles, though this last one isn't always intended.

[oneken]

"left-brained" repugnaut boiz r said by american popshreenx 2 b able 2 do simple math -- here i see no evidence of this

[Tom]

I believe the 97% example you cite pretty accurately reflects the scientific consensus on Global Warming, which would not seem a particularly good example of political bias. (OK, maybe the scientific consensus is a little less than 97%, but one of the flaws of the "objective" media is that they give both sides of any issue 50-50 coverage even if one side isn't exactly deserving. (I give you Al Sharpton re: anything.) So in this case they've given themselves over to conventional wisdom. They do that all the time. For example, the media accepted the conventional wisdom that Al Gore was given to exaggerating, as in the entirely fictional "invented the Internet" story. On the other hand, for years they had George W. Bush down as a straight shooter, and no amount of dissembling on his part could break through that conventional wisdom.

So, if your argument is that the media are prone to fads and intellectual isolation, I'm with you 100%.

As for the NASA "scandal," it's worth mentioning that the data were flawed to the tune of 0.03 degrees Fahrenheit, and that when the mistake was caught the agency readily accepted the new data and fully credited the scientist who caught it. This is the behavior of a group dedicated to scientific inquiry, not the advancement of a political agenda.

In any case, the NASA data was for the U.S. only, and when the improved methodology was applied to worldwide data it have exactly no effect whatsoever on the data. Which does not argue strongly that it was a big media story ignored for political reasons. Imagine the headline:

"Tiny Error In Data Makes No Difference in NASA Study"

If it's dueling studies you want, here's one that proves that in the run-up to the War in Iraq, mainstream media gave six times as much time and space to those for the war as they did to those against the war.

[Scott]

You didn't know someone would bring up Gunga Dan or you would have brought it up. But your ridiculous blanket statement has been de-proven.

I think you've missed a tidal wave change in the chattering classes and that's causing some confusion, Tom. Hannity, Scarborough, and thousands of others we could unfortunately name are not "covering" anything for anybody in the sense that they are bringing me or you new information. They talk about stuff on the radio and teevee and internet, and they do so because there are advertisers who want to sell soap to their listeners, viewers, and readers. Most people understand this, just as they understand that Jim Rome doesn't do sports reporting. I'm sure you do, too, but you don't want to acknowledge it for whatever reason.

PS You bring up Clinton, who matters not a whit in this discussion, yet I'm dogmatic. Just as some Republicans can't let it go, I'm pretty sure some others can't, as well. You might try arguing the merits of your post, but - your blog.

[Tom]

"You didn't know anyone would bring up Gunga Dan or you would have brought it up."

I did too. I knew it because when you ask conservatives for an example of liberal media bias you inevitably get Dan Rather. I thought about bringing Dan up and asking for a second example, but decided I'd let it come up in discussion. It was a cynical ploy to build the number of comments. You can either believe that or you can call me a liar; your choice.

"You bring up Clinton, who matters not a whit in this discussion..."

After Gunga Dan, the next thing that comes up in discussions like this is the delusional argument that President Clinton got a "free ride." I love that, because Clinton got roasted in the media.

To the credit of this small group, no one has made that claim. So I brought it up myself. I did it because his treatment by the media matters more than a whit because the media feasted on him.

If the media were biased in favor of liberals generally and Democrats in particular, one might imagine that Clinton would have got a free ride. He didn't get close to a free ride. Michael Isikoff of ostensibly liberal Newsweek made his career rubbing Clinton's nose in Monica Lewinski (inappropriate metaphor deliberate). More interestingly, when the establishment media lost interest there was something new out there to make sure they picked it back up: The Drudge Raport and Rush Limbaugh.

"I think you've missed a tidal wave change in the chattering classes and that's causing some confusion, Tom."

Quite the contrary; I'm intensely aware of the change. In fact, it forms the basis of my whole point.

The media are dominated by conservatives today not because the New York Times and CBS News have become conservative, but because they have become less important. They're much smaller voices in a much louder media environment.

Take, for example, talk radio. Conservative talk radio is the result of the prevailing liberal media bias of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Conservative ideas were essentially shut out of the very limited universe of communications. People like Rush Limbaugh were forced into the wilderness of AM talk radio. There, they invented a whole new form and demonstrated a whole new audience.

As media diversified, the early conservative colonists branched out while the establishment media -- which was New England liberal in its worldview and politics -- sat fat and lazy, sure that they would forever control the media agenda because they controlled the front page of the New York Times and the lead story of CBS News.

Technology and the media environment changed, however, and the distinctive voices who learned their craft in the relative outback of talk radio became the heart and soul of the new media. Starting with Clinton, the media agenda could no longer be set in the establishment newsrooms.

Those formerly big dogs are now dinosaurs, assembling an elderly audience that is barely salable even to pharmaceutical manufacturers and brokerage houses. Those dinosaurs are wedded to an objectivity model that precludes them taking overt political positions. They ploddingly, ploddingly cover both sides of every story -- as if there were only two sides, as if all sides were equally of merit. (This is why Al Sharpton is on TV so much; on every "race" story they have to cover the black view, and Sharpton's the only black person most network bookers have ever met.)

The new media model has no similar constraints. The compelling personalities that came up through talk radio don't worry about two sides; they're unashamed partisans who think of themselves as insurgents, because back in the day they were. I got a huge kick out of that, through the first 6 years of the Bush Administration. Conservatives talked about themselves as if they were a put-upon minority, even as they controlled the White House, both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court. Today's conservative movement has become the new establishment, about as revolutionary in the US as Castro is in Cuba.

The personalities that dominate non-traditional media are overwhelmingly conservative because the alt media farm team -- talk radio, direct mail, syndication -- were of necessity overwhelmingly conservative. There aren't any liberal pheenoms out there waiting to be called up to the big leagues, because liberals didn't have to develop a minor league.

(There are those who think liberalism doesn't translate onto the radio and that's why radio is conservative. There are other who think it's a conspiracy of station ownership. I think the failure of Air America, just for example, is proof that compelling radio is a learned skill, and that people won't listen to boring stuff even if they agree with its politics. More evidence: Fox News' 30 Minute Comedy Hour, which was developed to advance an agenda but failed because it wasn't funny, and entertainment that isn't entertaining doesn't hold an audience just because it's politically agreeable.)

In your assumption that the media are liberal, you're doing one of two things: Ignoring the last 20 years or limiting which media are eligible for inclusion in the calculation. I suspect the latter, and remind you it's not just network news anymore. The traditional media of 20 years ago were overwhelmingly liberal; the diversified media of today are not.

The ability to move the agenda lies not so much with the New York Times or, Lord knows, the vastly diminished CBS News. It rests, instead, with Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh and the loosely affiliated network of like-minded broadcast activists who work together to advance their political agenda.

The pendulum will swing again, of course. For example, in these early days of the Internet liberals seem to be better at using it as an organizational and information tool. But the Internet is not yet dominant, and overall it's conservatives who rule the media.

Getting back to my original challenge -- name a liberal media figure who has raised money for a candidate whose race he covers -- I have to admit it was a trick question. See, the thing is, there is no liberal figure like Sean Hannity or Joe Scarborough who might go out to raise money for a candidate. There is no movement liberal -- not one -- with a prime time television slot and the job security to thumb his nose at convention.

That, in itself, seems pretty convincing proof that the liberal media are a thing of the past.

[Pursuit]

"There is no movement liberal -- not one -- with a prime time television slot and the job security to thumb his nose at convention."

Umm, that would be because they're all pretending to be objective news reporters Tom. The simple fact is Hannity is just more honest about the whole thing. First, you know he is a knee jerk Republican, and secondly he is open and honest enough to admit to raising money for Rudi. You're quite correct that not one liberal exists that is honest enough to be so open.

Of course if it is closeted "objective" liberals that you want all you need to do is look at the news reports that fail to mention party when a Democrat is in trouble, the voting records of newsies that Scott points out, the Wikipedia "corrections" that the nation's newspaper of record made, Memogate, the routine claim that Valerie Plame was "outed by the administration in an attempt to discredit her husband" and on and on and on. Hell the reason liberal talk radio can't get off the ground is that the market is already being served by the news operations of the three networks.

Really Tom, you're smarter than this.

[Scott]

Dude, make this a post.

Rather - I'll take your word for it.

Clinton, free rides, conservative - who's being dogmatic, once more, with feeling? Couldn't care less here, one way or the other. No Presidents get free rides, not in my lifetime.

Lastly, don't make assumptions about my assumptions. Media, such as it is, in all it's various flavors and permutations, is there to sell soap. One bunch sells it to progressives, one bunch sells it to regressives, one bunch sells it fence-sitters.

OK, one more:
name a liberal media figure who has raised money for a candidate whose race he covers
Given that we've agreed that there is a different media stew than my dad had to deal with...does that Markos cat count? If not, why not? Your general idea that the liberal media is a thing of the past is belied by your very own acknowledgment that there is now a new (20 year old) media force called the internet that seems to be functioning very well in the service of the progressives.

Personally, and this is important, I don't care which way they swing, as I trust none of them to plainly state a set of facts and allow me to draw my own conclusions. You shouldn't trust me, either, for that matter.

[Squidley]

Tom,

Just because 97% of the reporting is on alleged anthropogenic global warming (AGW), it does not mean that 97% of the scientists who study the climate agree with that hypothesis. In fact, there are many professionals in the field who disagree with it--but we seldom hear about it. Truth be known, the topic has become so politicized that some researchers who have, in the past, been able to secure multi-million dollar grants, are now frozen out of the funding because their conclusions do not agree with the politically-correct, pre-ordained conclusion. I think you'd agree that political meddling in science is never a good thing.

While your point about the relative unimportance of the corrected data is valid, it's not the whole story. The scientist whose calculations were wrong refused to release his algorithm, so it had to be back-engineered--and that's how his mistake was made. Not the kind of scientific openness one would hope for. While NASA accepted the new calculations, the "1998 was the hottest year ever" meme is still current in the world at large. Furthermore, that so many hot years were in the 20s and 30s takes the wind out of the sails of AGW, since no one thinks that human activities were affecting the climate (the way they are alleged to do now) back then.

Tom, I'm sure you're old enough to remember the 70s. Remember what the environmental Chicken Littles were clucking about then? It was global winter. Funny how that changed so quickly.

Also, why is it that little things like the shrinking of the icecaps of Mars, or Jupiter's growth of a second Red Spot--both presumably caused by increased solar output--never come up in discussions of climate change?

When it comes to long-term forecasts about the global climate, I'll start giving the AGW ideologues some credence when meteorologists can accurately predict next week's weather.

[Tom]

Squid first: Please please please don't use the coming Ice Age of the '70s as an argument, since it was never anything but a freakish prediction by a tiny minority of scientists. The coverage it got, it got because it was so far out of the scientific mainstream.

And as for Jupiter's red spot...well, I don't even know how to reply to that.

Now Pursuit:

"they're all pretending to be objective news reporters Tom"

The discussion of whether feigned objectivity is good or bad in journalism is a long and honorable one. I wrote a paper about it when I was in college. It's worth noting that objectivity in journalism is not so much a result as it is a method. You get and tell both sides of the story. I'd argue that that kind of objectivity is one of the great exploitable weaknesses of modern journalism, giving both sides of an argument equal weight when both sides might not deserve equal weight.

The idea that liberals aren't filling prime time slots on news networks is because they've all chosen to lay in the weeds of the evening news is ridiculous, however. The whiff of conspiracy inferred in that is...oh, what's the word I'm looking for? Wacky? Nutty? A perfect illustration of the psychologically well-defended conservative mind?

"...reports that fail to mention party when a Democrat is in trouble, the voting records of newsies that Scott points out, the Wikipedia "corrections" that the nation's newspaper of record made, Memogate, the routine claim that Valerie Plame was "outed by the administration in an attempt to discredit her husband" and on and on and on."

I'm not going to get into the merits of each of the things on this list -- except one, which I can't resist since conservatives use it all the time as an example of liberal media bias: Memogate. You remember, of course, that Dan Rather lost his job over that. He was fired. I think that makes it a not particularly good example in an argument about how conservatives get away with things liberals dont.

Anyway, I can do just what you did: put together a string of events in which the media broke one way -- in my case, to the conservative argument -- and it won't prove a thing. Still, just of the top of my head: Gary Condit wasn't a murderer and cooperated fully with police despite the fiction that the conservative media forced into the public mind; Al Gore never said he invented the Internet; Whitewater wasn't anything worthy of mention; no one murdered Vince Foster; Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. I've got a million of 'em, and they don't prove anything.

"you're smarter than that."

Clearly not.

Now Scott who, for the record, I want to drink beer with. (I want to drink wine with Pursuit. Squid and I can get together and make aluminum foil hats.)

"...does that Markos cat count? "

Not only does he count, but he's the perfect example of what's coming down the road. So far, the Internet political communities like Daily Kos don't have the impact that prime time broadcast has, but prime time keeps losing audience and the Internet keeps gaining, so it's just a matter of time.

This may be the election when the Internet supersedes broadcast news in importance. I doubt it because I doubt everything Internet visionaries say, and I've got the Petfood.com stock to demonstrate why. Still, we seem to be getting close to a tipping point.

Kos -- which I do not, for the record, read regularly -- is an open advocate and activist, not unlike the conservative commentators like Hannity and -- particularly -- Scarborough. (Scarborough was a Republican Congressman, remember.)

Kos raises money on his website for Democratic candidates, even those with whom he has some basic disagreements. (He's partisan, not just ideological.) And, I would argue, he's sacrificing his independence and gradually being assimilated into the Democratic message machine in the same way that talk radio has been absorbed into the Republican body. President Bush entertains talk radio hosts in the Oval Office...the Democratic candidates flock to Yearly Kos.

Interestingly, a recurring theme on Kos is the bias of the mainstream media against "progressives." Like the conservatives before them, they're building an insulated world where bad news is dismissed as bias.

They haven't achieved the perfect isolation conservatives have -- or did, until a couple of years ago when reality began to pierce the bubbles of all but the dead-enders. But they're working on it.

[Squidley]

I'll explain the Red Spot reference this way:

Scientists who don't buy in to anthropogenic global warming (AGW) note numerous factors to account for recently-rising temperatures. One of those factors is increased solar output. As we know, solar energy drives storms on Earth; it's believed that it drives storms elsewhere in the solar system, too. If Jupiter has sprouted a second Red Spot at the same time that we appear to be warming (it's such a short time that it's hard to say anything conclusive) and at the same time that polar ice caps on Mars are shrinking, then it's reasonable to look at increased solar output as a cause.

As a matter of fact, it appears that the sun has increased its output: about .05% per decade for the last century or so.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/sun_output_030320.html

Add to that the fact that humans account for only about 5% of total carbon dioxide emissions, and the case for AGW gets weaker still.

In related news, the EU, which signed on to the economy-stifling Kyoto treaty, has cut its emissions only 0.8% (with some countries, like Italy and Spain, increasing their emisssions). On the other hand, the US, whose Senate rejected Kyoto 98-0, has lowered its emissions by 1.9%.

Pop quiz: which works better: a command economy or a free market economy?