4. Issues and Bias

4.1 Political

In this section I examine the myth that reporters go easy on Democrats or that "liberal" reporters display a political bias in favor of Democrats in their news reporting. This question was partly addressed in Sec. 2.8 (so read that first), and is covered here in more detail. As I pointed out in Sec. 2.8, there is already ZERO evidence that "liberal" reporters let their ideology skew their news reporting towards the left; indeed (heh), as I point out there, and in this section, the data shows that quite the opposite has been the case with the Clintons, Gore, Kerry and Bush. The fact-free tendency to claim "liberal media bias" using surveys of reporters is common (as illustrated by this post at the weblog "That Liberal Media"); however, this tendency should not come as a surprise because arguing based on the actual content and accuracy of news coverage, one would have to acknowledge that the media tilts conservative more than it tilts liberal - as I show on this website. 

4.1A.1 Ideology of Reporters/Journalists - more recent data

4.1A.2 Voting or Partisan Preferences of Media Editors, Publishers, Owners - and its impact on actual votes cast

4.1A.3 When Political Bias Exists and is Blatant, it's from the "journalists" on the Right

4.1B.1 Media coverage of Democrats and Republicans

4.1B.1.1 How the "mainstream" (so-called "liberal") media covered Bill and Hillary Clinton

4.1B.1.2 How the "mainstream" (so-called "liberal") media covered Al Gore during Campaign/Election 2000

4.1B.1.3 The media's coverage of George Bush during his first term (including 9/11 and Iraq) and their coverage of Election 2004

IRAQ coverage

4.1B.1.4 The U.S. Mainstream Media and Media Malpractice in Campaign 2004

4.1A.1 Ideology of Reporters/Journalists - more recent data

Steve Kangas has some interesting commentary on journalist "biases" on his website. Here is an extract:

The personal biases of journalists

...new studies show that today's journalists are more centrist than anything else. However, those who are not centrists identify themselves more frequently as conservatives on economic issues, and more frequently as liberals on social issues.

The following study was conducted by David Croteau of Virginia Commonwealth University [in 1998]. (24) He targeted Washington bureau chiefs and Washington-based journalists who cover national politics and/or economic policy. His questionnaires went to 78 national news organizations, with an emphasis on the following 14:

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

The 141 journalists and bureau chiefs who responded were an excellent cross-section of the target group as a whole. When their positions on political issues were tallied up, this was the result:

Q#22. On social issues, how would you characterize your political orientation?	Q#23. On economic issues, how would you characterize your political orientation?
Left 30%	Left 11%
Center 57%	Center 64%
Right 9%	Right 19%
Other 5%	Other 5%

What caused journalists to shift over the last 15 years from liberal attitudes to centrist ones, even conservative ones on economic issues?

One answer, of course, is that the media's parent corporations began hiring less liberal journalists. But another answer has to be the exploding salaries of celebrity journalists. It is a common observation in political science that receiving a higher income tends to make a person more economically conservative.

Between 1980 and 1995, the salaries of celebrity journalists sky-rocketed. In 1995, Diane Sawyer made $8 million; Ted Koppel, $5 million; David Brinkley, $1 million; George Will, $1.5 million; Cokie Roberts, $700,000. (25) These salaries place them in America's richest 1 percent (actually, the top one-twentieth of the top 1 percent). Keep in mind that the top 1 percent saw their wealth explode during the 80s, eventually coming to own 40 percent of America's wealth. These celebrity journalists live and work in centers of power like Washington D.C and New York City, where they rub elbows with the nation's political and business elite.

Says PBS producer Stephen Talbot:

"There's an Our Town quality to official Washington -- a very small, incestuous world of politicians and press who are now almost interchangeable. The press was once known as ink-stained wretches. But in their tuxedos and evening gowns at an event like the White House Correspondents Dinner, they resemble nothing more than the politicians they cover." (26)

Newsweek columnist Jonathon Alter concedes:

"I'm a part of this so-called overclass -- and so are my bosses and many of my colleagues at Newsweek and elsewhere in the national media. There's no point in denying it." (27)

And all evidence shows that celebrity journalists identify with the various elites they cover. Recently, ABC weathered a scandal (due to lack of coverage, naturally) in which its journalists were criticized for accepting huge speaking fees before big business groups. It turns out that corporate lobbyists cultivate "friendships" not only with politicians, but TV journalists as well. They were paying Cokie Roberts, David Brinkley and Sam Donaldson between $20,000 and $35,000 per 40-minute speech. David Gergen collected over $700,000 from speaker fees in one 16-month period alone. In general, the speeches have been very friendly to big business, and that is why lobbyists were willing to pay such huge honoraria. In a 1992 speech, for example, David Brinkley described Bill Clinton's tax increase on the rich as a "sick, stupid joke." (This was even before he called Clinton "boring" on the eve of his 1996 reelection.) In July, 1994, ABC finally advised its journalists to stop accepting speaker fees from corporations and lobbying groups. The decision was immediately protested by Sam Donaldson, Cokie Roberts, David Brinkley, Brit Hume and others. (28)
...
Does personal bias result in media bias?

Granted, journalists have their own personal viewpoints, ranging from liberal to conservative. But what does that really mean? Very little, it turns out.

The idea that the media's message can be boiled down to the personal biases of individual journalists is profoundly and absurdly reductionist. The media is composed of individuals, yes, but it is also composed of institutions, organizational structures, traditions, rules, social and economic forces, and interest groups applying pressure. And all these things affect the media's message in profound ways.

For example, consider the rule of balanced sources. Under normal circumstances, journalists get both sides of the story. This is a basic rule of thumb that every journalist knows, and is taught in every Journalism 101 class. It doesn't matter if you're liberal or conservative; it is widely considered unethical to present only one side of the story. The only time that this ethic seems to break down is when a conflict of interest arises between journalists and the corporations that pay their paychecks.

But this ethic doesn't stop corporations from "legitimately" biasing the media towards conservatism. All they have to do is hire pundits who are mostly conservatives themselves. Pundits enjoy a unique role in the media, in that they are expected to be biased. In fact, the more outrageous their opinions, the better. Whereas a reporter must stick to the facts and report both sides, pundits are free to interpret them any way they want. What this means is that criticism of reporters for their alleged liberal bias is actually misplaced. It is really the political spectrum of pundits that we should worry about.

Unfortunately, there are far more conservative pundits than progressive ones:

Conservative pundits: Pat Buchanan, Fred Barnes, John McLaughlin, David Gergen, Robert Novak, William F. Buckley, Jr., George Will, William Safire, Cal Thomas, Jonathon Alter, Joe Klein, Robert J. Samuelson, James Kilpatrick, Rush Limbaugh, and hundreds of other conservative radio talk-show hosts.

Centrists (self-described): Sam Donaldson, Mark Shields, Michael Kinsley, Morton Kondrake, Al Hunt, Jack Germond, Hodding Carter.

Progressive pundits: Jim Hightower (cancelled), Barbara Eirenreich, Molly Ivins.

Conservatives freely admit to this bias themselves. Here's Adam Myerson, editor of the Heritage Foundation's Policy Review:

"[Pundit] journalism today is very different from what it was 10 to 20 years ago. Today, op-ed pages are dominated by conservatives… We have a tremendous amount of conservative opinion, but this creates a problem for those who are interested in a career in journalism after college… If Bill Buckley were to come out of Yale today, nobody would pay much attention to him. He would not be that unusual… because there are probably hundreds of people with those ideas [and] they have already got syndicated columns." (29)

In fact, no one can deny the extreme right-wing bias of the pundit spectrum after listening to talk radio. Conservatives have captured an entire media arm and devoted it almost exclusively to corporate and conservative propaganda. Liberal talk-show hosts are almost non-existent. Conservatives blame this on the low ratings of liberal talk show hosts, but this is a curious argument, since liberals form the largest political school of thought in America. The fact is that corporate owners simply do not promote liberal talk show hosts. When ABC first hired Rush Limbaugh, they spent millions promoting him, ghost-writing his books and arranging appearances on Nightline, The McNeil/Lehrer News Hour and even Phil Donahue. No liberal talk show host has received anything even remotely resembling this kind of promotion. It's just another way that corporations ensure the conservative slant of the media.

The Fairness Doctrine

The United States once had a law which attempted to balance viewpoints in radio and television: the Fairness Doctrine. Created by the Federal Communications Commission in 1949, this law required broadcasters to cover controversial issues with some opposing views. It required neither the internal balancing of programs, nor for equal time, nor for all opinions to be heard. It merely prevented broadcasters from airing relentless, one-sided propaganda.

An example of the Fairness Doctrine in action was the ABC movie The Day After. This anti-nuclear war movie angered many conservatives like Henry Kissinger, who believe that the willingness to use nuclear weapons is actually a deterrence to war. However, Kissinger got a chance to respond to the movie on national television, for Nightline followed the movie with a group discussion that included Kissinger and other conservative pundits. The reason why ABC was so even-handed, presenting both a liberal and conservative viewpoint on nuclear war, was because the Fairness Doctrine required them to.

Another example was controversial state ballot measures. The Fairness Doctrine required broadcasters to air both viewpoints of any initiative. It is interesting to note that since the Fairness Doctrine was repealed in 1987, studies show that the media's treatment of many initiatives has been heavily one-sided. (30)

Why the Fairness Doctrine? Why not just let the market produce what it wants? The market works fine in the case of print media, because almost anyone can afford to print something, even if it's just a flyer. However, this is not the case for radio and television. In the 1920s, the airwaves were unregulated, and became so overcrowded with signals that they jammed each other. The Federal Communication Commission therefore started issueing licenses for broadcasters to use certain radio frequencies. Because the spectrum is so limited, however, there can only be a limited number of broadcasters. Diversity of opinion cannot be achieved by adding more stations, but only by creating it within stations. This is the rationale for the Fairness Doctrine.

Up until the late 1980s, the Fairness Doctrine enjoyed broad popular support, ranging from the left-wing ACLU to the right-wing National Rifle Association and Accuracy In Media. In 1987, Congress considered a bill that would inscribe the Fairness Doctrine in federal law. It passed with overwhelming support in the House (3 to 1) and the Senate (nearly 2 to 1). Even such far-right legislators as Newt Gingrich and Jesse Helms voted in favor of it. (31)

Unfortunately, Reagan vetoed the law, and then went a step further: his FCC repealed the Fairness Doctrine completely. Reagan had staffed the FCC with corporate media types who were bent on deregulating the media at all costs, and were thus hostile to the Fairness Doctrine. It was the equivalent of letting the fox guard the chicken coop. Shortly afterwards, Rush Limbaugh and other conservatives were free to take over AM talk radio, without fear of giving equal time to liberals.

Democracy Radio conducted a survey in 2004 to assess the tilt in talk radio. Here are the results:

Total number of local Conservative programs: 149
Total number of radio stations that broadcast local Conservative programs: 142
Weekly broadcast hours of local Conservative programs: 2,349

Total number of national Conservative programs: 19
Total of affiliates for national Conservative programs: 3,394
Weekly broadcast hours of national Conservative programs: 39,382

---

Total weekly broadcast hours of local and national Conservative programs: 41,731


Total number of local Progressive programs: 49
Total number of radio stations that broadcast local Progressive programs: 36
Weekly broadcast hours of local Progressive programs: 555

Total number of national Progressive programs: 19
Total of affiliates for national Progressive programs: 250
Weekly broadcast hours of national Progressive programs: 2,487

---

Total weekly broadcast hours of local and national Progressive programs: 3,042

This is an appropriate juncture to reiterate the point I made in Sec. 2.8. The media is awash with conservative commentators, op-ed writers, columnists, talking heads and talk show hosts. Clearly many of these people are strong supporters of the Republican party and vote Republican. If conservatives among them who peddle the theory (that journalists who are "liberal" or "Democratic" are necessarily biased liberal in their reporting) actually believe it, then it means they accept that they themselves are completely biased and cannot be trusted with anything they report on or write about -- because it would not be "fair and balanced". Or at least one would think they accept that. But when Fox News comically keeps insisting that they are "fair and balanced", they are actually making a claim that it is possible to support a particular political party and ideology and yet be "fair and balanced." So which one is it folks? Make up your mind. Luckily for us, we don't have to wait for them to start telling the truth (more on the difference between "liberals" and conservatives in the media in Sec. 4.1A.3). The reality is quite clear to those who are interested in facts over rhetoric. As you read more, you will see why the reality of media bias is usually quite the opposite of "liberal bias".

Let me wrap up this sub-section with this piece from Bob Somerby which shows how "liberal" many of the so-called "liberal columnists" in this country are:

In part, today’s Dems proceed with caution because of the press. But Raspberry misses this matter completely. At one point, he offers a key observation, but totally fails to connect the key dots. “On issue after issue, the Republicans have proposed—and the Democrats have compromised,” he complains. Iraq is the scribe’s prime example:

RASPBERRY: Democrats who thought the war in Iraq was at best premature couldn’t find their voice to say so…Few besides West Virginia’s Sen. Robert C. Byrd have stood up to decry the president’s extraordinary policy of preemption, or to point out how dangerous a precedent it sets, for us and the world.

And this is significant: Nobody’s paying much attention to the 85-year-old Byrd, the Senate’s senior member. I don’t mean only that his impassioned cry…is not generating a response among the electorate. I mean also that it is ignored in the mass media. It’s as though Byrd is the one out of order, not the president who makes needless war…

Byrd is ignored in the media, he says. Even worse, the press makes Byrd seem out of order. But Raspberry magically fails to see that this helps explain why some Dems are “struck dumb.” Why exactly would Dems want to fight if the press rules such work out of order?

Let’s close with Raspberry’s stance during Florida. In his column, he says that Dems didn’t fight that Supreme Court decision. But let’s recall what he wrote during Florida. With “liberals” like this in the mainstream press, do you wonder why Dems may be cautious?

RASPBERRY (11/20/00): Just so you’ll know, I voted for Al Gore.

And yet I find myself hoping he loses Florida and the presidency—but that he loses fair and square.

To put it plainly: I hope the combination of the certified, absentee and recounted votes will put George W. Bush ahead in the Florida tally.

“The point is that because the Republicans believe they’ve already won fairly, however narrowly, any procedure that threatens that outcome—including recounting or revoting—will be seen by them as an attempt to steal the presidency,” Raspberry wrote. Therefore, “the best I can hope for is that Bush’s narrow vote lead will withstand both the overseas ballots and whatever additional votes Gore picks up in the recount.”

Raspberry’s piece made a type of sense. But if that is the voice of our key press corps “liberals,” do we really have to ask ourselves why today’s Dem will sometimes show caution?

ANOTHER OUTSPOKEN LIBERAL: And then, of course, there’s Richard Cohen, another of the Post’s fiery “liberals.” Last Thursday, he offered more of the puzzling work that has become his great trademark. Throughout his column, Cohen implied that Donald Rumsfeld gilded the lily about WMDs. But at the end, he drew this weird conclusion:

COHEN: Now elements of the Bush administration, particularly within the Pentagon, are rattling their sabers in the direction of Iran, making some of the same arguments they made about Iraq: links to terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, etc. Given what has happened in Iraq, should they be believed?

The answer is yes. But asking whether the Bush administration should be believed about Iran is different from asking whether it will be believed. The question, after all, is not whether the U.S. intelligence agencies are competent but to what uses the intelligence has been put. If, as it seems, information goes into the Pentagon at one end and comes out the other with a political spin, then we are right to wonder about ulterior motives.

“The answer is yes,” Cohen says. “[T]he Bush administration should be believed about Iran.” But in the very same paragraph, he says the administration’s findings will almost surely be dripping with spin. Many readers wrote to complain about the absurdity of this column. But Richard Cohen is a Post “liberal.” There’s no one quite like them on earth.

4.1A.2 Voting or Partisan Preferences of Media Editors, Publishers, Owners - and its impact on actual votes cast

Louis Boccardi, former CEO of Associated Press, 2003 [Brock, page 90] 

"Most media are owned by Republican conservatives."

Eric Boehlert (Salon.com, Oct 2004)

As the mountain of newspaper endorsements pile up in favor of Sen. John Kerry, including dozens from dailies that backed Bush in 2000, the Bush/Cheney campaign is dismissing the trend as no big deal. "Look, the Republican candidate will never win the contest for editorial board endorsements. The major dailies across the country tend to skew liberal," RNC chairman Ed Gillespie told CNN last week. That spin comes straight out of the GOP handbook that insists the mainstream press tilts to the left, so of course newspapers love Democrats come Election Day.

Only problem is, it's not accurate. In fact, the complete opposite is true. Since 1940 when industry trade magazine Editor & Publisher began tracking newspapers during presidential elections, only two Democratic candidates -- Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and Bill Clinton in 1992 -- have ever won more endorsements than their Republican opponent. That's because newspaper publishers, who usually sign off on endorsements, tend to vote Republican (like lots of senior corporate executives), which means GOP candidates pick up more endorsements. A lot more [bold text is eRiposte emphasis]. In 1984, President Reagan landed roughly twice as many endorsements as Democrat Walter Mondale in the president's easy reelection win. And in 1996, despite his weak showing at the polls, 179 daily newspapers endorsed Republican Bob Dole, which easily outpaced the Democrats' tally by nearly a 2-to-1 margin.

In 2000, the overwhelming trend toward Republicans continued [eRiposte: see footnote for comments on another study]. According to estimates, candidate Bush enjoyed a huge newspaper advantage, picking up nearly 100 more daily endorsements than Gore. On the eve of the election four years ago, Editor & Publisher spelled out the newspaper love affair with Bush in a Nov. 6 article: "The nation's newspaper editors and publishers strongly believe the Texas governor will beat Al Gore in Tuesday's election for president. By a wide margin, they plan to vote for him themselves. And, to complete this Republican trifecta, newspapers endorsed Bush by about 2-to-1 nationally."

E&P's results come from industry-wide surveys it conducted among 800 top newspaper executives one week before the election. Asked how they were going to vote in 2000, 59 percent of newspaper publishers signaled they were voting for Bush, compared to just 20 percent for Gore. And even among newsroom editors, Bush won support among 33 percent, compared to just to 24 percent for Gore.

As E&P noted in 2000, "One has to wonder: whatever happened to the so-called 'liberal press'?" The better question for the Bush/Cheney team is, why have all those GOP publishers abandoned the president this time around?

[eRiposte Footnote: In their 2004 paper titled "The Political Orientation of Newspaper Endorsements in U.S. Elections, 1940-2002," S. Ansolabehere, R. Lessem and J. M. Snyder, claim that "by the 1970s, the Republican advantage in endorsements had vanished. Newspapers in the 1970s and 1980s split their endorsements between the parties evenly. In the 1990s, newspapers exhibited a slight tendency toward Democrats, endorsing Democratic candidates about 10 percent more often than Republicans." However, this claim is quite misleading because their entire sample size was just 65 newspapers (or 67 - their paper has both numbers) - and this appears to be clearly smaller than E&P's sample size. Moreover, data from 1940 was obtained only on 15 newspapers and for the remaining (50 or 52) papers, even though the lowest starting year was 1970, most of the data was from 1994-2002! So, their conclusions are highly questionable when applied to the above time period or country as a whole.] 

[NOTE: A media concentration chart as of Dec. 20, 2001 is available here; another media ownership summary page is here]

Joe Conason has also commented on this issue in Salon.com:

So when Lichter tells Kelly that journalists can't help reflecting bias in their work, he might as well be talking about himself. There is nothing "scientific" about his research into bias, since all of his organization's judgments about favorable or unfavorable coverage on newscasts are inevitably subjective. At an even more basic level of dishonesty, it's ridiculous to assume that newspapers or newscasts reflect the supposed Democratic bias of reporters, the lowest-ranking figures in the media. Why wouldn't they instead reflect the bias of editors, publishers, directors and management, all of which tend to be Republican and conservative? Editor & Publisher polled the nation's newspaper executives just before the 2000 election, and found an overwhelming preference for George W. Bush.

We also know that Jack Welch, former chief of NBC (and GE) is an ardent Republican. So was Larry Tisch when he owned CBS. So are Richard Parsons and Steve Case of CNN (and Time Warner AOL). Michael Eisner (Disney ABC) gave to Bill Bradley and Al Gore, but he gave more to Bush and McCain -- and he supported Rick Lazio for the Senate against Hillary Clinton. Rupert Murdoch and John Malone are big Republican supporters of the Cato Institute. So why isn't anybody complaining about the "conservative bias" of media executives?

Brock (page 90) quotes Kathleen Hall Jamison (NOTE: I don't particularly find her to be credible in general considering how woeful FactCheck.org was in the 2004 campaign (and since then), but here she is commenting on other studies - not her own, and the Ansolabehere et al. paper cited above suggests that newspaper endorsements generally have a very slight positive effect):

According to Jamieson, "Unrecognized [in the media bias debate] are the number of studies that suggest that endorsements affect the favorable coverage of the candidate who receives the paper's nod - in three different studies, it was the ideological disposition of the editors and publishers that predicted bias...." [eRiposte emphasis] As for why reporters' personal political views are not reflected in their coverage, she wrote, "One might hypothesize instead that reporters respond to cues of those who pay their salaries and mask their own ideological dispositions."

This is not to say that just because a candidate gets endorsements, that the news coverage that candidate gets will be uniformly good. Obviously not. The point is that there are many factors that affect the news coverage, endorsements is ONE among the many and it is certainly more important than journalist ideology. But the fact of the matter is that "liberal" journalist ideology has been proven time and again to not positively skew their coverage towards Democrats - if anything the opposite has been true for quite some time.

Alterman (pages 21-22) covers this aspect further, discussing the pressures that everyday reporters and journalists face from their bosses:

When it comes to news content, the journalists are often the low people on the totem poll [sic]. They are "labor," or if they are lucky, "talent." They are not "management." They do not get to decide by themselves how a story should be cast. As Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten put it...

[....] Editors are rock. Writers are those gaily colored wussy plastic paper clips. In short, I was given a choice: I could see the lucent wisdom of my editors' point of view and alter the column as directed, or I could elect to write a different column altogether, or (in an organization this large and diverse, there are always a multitude of options) I could be escorted to the front door by Security.¹⁸

Alterman then talks about what has happened to mainstream media due to media consolidation via the formation of large conglomerates, where a media outlet is just one arm of the conglomerate. This not only reduces the diversity of viewpoints, but also adds tremendous pressures about what a given media outlet can cover without a conflict of interest. He quotes Michael Kinsley (page 23), the founding editor of Slate.com, which at the time was owned by Microsoft: 

"Slate will never give Microsoft the skeptical scrutiny it requires as a powerful institution in American society - any more than Time will sufficiently scrutinize Time Warner..."

Alterman (page 24) goes on to point out that:

What has changed is the scale of these pressures, given the size and the scope of the new media conglomerates, and the willingness of news executives [eRiposte note: Remember, these tend to be more Republican/conservative] to interfere with the news-gathering process up and down the line. One-third of the local TV news directors surveyed by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism in 2000 indicated that they had been pressured to avoid negative stories about advertisers, or to do positive ones.²⁵ Again, by the time you get to actual pressure on an editor or writer, a great many steps have already been taken. A 2000 Pew Research Center study found that more than 40 percent of journalists felt a need to self-censor their work, either by avoiding certain stories or softening the ones they wrote, to benefit the interests of the organizations for which they work.²⁶ As the editors of the Columbia Journalism Review put it: "The truth about self-censorship is that it is widespread, as common in newsrooms as deadline pressure, a virus that eats away at the journalistic mission."²⁷ And it doesn't leave much room for liberalism.

Conservative critics of the [so-called liberal media] SCLM often neglect not only the power of owners and advertisers, but also the profit motive to determine the content of the news.

Here's an explicit, recent, appalling case highlighted by Brad Friedman (BradBlog) - a textbook example of the so-called "liberal" media's misbehavior which on the face of it exudes a stench, not of liberal bias, but of the opposite:

The Washington Post, which recently donated $100,000 to President Bush's inaugural, was granted rare high-level access yesterday in the form of a coveted presidential interview. A spokesman insisted there was no connection, but one grizzled media observer, who requested anonymity so he could still submit op-eds to the paper, said: "Let's face it, the whole thing reeks."

The above was not actually written by us, but by The Post's Howard Kurtz last week in a WaPo article headlined "Influence Being Peddled!"

His piece, which followed-up a front-page article the previous day headlined "Big-Money Contributors Line Up for Inauguration" postulates how terrible it might look "if some blogger" led one of their items with just such a charge. So, Howard, consider it done.

[ed. Note: We've linked the MSNBC version of the original WaPo article above. It has a slightly different headline than the one in WaPo, but does not require a free sign-up to read. The Kurtz response in WaPo is unfortunately not posted on the MSNBC site.]

In regard to the Post's original page-one condemnation (explanation? apology? justification?) of the corporate glad-handing to the Bush Administration, which they themselves have done as well, Kurtz quotes from the pieces list of "well-heeled, favor-seeking supporters", and then says...

And there was this: "Practically all the major donors have benefited from Bush administration policies."

Oh, and by the way: The Washington Post Co. forked over $100,000.

So what the hell exactly does The Washington Post thinks it's doing by contributing $100,000 to the Bush/Cheney inauguration?!

Kurtz admits "the appearance is awful", but to his credit, he tried to get some answers...

Not to worry, the company has an explanation: "We make clear to one and all that all we want is tickets to the balls for our major corporate advertisers," Post Co. Vice President Patrick Butler, who is quoted in the piece, told me.
...
Courting advertisers may be the motivation, but the appearance is awful. After all, the practice is deemed unsavory enough to warrant a Page 1 piece in The Post Co.'s newspaper.

The company has business interests that are affected by administration policies. It owns a bunch of television stations that have FCC licenses, for example. So are we being asked to believe that the Bush administration will not notice that The Washington Post Co. was neighborly enough to cough up 100K for the inaugural bashes? We -- meaning journalists who work in the newsroom -- don't believe that other corporations and trade associations give such contributions without expecting anything in return. In fact, we write about this sort of thing all the time, including yesterday.

And our corporate parent is now playing the same game.

So we appreciate, in this case, his willingness to call his corporate bosses on the carpet, but it hardly gets WaPo off the hook for this appalling business practice.

[NOTE: Pro-corporate bias is examined further in Sec. 4.2]

Steve Kangas has also explored media control and corporate influence on his website. Here is an extract:

The fact is that conservatives have powerful friends in the media: the corporations that own them, and the corporations that pay for their advertising. These giant firms have been increasingly successful in bending the media's message to suit their self-interests, which include a conservative and pro-corporate agenda. Studies show that the media are eerily silent on the issues most important to workers, consumers and other citizens adversely affected by corporate behavior. Conservatives respond to these charges with (old) polls showing that most journalists are personally liberal, but these polls are outdated. New polls show the majority of journalists are centrists. And of those who are not centrists, there are more conservatives than liberals on economic issues. We'll explore more of this question below.

The Media Monopoly

Easily the most famous book on media trends in the last 15 years is Ben Bagdikian's 1983 book, The Media Monopoly. In it, he predicted that deregulation under President Reagan would allow media ownership to concentrate in fewer and fewer corporate hands. This, in turn, would result in a more pro-corporate media. Ridiculed as "alarmist" when it first came out, it has since been praised as a classic for the accuracy of its predictions. "I derive no pleasure from having been correct," writes the former dean of American journalism in his most recent edition. (3)

To be specific, the number one trend within the media today is that they are rapidly being monopolized by large corporations. Technically, the term "monopoly" is incorrect when describing today's media -- what we actually have is a shrinking media oligopoly. Most scholars use the term "media monopoly" only because that's the direction the media are headed. This essay will also use the term "media monopoly" to denote the direction, rather than the current status, of the media.

The dangers of a media monopoly

Before reviewing the statistical evidence of the media monopoly, which is undisputed even by the media themselves, we should make certain of its dangers.

The incentives for buying media organizations have long been obvious to Wall Street, which has seen vicious competition break out to capture the remaining media markets. These incentives were articulated in 1986 by Christopher Shaw, a Wall Street expert who has handled over 120 media mergers. Shaw told investors that media buy-outs would give them two things: "profitability" and "influence." (4)

There is nothing inherently wrong with either profitability or influence, of course -- it's just that in a monopoly, they would be abused. Consider the abuse of profits. All the usual market failures would be present in a media monopoly: the captive market, the rise in prices, the drop in quality, and the exploitation of consumers.

But significantly more troubling is the monopolization of influence. If one person controls all information, there are no opposing viewpoints so essential to keeping public and scientific debate honest. We profoundly condemn the monopoly of information by the state, as exemplified by Joseph Goebbels' "Ministry of Propaganda and Enlightenment." But this danger is no less evident if a single business takes over the control of all information in society. Then all information would come from a corporate point of view, silencing the voices of workers, consumers and other citizens who are affected by corporate behavior. Democracy is based on the assumption that opposing viewpoints can be heard. If corporations could somehow eliminate or control populist debate, then we will not have a true democracy.

The potential for abuse by corporate owners is obvious. Just one example was General Electric's earlier buyout of NBC News. General Electric is the 10th largest company in the United States. It is a major Defense contractor and an international player on the world market. It is sensitive to the needs of its clients, who come from all sectors of the economy. It is also a fact that GE has suffered many a scandal throughout its history. During the Great Depression, it cut the life of its light bulbs by one-third to drive up profits. It was convicted of an illegal agreement with a German arms company during World War II. It has been convicted of fraud, fixing bids, conspiracy and tax evasion. (5) In all these cases, control of a major media outlet would have given it undue influence, whether in the market or before Congress or the courts.

Furthermore, GE has played an active role in conservative politics. Shortly after the company acquired NBC, a GE executive announced that NBC should start a political action committee to contribute money to strengthen the company's influence in Washington. Failure to cooperate, the executive said, would raise questions about the employees' "dedication to the company." (6) Later the President of NBC News clarified that its news employees would be exempt from contributing, but this hardly removes the larger conflict of interest.

It should not be surprising that these parent companies, like most big businesses and all Defense contractors, are extremely conservative. They have agendas: they desire lower taxes, fewer lawsuits from the public, fewer environmental restraints, better public relations (a euphemism for less public exposure to scandals), higher profits and more effective lobbying power in Washington. Controlling public opinion would give them all these things. Ironically, it would not be necessary for a single winner to emerge from the take-over wars. Shaw maintains that by the year 2000, all U.S. media will be in the hands of six giant corporations. Most business analysts agree with him. (7) One can safely assume that they will all have the same business and political agenda.

The statistical evidence of a media monopoly

That said, let's review the evidence of a media monopoly. Ownership of all forms of media (newspapers, magazines, radio shows, network television, cable, journals, books, movies, videos and cassettes) are quickly being consolidated under a few corporations. In all, the number of dominant corporations who control any form of media has shrunk from 46 in 1981 to exactly half in 1992: 23. At the end of World War II, 80 percent of all newspapers were privately owned. Today, that figure is its exact opposite: 80 percent of all newspapers are owned by corporate chains. From 1960 to today, the number of corporations which own newspapers fell from 27 to 14. (Gannett Company, which publishes USA Today, is the largest, with 87 other daily newspapers.) From 1981 to 1988, the number of corporations who owned magazines fell from 20 to a mere three. Television news is dominated by four major networks, who control up to three-fourths of the audience share. (8)

One of the most obvious signs of this trend is that cities are becoming "one-newspaper towns." One of the persons most responsible for buying out competing newspapers is Rupert Murdoch, who says that his worldwide strategy is acquisition and takeovers. (9) Another is Allen Neuharth, chairman of Gannett Company, who told a group of Wall Street investors that "No Gannett newspaper has any direct competition." (10)

Since the 1992 edition of The Media Monopoly, media mergers of unprecedented scale have continued unabated -- but there's no discussion of the dangers involved, or the controversy it should represent. Disney has since bought ABC, Westinghouse has bought CBS, and Time-Warner has bought Turner Broadcasting System. Congress cleared out the remaining obstacles for still more media mergers by passing the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Headlines in the media blared about the bill's attempt to censor pornography on the Internet, but otherwise remained completely silent about its deregulation of anti-trust laws for the media. For this bit of censorship, the Telecom Act was voted the number one censored story of 1995 by Project Censored.

The cable industry offers a perfect snapshot of media monopolization and all its dangers. After the cable television industry was deregulated in 1984, prices soared, quality of programming plummeted, and cable systems began selling their channels in indivisible blocs that prevented subscribers from voting with their dollars. From 1986 to 1990, the cost of basic service rose 56 percent -- twice the rate of inflation. (11) The problem? Growing monopolization, at several levels. There are now 11,000 cable systems across the nation, almost all of them exercising a local monopoly over their municipal region. They in turn are controlled by a handful of national companies. By far the most dominant is the phenomenally expanding TCI, which is a gatekeeper over national programming. Its owner, John Malone, owns all or part of 25 national or regional cable channels, including Turner Broadcasting. (12) Because there is little or no competition, cable programmers search for the cheapest shows to produce. Quality of programming has sunk to network TV levels. It seems that each year, Congress passes yet another cable deregulation bill. Every single one has been touted to "open competition" and "benefit the consumer." But the concentration of power in the cable industry keeps getting worse, not better.

Another source of pro-corporate bias: advertising

Owning and monopolizing the media is only one way that corporations introduce a pro-corporate bias into the media. An equally pervasive one is advertising.

Most media depend on the sale of corporate advertisements to stay alive. Without advertisements, a medium would have to charge its customers a higher up-front price for its product. But that would kill its circulation, since competitors would offer up-front prices that were considerably lower or even free. Of course, there's no such thing as a free lunch. The consumer actually pays a higher price for the advertiser's products, which then go to the media.

Advertising has been criticized on many grounds: it is inefficient, wastes time and resources, is terribly unpleasant, stifles free market competition, helps sustains long-term advantages to giant corporations, and makes people buy products for psychological reasons instead of economic ones like cost, quality and demand. Entire essays could be written on each of these shortcomings, but what we will address is how advertising injects a pro-corporate bias into the media.

The media generally cannot run stories that offend corporations, because sponsors will threaten to pull their advertising dollars. In 1980, the liberal staff at Mother Jones debated over whether or not to publish a series of articles linking cigarettes to cancer. The editors knew that the tobacco industry would punish them by canceling their lucrative advertising contracts, which the young, struggling magazine desperately needed. Mother Jones stuck to its principles and printed the articles anyway; and, just as expected, the tobacco companies angrily pulled their ads.

And whereas a parent corporation like GE has a particular set of interests that NBC would never report against, advertisers have general interests that reporters would never tilt against either. A publisher never knows who the next advertiser might be; therefore it's good policy not to write offensive things about any corporation, or even corporate culture in general. No news organization could attract advertisers if it persistently attacked the corporate agenda.

Evidence of pro-corporate bias in the media

...Ben Bagdikian writes that owners let the editors operate freely until a story arises that affects the company's interest. Then one of two forms of influence will be exerted. It may be a direct order, as when the Chairman of General Electric called the President of NBC News after the 1987 stock market crash and told him not to use words in their reporting that would adversely affect GE stock. (13) (The NBC News president claimed he did not pass on the order.)

Or it may be an unspoken agreement. Editors and writers know what their employer's interests are, and they protect them without being told. Why? Either to demonstrate their dedication to the company, thus protecting their future promotions, or simply because they fear being fired. Unfortunately, it is a frequent practice for owners to fire journalists who, knowingly or not, write against their particular interests. Just one of many examples is the owner of the Dallas Morning News, who fired Earl Golz for writing a story about an imminent bank failure that outraged the owners of the Abilene National Bank. Golz' story proved true -- the bank crashed a few weeks later -- but Golz' was not rehired. (14) To be sure, other journalists witnessing his fate would practice self-censorship whenever it came to protecting their owner's interests.

Whether owners interfere explicitly or implicitly in the newsroom, evidence of it continually surfaces. Here are just a few examples:

• During the debate on health care reform, the New York Times ran stories persistently in favor of managed competition, a program which would have been profitable to major health care corporations. Other proposals for reform, like the Canadian single-payer program, were criticized or ignored. Reason: four members of the Times board of directors are also directors of major insurance companies, and two are directors of pharmaceutical companies. (15)

• Victor Neufeld, the executive producer of ABC's top-rated news show 20/20, repeatedly rejected several promising stories on nuclear power hazards. Reason: His wife is a prominent spokesman for the nuclear and chemical industries. (16)

• Walter Annenberg, owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer, used his paper to attack a candidate who opposed action that would have benefited the stockholders of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Reason: he was the single largest stockholder. (17)

• Rupert Murdoch's Post endorsed President Carter in the crucial New York Presidential primary, contributing to his victory. Reason: two days earlier, Murdoch had lunch with Carter, convincing him to lean on the Export-Import Bank of the United States to give him a taxpayer-subsidized loan of $290 million. The bank had previously rejected the loan. (18)

• A four-month study by FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting) analyzed how the New York Times and Washington Post covered NAFTA. Of the experts quoted in their articles, pro-NAFTA outnumbered anti-NAFTA sources by three to one. Not a single labor union representative was quoted. Reason: these newspapers' boards of directors are drawn from big business. (19)

• Journalist Elizabeth Whelan asked ten major women's magazines to run a series of articles on the rise of smoking-related diseases in women; all ten magazines refused. Reason: "I frequently wrote on health topics for women's magazines," says Whelan, "and have been told repeatedly by editors to stay away from the subject of tobacco." (20)

The above stories are anecdotal, but they show specifically how editors and advertisers interfere with the objectivity of the media. 

Also read Kangas' interesting piece titled "ABC and the Rise of Rush Limbaugh". Here is the introduction:

The following brief history of ABC offers a perfect snapshot of everything that has gone wrong with the media. This remarkable story includes ABC's takeover by a conservative parent corporation, the demise of the Fairness Doctrine, the rightward shift of the evening news, the rise of conservative talk radio, and the cozy relationship between a state and a press that are supposed to be separate.

4.1A.3 When Political Bias Exists and is Blatant, it's from the "journalists" on the Right

Let's go back to Brock (pages 136-138):

Unlike the conservatives, the liberals are unmoored to any cohesive political movement, and they have no symbiotic relationship with politicians. No liberal columns in wide syndication are "sponsored" by partisan think tanks or subsidized by opinion magazines. The liberals either make it in the market or they don't, while the so-called free marketers are on the dole. Nor are the liberal writers known to attend weekly closed-door strategy meetings to forward the agenda of the Democratic party. They are truly independent columnists and, therefore, a much less potent fighting force when going up against the right wing, which plays a different role in the media wars.

The spectrum of opinion is itself out of balance. Ideologically, left-wing voices that were the true polar opposites of those of the right wing - anti-capitalist, anticorporate, populist, or pacifist - long ago had been all but expunged from the nation's editorial pages as the print media became increasingly corporatized and reliant on advertising.²⁴

...

Liberal advocacy is further tempered by the reality that counterintuitive thinking and criticizing one's own political bedfellows are valued and even celebrated in liberal journalistic circles. By contrast, independence is looked on as disloyalty in the conservative media, which ironically prizes "political correctness." As The American Prospect's Michael Tomasky has noted, "[Liberals] bend over backwards to 'prove' their 'independence.'" 

Brock is of course, extraordinarily kind to the so-called "liberal" journalists because independence is not the same as "no interest in actually covering the FACTS". To understand the reality, we'll have to read Bob Somerby.

Somerby has highlighted (below) how the so-called "liberal" opinion columnists at mainstream media outlets are themselves so timid and unwilling to actually stand up for the truth (facts), while their ideological opposites leave no stone unturned in their quest to lie to their readers on a daily basis, acting as a covert or overt propaganda arm of the GOP:

A bit of background: In late November 2002, we marveled at a puzzling piece by the Washington Monthly’s Nick Confessore (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 11/29/02). Confessore, a fiery liberal, was analyzing a fairly obvious fact. Paul Krugman had become a famous pundit by trashing the Bush Admin’s lying, Confessore said. But for some strange reason, Confessore noted, mainstream reporters and center-left pundits hadn’t chosen to follow Krugman’s lead. The Monthly scribe was puzzled by this. “What makes Krugman interesting, in short, is not just why he writes what he writes. It’s why nobody else does,” the scribe wrote.

Confessore had noted an important fact—the rest of the press corps’ reporters and pundits had left Krugman twisting in the wind. The comedy came when the Monthly scribe tried to explain this situation. Why had others left Krugman hanging? First, Confessore politely explained the failure of mainstream reporters to examine the “facade of lies” surrounding the Bush budget plans:

CONFESSORE (12/02): [I]f dismantling the facade of lies around, say, Bush’s tax cut is so easy to do—and makes you the most talked-about newspaper writer in the country—why don’t any other reporters or columnists do it themselves? Because doing so would violate some of the informal, but strict, rules under which Washington journalists operate. Reporters usually don’t call a spade a spade, unless the lie is small or something personal. When it comes to big policy disagreements, most reporters prefer a he-said, she-said approach—and any policy with a white paper or press release behind it is presumed to be plausible and sincere, no matter how farfetched or deceptive it may be.

Politely, Confessore re-typed a tired old line; reporters weren’t “dismantling the facade of lies” because to do so would “violate some of the strict rules under which journalists operate!” In short, reporters weren’t reporting the facade of lies because they were far too professional! And don’t worry—Confessore’s clowning was just getting started. Having praised reporters for their inaction, the bright young writer politely explained why pundits weren’t echoing Krugman:

CONFESSORE (continuing directly): Similarly, among pundits of the broad center-left, it’s considered gauche to criticize the right too persistently, no matter the merits of one’s argument. The only worse sin is to defend a politician too persistently; then you become not a bore, but a disgrace to the profession and its independence—even if you’re correct. Thus, in Washington circles, liberal Times columnist Bob Herbert is written off as a predictable hack, while The New York Observer's Joe Conason, who vigorously defended the Clintons during the now-defunct Whitewater affair, is derided as shrill and embarrassing. Obviously, conservative columnists and pundits aren't quite as averse to being persistent or shrill. But center-left journalists do not, to put it mildly, take their cues about what's acceptable practice from conservative pundits.

Confessore was describing great moral cowardice—but he almost made it sound heroic. Why were center-left pundits so quiet? Easy! Such pundits “do not, to put it mildly, take their cues about what's acceptable practice from conservative pundits!” It couldn’t be that these pundits were vast moral cowards; instead, Confessore said that they were simply refusing to act like a bunch of conservative hacks! No, this didn’t make any sense. But as he continued, Confessore kept making it sound like the cowardice of his center-left colleagues was a badge of professional honor:

CONFESSORE (continuing directly): That's because liberal journalists and conservative journalists have different value systems. Most liberal pundits—E.J. Dionne, Ronald Brownstein, or Maureen Dowd—came up through the newsroom ranks, a culture that demands shows of intellectual independence from politicians, especially Democrats. Many conservative pundits, on the other hand—Safire, Tony Blankley, or Peggy Noonan—come straight from political careers, a culture that encourages intellectual fealty and indulges one-sidedness. Krugman is not a journalist by training, and he's never held appointive or elective office. But like conservative pundits, he doesn't feel bound by the niceties that professional reporters do. Hence the discomfort with Krugman's methods among center-left journalists.

Why were center-left pundits so quiet in the face of Bush’s “facade of lies?” Why were they trashing Krugman (and Herbert; and Conason) at their fancy cocktail parties? Could it be that they were moral cowards? Could it be that they just didn’t care about the policies Bush was pimping through that “facade of lies?” No, it couldn’t be any of that—so Confessore found nobler motives! According to Confessore, liberal pundits were staying silent due to their “value systems;” they had “c[o]me up through the newsroom ranks, a culture that demands shows of intellectual independence from politicians!” According to Confessore’s laughable presentation, if Dionne, Dowd or Brownstein had discussed that “facade of lies,” that would have meant they were being “one-sided.” Why weren’t these pundits following Krugman? Easy! They “felt bound by the niceties” of their profession. Krugman, a non-journalist, didn’t.

Confessore’s analysis was utterly laughable—an insult to the intelligence of Monthly readers. According to Confessore himself, Bush was involved in “a facade of lies”—but he made it sound like his “center-left” colleagues were being Top Pros when they refused to pursue that story! They were following their high-minded “value systems.” They were refusing to “violate the strict rules under which Washington journalists operate.” They were showing “cultural independence from politicians” and refusing to be “one-sided.” And they were refusing to “take their cues about acceptable practice from conservative pundits”—from the very conservative pundits Monthly readers correctly dislike. By the time Confessore got done, he had almost transformed his Silent Colleagues into Heroes of Modern Press Culture. What a stud! He praised Paul Krugman for dismantling Bush’s lies. And he praised the rest of his cohort because they hadn’t dismantled them!

Yes, Confessore made a set of silly excuses for the failures of the mainstream press—and in the culture of the mainstream press, such fawning is always rewarded.

Brock also discusses how leftist views are rarely, if ever, sanctioned or invited on a regular basis on conservative media outlets, whereas even so-called liberal outlets like Slate, The New Republic, Salon.com, etc., make it a point to feature conservative options on their sites.  

4.1B.1 Media coverage of Democrats and Republicans

4.1B.1.1 How the "mainstream" (so-called "liberal") media covered Bill and Hillary Clinton

Very little needs to be said on this considering that most reasonable people have acknowledged that the media was not just brutal on the Clintons, but routinely fabricated stories about them during the 1990s, unambiguously proving that the media was not "liberally biased" during the Clinton years. Sean Wilentz captured some of the media admissions in his 2003 Salon.com piece (extract below, bold text is my emphasis). He also pointed out how the media got no punishment and no retribution for their wide-ranging anti-Clinton malpractice in those years and some of the fraudsters on the Right actually got promoted and got cushy jobs in the Bush administration, instead:

Five years ago, I testified before Congress that history would harshly judge the unconstitutional impeachment drive against President Clinton. My position was fairly mainstream among American historians. By the time I testified, nearly 500 had signed a letter I helped to write with the distinguished scholars Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and C. Vann Woodward, deploring the impeachment on historical and constitutional grounds. Soon thereafter, a group of more than 400 leading legal scholars, including Cass Sunstein and Laurence Tribe, issued a similar statement.

Not surprisingly, Republicans lambasted both the historians' letter and my testimony, as did journalists and pundits playing amateur historians inside the right-wing media echo chamber. A group of 90 writers -- only three of them historians, but with a heavy contingent from the right-wing think tanks plus partisan ideologues from the Reagan and first Bush administrations, such as C. Boyden Gray -- composed a counter-statement attacking the historians. But a wide range of editorial writers and columnists in the so-called "liberal media" also denounced the historians for being "gratuitous" "condescending" and "partisan."

The historians' verdict was clear: The impeachment drive against President Clinton lacked constitutional and political legitimacy. The journalists' opinion was equally clear: The impeachment was legitimate, and the historians were really a fusty collection of liberal elitists who had no business sticking their noses into public affairs.

Now an extraordinary thing has happened. Journalists from across the political spectrum are finally acknowledging that impeachment was mostly a partisan crusade on trumped-up charges to bring down a popular president. "From the viewpoint of history," the conservative Andrew Sullivan wrote recently in the New York Observer, "it's going to seem deranged." They have conceded that numerous allegations noisily leveled against Clinton and repeated endlessly in the news media of which they are a part have turned out to be bogus.

The occasion for this sea change in conventional wisdom is the publication of Sidney Blumenthal's "The Clinton Wars" and the response to it.
...
Even as journalists admit that Blumenthal has the goods to prove what a right-wing circus impeachment really was, they dismiss his revelations as score-settling, and worse -- as "history." The spectacle of the media, having gotten the story wrong in the first place, dismissing the book that gets it right is stunning, even to someone who lived through the actual impeachment.

Meanwhile, the most respectful reviews have come from historians -- Robert Dallek in the New York Times Book Review and David Greenberg in the Washington Monthly. Though not uncritical, both warmly praised the book's reconstruction of the historical record and called it the place to start in order to understand the Clinton presidency. Once again, the historians get the story right.

Journalists have attacked Blumenthal, a controversial figure in Washington press circles, for writing a memoir they deem a courtier's brief -- too one-sided, partisan and uncritical of Clinton. History is of less interest to these journalists than Blumenthal's personality, his devotion to the Clintons, and various trivial matters of great import to the news media, like whether "Hardball" host and Clinton-hater Chris Matthews really did lobby for the job as Clinton's press secretary.

Yet in working up their ad hominem cases against Blumenthal, even his journalist critics concede that the book's exposure of the partisan campaign against Clinton that culminated in the impeachment is accurate and persuasive.

A sampling:

Andrew Sullivan in the New York Observer: "The real value of this book is in its portrait of Mr. Clinton's foes ... .[T]he account Mr. Blumenthal gives of the haplessness and priggishness of Kenneth Starr is riveting stuff. The testimony of Sam Dash, Mr. Starr's ethics advisor, is particularly damning. The insane attempt to actually bring down a President over perjury in a civil suit has not yet been more vividly evoked."

Janet Maslin in the New York Times: "Certainly "The Clinton Wars" can point to baseless, breathless news coverage as a catalyst to the Kafkaesque."

Lev Grossman in Time: "Blumenthal's abiding theme is that Clinton's presidency was the victim of a right-wing political cabal that manipulated the media and the legal system to make mountains out of dunghills, and he makes a surprisingly convincing case by doggedly following countless news stories and allegations to their origins in tainted, planted, unfounded, retracted, distorted, misleading and plain nonexistent evidence."

Bill Bell in the New York Daily News: "No question, the Clintons were dogged by some extremely malignant, ignorant and hypocritical extremists, funded by a few rich conservatives ... .Beyond the settling of grudges and slights, though, is a bigger, dramatic story -- of the impeachment itself -- and Blumenthal's riveting account is sharp, spare and focused. It pulses with the energy of clashing ideologies and strategies and is propelled by the force of the legal, political and reputational stakes involved. It sets the standard for subsequent reports, including the one his Oval Office boss is writing."

Joseph Lelyveld in the New York Review of Books: "Blumenthal holds your attention when he pieces together the various components of what Mrs. Clinton called a "vast right-wing conspiracy," from Little Rock enemies and haters to the lawyers of the Federalist Society who worked their connections to the Office of the Independent Counsel to shift its focus from real estate to sex ... .Disgraceful things did happen. On more than one occasion, an Internet gossip columnist did set the agenda for mainstream news organizations. Stories without sources did gain instant currency. Some were fabricated."

But the more disturbing point is this: Impeachment isn't just "history." Some of the key "right-wing fanatics" who peddled "tainted, planted, unfounded, retracted, distorted, misleading and plain nonexistent evidence" that led to a "Kafkaesque" political "show trial" have more power than ever in politics and the media -- and have, it seems, actually benefited, personally and politically, from their attacks on the Constitution. The current corrected revised accounts by journalists leave the misimpression that only a few marginal right-wing zanies of passing importance were involved in the illegitimate effort to bring Clinton down. As the now uncontested facts around impeachment show, that is hardly the case.

Four examples:

One of the chief members of the "cabal of right-wing fanatics" was Theodore Olson, who, as counsel to the rabidly right-wing American Spectator, oversaw the notorious Arkansas Project that spread some of the most vicious lies about Clinton. (Olson was also one of the supposedly impartial "experts" who signed the petition attacking the historians in 1998.) In testimony before the Senate, Olson denied any involvement in the Project -- but that testimony was later fully documented as false. Yet Olson is now solicitor general of the United States, appointed by President Bush and approved by the Senate during the confusion that accompanied Sen. Jim Jeffords' defection to the Democrats in 2001. Among Olson's current tasks is selecting hard-right nominees for the federal judiciary, with whom the Bush administration is now trying to pack the courts. Many of those nominees are, like Olson, closely connected with the radical activist circles within the Federalist Society, the right-wing lawyers' group that also produced several of the so-called "elves" who plotted Clinton's downfall.

Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas did more than any House Republican to coerce his colleagues into supporting impeachment. DeLay privately threatened moderate Republicans who would not go along, using right-wing fundraisers and 60 designated whips to do his dirty work for him. "Coming out of the election," Republican congressman Peter King later said, "I didn't hear anyone discuss impeachment. It was over. Then DeLay took over." One by one, the moderates caved in to what DeLay and his minions were calling "the Campaign." At the time, DeLay was the House majority whip. Since then he has been promoted for his "deranged" attack on the Constitution by being named House majority leader.

In 1998, Bret Kavanaugh was a conservative lawyer on the staff of Kenneth W. Starr's Office of Independent Counsel. He coauthored the salacious so-called Starr Report that became the basis for the illegitimate articles of impeachment -- and the basis for Starr's aggressive testimony to Congress, in violation of the Constitution, that led the office's chief ethics advisor, Samuel Dash, to quit in protest. Today, Bret Kavanaugh is deputy legal counsel at the Bush White House.

In 1995, Michael Chertoff was chief counsel for Sen. Alphonse D'Amato's Senate Whitewater Committee that churned endless baseless allegations against the Clintons. Since then, he has served as Attorney General John Ashcroft's assistant atop the Department of Justice's criminal division (and a leading force behind the authorship of the so-called PATRIOT Act) and been nominated by George W. Bush to the federal bench.

...

Those who unprofessionally suppressed crucial pieces of evidence -- including the independent Resolution Trust Corporation report that exonerated the Clintons over Whitewater as early as 1995 -- will bear a heavy burden.

Near the top of the list for condemnation will be the multinational media conglomerate run by Rupert Murdoch, including the Weekly Standard, the New York Post, and (in conjunction with Roger Ailes) Fox News. Even before the Lewinsky story broke, Murdoch's outlets remorselessly hyped malevolent stories about the Clintons -- from Whitewater to Travelgate -- even after they were proven to be false. In 1998 and 1999, their slanted coverage of the impeachment drama performed a singular disservice to the truth. They have never corrected their numerous false reports, let alone apologized for them. Yet the Murdoch empire is now flourishing. Thanks to Bush administration rulings, its control over an increasingly concentrated and centralized media is likely to grow.

Let us not forget how the New York Times (and the Washington Post as well), participated in the extensive fraud against the Clintons - and never apologized for it. 

Another note from Michael Tomasky in The American Prospect:

They do have the backing, most of the time, of some major editorial pages, although not nearly to the extent that conservative papers support the Republican Party. Again, the policy versus politics distinction: The New York Times and The Washington Post usually land on the Democrats' side on policy, but when it comes to politics, both papers habitually bend over backward to prove that they can be just as tough on Democrats as on Republicans. (They murdered Bill Clinton on Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky, and while the Times, at least, has been pretty tough on Bush in regard to Harken, both papers have issued repeated post–9-11 warnings to Democrats to play nice.) And, lastly, unlike the right, Democrats own no cable network. There is no place for them to dump their message and watch it travel out, more or less unfiltered, into the national bloodstream.

4.1B.1.2 How the "mainstream" (so-called "liberal") media covered Al Gore during Campaign/Election 2000

I have previously covered the New York Times' significant journalistic malpractice in their coverage of Al Gore. 

I have also provided a sample of the media-wide malpractice against Al Gore during Campaign 2000 - marked by fabrications, misquotations, misleading coverage, hatred and just pure B.S. in many cases. Take a look at it and you'll see how widespread the media's false thrashing of Gore was. 

You can even hear some of it from the mouths of the "journalists" themselves.

Bob Somerby in the Daily Howler:

WHY GOOD GUYS SLEPT (PART 2): On June 25, 1999, Howard Kurtz wrote a lengthy piece about the “harsh coverage and punditry” being directed at Candidate Gore. And, according to Josh Marshall’s later assessment, the press corps’ “disdain and contempt” for Gore were clear by this time (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 12/17/02). Indeed, by the time Kurtz wrote, it was QUITE clear that Gore was receiving odd coverage. Four months later, the press corps would display its “disdain and contempt” in a truly remarkable way.

On October 27, 1999, Gore and Bradley staged their first debate in a small venue at Dartmouth College. The session was broadcast live on CNN. The 300 journalists in attendance watched on large-screen TVs, penned up in a separate pressroom.

And in that room, the Washington press corps—your bulwark of democracy—displayed its astonishing lack of professionalism. What happened as Gore and Bradley debated? Howard Mortman, then of the Hotline, appeared on that publication’s cable show one week later. Mortman described the remarkable scene inside that Hanover hall.

How had the press corps acted during the debate? “The media groaned, howled and laughed almost every time Al Gore said something,” Mortman reported. “What happened with Bradley?” a panelist asked. “Stone silence. Really,” Mortman said. And Mortman—a staffer in the original Bush White House—was not alone in his report. Eric Pooley described a similar scene in the November 8 Time:

POOLEY: [Gore’s attempt to connect with the audience] was unmistakable—and even touching—but the 300 media types watching in the press room at Dartmouth were, to use the appropriate technical term, totally grossed out by it. Whenever Gore came on too strong, the room erupted in a collective jeer, like a gang of 15-year-old Heathers cutting down some hapless nerd.

Seven weeks after the Dartmouth debate, Salon’s Jake Tapper described the same conduct. Appearing on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, he replied to a question about “liberal bias:”

TAPPER: Well, I can tell you that the only media bias I have detected in terms of a group media bias was, at the first debate between Bill Bradley and Al Gore, there was hissing for Gore in the media room up at Dartmouth College. The reporters were hissing Gore, and that’s the only time I’ve ever heard the press room boo or hiss any candidate of any party at any event.

To state the obvious, the press had engaged in stunning misconduct. Given the way Gore would be trashed by the press for the rest of the election, every Democrat should be deeply disturbed to read about this remarkable event. (For our real-time treatment of this matter, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 12/14/99, with links to earlier reports.)

Clearly, the Dartmouth debate showed the startling growth of the press corps’ “disdain and contempt” for Gore. It also showed the “contempt” the corps has simple standards of professional conduct. But something else was on display in the aftermath of this event. Also displayed was the press corps’ reflexive secrecy about its own attitudes and conduct.

Dozens of major, well-known reporters were present in that jeering crowd. And Pooley was the only such scribe who described the press corps’ remarkable conduct. (He, alas, showed no real sign of knowing that the conduct was inappropriate.) By any normal standard, the press corps’ behavior this evening was news. But hundreds of journalists knew the rules. They knew they shouldn’t say a word about their own cohort’s strange conduct.

Bob Somerby has more, in the Daily Howler:

Take the first Bush-Gore debate, the event which decided the election. Six different networks took instant polls. Gore won every single poll—and then your press corps got busy. They decided that Gore’s very-troubling sighs were the evening’s extremely important Top Story. For the next several days, they played loops of Gore sighing (with the volume cranked), and the polls, they were quickly a-changin’. Meanwhile, the corps focused on trivial errors by Gore—and ignored a string of major Bush howlers. Bush misstated his own drug plan; misstated his own budget plan; and crazily said that Gore had outspent him. But forget about Candidate Bush’s budget plan. The press flogged that school desk in Florida.

The press corps’ performance was so astounding that several pundits actually said so. Tucker Carlson and Margaret Carlson appeared on Inside Politics the next day. “I was there, so I didn’t hear [the commentary] last night,” Margaret Carlson said, “and I was amazed to find out that our colleagues all said that it was a draw.” Tucker Carlson, a conservative, was surprised by that too. His comments were truly remarkable:

TUCKER CARLSON (10/4/00): I mean, you know, and it’s interesting—I mean, there is this sense in which Bush is benefiting from something, and I’m not sure what it is. Maybe it’s the low expectations of the people covering him. You know, he didn’t drool or pass out on stage or anything, so he’s getting credit for that. But there is this kind of interesting reluctance on the part of the press to pass judgment on it. I think a lot of people—they don’t, necessarily, break down along ideological lines—believe that, you know, maybe Bush didn’t do as good a job as he might have. And yet, the coverage does not reflect that at all. It’s interesting.

According to Carlson, a major insider, your press corps wasn’t saying what it thought. On Hardball, Chris Matthews and Christopher Hitchens made the same observation. Hitchens—long a virulent Clinton-Gore critic—said the press corps was “determined to avoid” charges of “liberal bias.” Matthews—who had trashed and slandered Gore since March 1999—also said that pundits just weren’t being truthful:

MATTHEWS (10/4/00): I couldn’t believe the number of people who chickened out last night. It was clear to me—and I’m no fan of either of these guys entirely, and I can certainly say that about the one who I thought won last night, that’s Al Gore—I thought he cleaned the other guy’s clock, and I said so last night. All four national polls agreed with that…I don’t understand why people are afraid to say so.

Comments like these—so rare in the press corps—disappeared quickly, of course. Don’t expect to see them today, as the press tidies up its strange conduct. When press corps insiders tell the story today, “people just never warmed to Gore,” and by contrast, those “people” liked Bush. When press corps insiders discuss this today, there’s no word on how it all happened.

WHERE WAS FRANK? Did Frank Bruni’s coverage reflect what he thought? In his book, Ambling Into History, he recalls his thoughts as he watched Debate I:

BRUNI (page 187): The skills that led to great debating were not ones that Bush naturally possessed, and his three subsequent debate performances made this clear. By any objective analysis, Bush was at best mediocre in the first debate, in Boston…In all of [the debates], he was vague. A stutter sometimes crept into his voice. An eerie blankness occasionally spread across his features. He made a few ridiculous statements…I remember watching the first debate from one of the seats inside the auditorium and thinking that Bush was in the process of losing the presidency.

Bruni thought that Bush was so bad that he “was in the process of losing the presidency!” But did Bruni’s report in the Times reflect that? Sorry. The next day, Bruni started with a four-paragraph passage about what a big *sshole Gore had been. See THE DAILY HOWLER, 3/18/02.

Another example from Somerby:

In Anybody Can Grow Up, Carlson explains the lousy coverage aimed at Gore in Campaign 2000. Bush had better food on his plane, and besides that, scribes liked him better. “It’s a failure of some in the press,” Carlson writes, “that we are susceptible to a politician directing the high beams of his charm at us. [eRiposte emphasis] That Al Gore couldn’t catch a break had something to do with how he was when his hair was down.” Needless to say, that is an astounding confession of press corps dysfunction. See THE DAILY HOWLER, 6/14/03.

For the record, Carlson had explained Gore’s lousy coverage in real time, in a way that was even more revealing. On Tuesday, October 10, 2000, Carlson appeared on Imus in the Morning to discuss press coverage of Bush and Gore’s first debate. As she noted, Gore was being slammed as a liar because of a few trivial misstatements. Much larger howlers were being ignored—misstatements by Bush about policy matters. Speaking with Imus, Carlson explained the press corps’ apparent double standard:

CARLSON (10/10/00): Gore’s fabrications may be inconsequential—I mean, they’re about his life. Bush’s fabrications are about our life, and what he’s going to do. Bush’s should matter more but they don’t, because Gore’s we can disprove right here and now. We can’t disprove that there’s going to be a chicken in every pot.

According to Carlson, the press had focused on what was easy. She explained in a bit more detail:

CARLSON: You can actually disprove some of what Bush is saying if you really get in the weeds and get out your calculator or you look at his record in Texas. But it’s really easy, and it’s fun, to disprove Gore.

It was “fun” to disprove Gore’s errors! Carlson took her presentation through one more startling iteration:

CARLSON: I actually happen to know people who need government, and so they would care more about the programs, and more about the things we kind of make fun of…But as sport, and as our enterprise, Gore coming up with another whopper is greatly entertaining to us. And we can disprove it in a way we can’t disprove these other things.

What an astonishing presentation! According to Carlson, the press was pursuing Gore’s trivial errors because it was “greatly entertaining” to do so. And why had they ignored Bush’s errors, which she found more significant? Because they weren’t as easy to disprove! According to Carlson, the press agenda had been set by what was “easy”—and “entertaining” and “fun.” It was “sport.”

Part of what Carlson said this day was, of course, simply inaccurate. In fact, there was nothing hard about “disproving” some of Bush’s Debate I errors; the press corps simply preferred not to do so. But part of what Carlson said to Imus is clearer now because of her book. What did Carlson mean when she said, “I actually happen to know people who need government, and so they would care more about the programs, and more about the things we kind of make fun of?” To all appearances, she was talking about her brother Jimmy, who was born with severe brain damage. In her book, Carlson notes that her brother found “a fulfilling career” because he was given “a set-aside job” at a navy depot. “The American with Disabilities Act is a godsend,” she says. To all appearances, it was this powerful personal tie that helped Carlson understand why people might care about those “government programs”—“the things we kind of make fun of.” But there she was, telling Imus that it was “more fun,” “greatly entertaining” and “sport” to trash Gore for trivial errors.

Given her life experience, it must have taken a powerful force to make Carlson take part in this kind of “sport.” Her book suggests what that force may have been. We finish our profile tomorrow.

And another:

In June, Howard Kurtz suggested the Gore coverage was odd; this month, E.J. Dionne just plain said it. And Fred Barnes, in a recent Weekly Standard, paints a truly remarkable picture of press corps incompetence and immaturity:

BARNES: Gathered in a pack they can be cruel and unfeeling, but not when they're on their own. They're softies, easily schmoozed, ever susceptible to being fooled by appearances...At the moment, the likability award is shared by George W. Bush and John McCain, rivals for the Republican presidential nomination. Bush is fun to be around, gives everyone, including reporters, a nickname, and is something of a wise guy, which gets him in trouble from time to time but appeals to journalists. [eRiposte emphasis]

One's cheeks rouge for the press corps to hear this account, of people "cruel and unfeeling in a pack" but willing to pander if given a nickname. Barnes offers this portrait as an amusing aside. But if his remarkable portrait of the press corps is accurate, it is a disturbing account of a massive fault line in our debased public discourse.

And let's not forget these quotes as well.

• Joe Scarborough (former Republican Congressman and MSNBC talk show host)

  "...I think, in the 2000 election, I think [the media] were fairly brutal to Al Gore. I think they hit him hard on a lot of things like inventing the Internet and some of those other things, and I think there was a generalization they bought into that, if they had done that to a Republican candidate, I’d be going on your show saying, you know, that they were being biased..." [Hardball, MSNBC, Nov 2002] 

• Tucker Carlson (conservative commentator on CNN - then)
  "I remember being with someone I know who works at a major metropolitan daily. We were at this little forum in New Hampshire—like eight reporters there, it was one in the morning—Gore says something about his sister received, smoked dope for cancer treatment, and this reporter went after him in the most disrespectful way—it was shocking. I was embarrassed, and I wasn’t a Gore man. And I remember talking to her afterwards, you know, “Boy, you know that was pretty rough, what you did to the vice president,” and she said, “I just don’t like him. He’s a phony.” And that right there said it all to me. A lot of reporters didn’t like him on a personal level. I believe most of them voted for him anyway, but they just didn’t like him and they were mean to him as a result. [Carlson’s emphasis]" [Jan 2004]

Bottomline? Certainly, NO liberal media bias all the way through Election 2000. Indeed, quite the opposite, with the media treating Gore with contempt and continued to invent fake stories about him even after Election 2000. This has been chronicled quite a bit by The Daily Howler. The Howler's Gore coverage mini-series here highlighted some of the lowlights of the anti-Gore media malpractice.

4.1B.1.3 The media's coverage of George Bush during his first term (including 9/11 and Iraq) and their coverage of Election 2004

I have mentioned this before - here, so let me point it out again, with some updates. The extensive media tilt towards Bush and the Right was blindingly obvious [and don't bother sending me this study - it's covered here] .

• Most of the media kept people deeply misinformed about virtually everything that was important for Americans to know - 9/11 (the fawning coverage of Bush cannot be forgotten), the Iraq war (see here for example), tax cuts, George Bush and John Kerry, to name a few topics. Many well-researched books (examples here and here) have been written on the subject of George Bush's administration, detailing facts that were rarely reported in most media outlets 
  [NOTE: Leading conservative spokesmen realized that by tarring Bush critics (who had the facts on their side) with the term "Bush-hater" they could deceive their own supporters into believing that these critics were just as irrational and fiction-based as they [the spokesmen] themselves had been against Bill and Hillary Clinton. Clearly this strategy worked. However, the truths about Bush and his administration will remain in the historical record, even if Bush propagandists want you to ignore them now in order to enable them to retain political power.]

  • The media's wanton ignorance of - or sometimes depraved indifference to - the Bush administration's mendacity (a sample here and here - and read the books too), pathological corruption (here and here) and gross incompetence on national security (to name just a few things) was inexcusable

• The media's Kerry-bashing went on and on via biased, misleading or downright fraudulent commentary or coverage in both right-wing media and so-called mainstream media networks (remember Sinclair Broadcasting or Clear Channel? Remember the egregious cable TV networks who were almost gleeful enablers of the utterly fraudulent "Swift Boat Veterans"?) 

• The media's repeated, false portrayal

  • Of Bush as a "strong leader", who is "steady" and "firm"

  • Of Kerry as a flip-flopper and as a staunch liberal (as if these could both simultaneously be true), and 

  • Of this election as if it were just another election between two candidates, one of whom was repeatedly mischaracterized (e.g., social loner anyone?) 

  was symptomatic of a media that tilted conservative when it came to the facts in the news coverage

• The media's constant chiding of Kerry for not having a clear enough message was another typical manifestation of conservative bias, considering that research by independent groups showed that the real problem was the opposite: most Bush supporters were deeply uninformed or ignorant about the real George W. Bush and Kerry's supporters were much better informed about Kerry's positions. 

• The climax of course was the fully expected Election 2004 coverage, where:

  • Spin and B.S. often took precedence over real issues and facts, 

  • False equivalence between Bush' mendacity and Kerry's rhetoric became common, 

  • Fact-checking (although clearly improved compared to the abysmal 2000 election coverage) fell far short of expectations, and, 

  • After the election, branding those genuinely concerned with election anomalies/irregularities or downright voter fraud/suppression (and the failure of democracy in many cases) as paranoid/idiotic conspiracy theorists picked up steam

Media Matters has more.

As of March 14, The Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) released its annual State of the Media coverage for 2004, in which they claimed Kerry got more "negative" coverage than Bush for the period that they studied. In reality PEJ's study is useless to assess the reality of the coverage. I explain why, here. I simply cannot fathom why well-known outfits like PEJ spend so much resources studying something using a methodology which says woefully little about the quality of journalism in this country. 

A special mention also needs to be made about the media's post 9/11 and pre-to-initial Iraq-invasion coverage. It was once again, downright appalling and deeply slanted towards Bush, as the media outlets themselves admitted (below).

IRAQ

Let's first cover some basic facts as to how much people were (and remain) misled.

Let me close this section, for now, by saying, that politically, the data is vast that the media is NOT liberal. It is illiberal and overall tilts conservative.