From: jswitzer@afit.af.mil (Chip Switzer)
Newsgroups: alt.rush-limbaugh,alt.news-media,alt.activism.d
Subject: Re: A journalist speaks on media bias
Date: 26 Aug 92 19:05:13 GMT
Organization: Air Force Institute of Technology

dsvoss@isr.harvard.edu (Steve Voss) writes:

>Here follows my response to Chip:

>You seem somehow bothered that I suggested reporters are actually
>"libertarian" rather than "liberal."  

Not bothered, just suprised.  I will be the first to admit that I am no
student of the media.  Most, if not all, of my "evidence" is emperical.
I began by appreciating your post (not just because it began by
agreeing with some of my points) for its "insider" and educated view.

>I'm not quite sure why you felt this
>was such a massive attempt at rhetorical victory for reporters, but I will
>answer it anyway.  Most polls have found reporters NOT to be sympathetic to
>economic regulations, despite the liberal proclivity to "tax and spend."
>In general, academics have had a hard time explaining this discrepency.
>The main poll I had in mind was in "The Media Elite" by Lichtman et.al.
>It is a conservative book based on the argument that the MEDIA HAS A
>LIBERAL BIAS.  Nonetheless, they find what I claim as regards economic
>regulation.  I cannot answer to your specific LA Times poll and its finding
>regarding "business regulation" other than to say that it is rare.  As to
>gun control and affirmative action, I never made any claims as to these
>issues; I would expect journalists to be "liberal" on these.  I stress that
>the "libertarian" label is just an attempt to portray journalistic biases
>more accurately; just because it is better than "liberal" doesn't mean it
>is more accurate.  If you are interested, the Lichtman study ultimately
>decides that reporters are liberal in the turn-of-the-century Progressive
>reformer sense rather than a New Deal sense, a conclusion I support on
>its academic merits.  Therefore the political model of a reporter would not
>be Bill Clinton or Mike Dukakis, it would be William Weld ("liberal"
>Republican governor of MASS).

>You scoff that, when I say reporters are relatively no more liberal than
>other professionals, I am merely comparing liberals to liberals.  If you
>were more interested in understanding what I had to say and less in making
>rhetorical points, you might have read my passage more closely.  I wasn't
>attempting to suggest reporters weren't liberal, only that their liberality
>isn't surprising -- it matches what is found in other related fields.

Yes, I scoffed.  Becuase you didn't even use as broad a sample as "other
professionals", or even other educated people. You said the press was
"not notably liberal in relation to other professionals with similar 
backgrounds who work in fields involving communication or self-expression 
(e.g. acting, teaching, art, etc.)"  This doesn't say a thing about
their political persuasion.  You could have just as easily compared them
Democratic congressmen.  

>I cannot answer to your skepticism regarding the Republican endorsement
>tendencies of the nation's newspapers, since that is a commonly known
>fact among people who study this topic regardless of political persuasion
>(i.e. it has never been disputed).  One thing I didn't mention, but
>will now, is that you have a rebuttal to this statistic, which is that it
>doesn't take into account the circulations of the different newspapers.
>Therefore the NY Times endorsement of Clinton will count equally to
>the Meridien MS paper's endorsement of Bush.  If you only read big-city
>Northeastern papers, you have a skewed impression of what editorial
>pages write.  In 1988, only one of the eight biggest newspapers in
>Louisiana endorsed Dukakis, for example (and that paper has since gone
>out of business).  I worked for Gannett News Service in 1988; when
>Gannett broke down their own newspapers' endorsements they found that
>55% endorsed Bush, 45% Dukakis (very very close to what the population
>actually voted).

Then I stand educated on this point.  It's suprising, but it just goes
to show you that almost every issue defies being put into a nutshell.

>You call both "pro-choice" and "pro-life" blatant propaganda.  I agree.
>But "pro-abortion" also is flat-out wrong for many of the people who
>oppose government regulation of the abortion procedure (especially
>pro-choice Catholics).  Given the need to choose a propagandistic
>label, I chose the accurate one.  

On the basis of just what you read on the net, you have to see that
there are logical, well thought out arguements for (or against) both.
Not that that will change anybody's mind on the issue.  The fact that
you have an opinion about which is "more accurate" should be (INHO) 
irrelevent to an objective reporter.  There are plenty of examples of the
press using long names when they have to.  It is not a convincing 
argument to say, "abortion-rights advocates/opponents" is too long to
use in a story.  The only explanation that holds any water is that
on average, reporters and editors alike bow to the liberal agenda when
labeling people or ideas.  Not that they get out their "liberal
handbook" before making a decision--they just have the same liberal
preferences.

>On the other hand, what's wrong
>with "anti-abortion"???  Do you claim not to be both "pro-life" and
>"anti-abortion"?  The only reason anti-abortion is a problem for activists
>is that it uses "anti" rather than "pro" and some people feel it gives
>a "negative" image.  

Come on, you're an educated person and well-versed in multi-media
and public relations dogma.  You know that a label is *everything* in
a battle for public opinion.  For you to pooh-pooh the
negative image is showing me that you don't *want* to see why it's a 
big deal to one side of the issue.

>By the way, when I covered the School Choice movement,
>I did refer to them as the Choice Movement in articles relating to
>education reform, despite the fact this is a "conservative" position and
>its adherents of course don't support "choice" on every political issue.
>And if the opponents tried to call themselves "pro-education" or something
>equally ridiculous (on par with pro-life) that implied their enemies
>were "anti-education" I would have rejected that too.

>You think you are so perceptive as to bias, but I'm afraid the only thing
>you are good at is jumping to conclusions.  Despite all of the "evidence"
>you found in my post that proved my "liberal" bias, the following things
>are true about my political opinions:
>1) I voted Republican last time I went to the polls (governor of LA, state
>senator, secretary of state, attorney general, state representative, etc.)
>2) I recently worked as a consultant for the Republican Party of New
>York helping them try to defeat in court a blatant gerrymander developed
>by the state's Democratic Party.
>3) I have been offerred a job working for either Jack Kemp or Dick
>Cheney in 1996 if the law firm with which I work gets the account,
>and have tentatively accepted.
>4) Those who know me here joke about me being the "conservative" member
>of the American studies department.  The only reason this is a joke is
>that the department has other "conservative" members.

I said that your article was biased.  You can't deny that you spent
several paragraphs expalining why the liberal point of view was the only
reasonable point of view.  You attempted to explain many things, just
like a news story might, and in the process explained them in a way that
made the liberal side look like a good alternative to the unreasonable
conservative side--just like many news stories do.  That is my
definition of bias in a story.  I certainly made no judgements on you 
as a person or even jumped to any conclusions about your politics.  Your
article stands on its own.

>Maybe you are the one who should question your rock-solid opinions and
>judgmental demeanor.

If I sounded judgemental (to you or in any other post) it was not 
intentional.  I admit I get carried away sometimes, but not usually 
in a partisan way.  What I rally against is not necessarily the liberal
agenda.  It is (and you can check my other posts) against the arrogance
of "my opinion is the only G*d d*mned opinion that makes *any* sense
and anybody who disagrees with me is ignorant."  Not that your post 
sounded like that, but media bias has a tendency to come off like that
(as in your making the "accurate" choice about labels) and that is why I 
hate it so much. 

And I don't think I need to question my opinions.  I have them and so
does everybody else.  The free flow of these opinions on the net is a
great thing.  I have a problem when those opinions work their way into
a news story, though.


Chip Switzer                            "A witty saying proves nothing." 
jswitzer@afit.af.mil                              -- Voltaire 
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