Category: Media Criticism

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Putting a Coda to the Myth of That YouTube Video

The congressional Benghazi hearings may leave room for debate about why the Administration acted as it did before, during, and after the tragedy, but they surely put to rest any lingering claims that the attack was a consequence of that YouTube video, “Innocence of Muslims."

As noted here and here, this was not the first time people rushed to link a murderous act with controversial speech, and it won’t be the last.  But it should stand as an abiding lesson for producers and consumers of the news, and for commentators of all stripes, to be deeply skeptical of similar claims in the future.

                                            

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

David Stockman Riles the Commentariat

Unless you’re a demagogue or an ideologue (or, like Paul Krugman, both), it might have occurred to you that this country’s outsized money printing by the Fed and our ongoing fiscal deficits are going to end badly; that the debts being piled up, at the velocity of a hurricane, will never be repaid (indeed couldn’t be repaid other than with greatly devalued dollars); and that the likely end result therefore is going to be destabilizing inflation, and the passing along to future generations of staggering debt.

To harbor such thoughts is not only rational but wise, and undoubtedly on the minds of millions of Americans.  Which – along with the fact that he’s promoting a new book – perhaps explains why David Stockman recently wrote a lengthy op-ed piece in the New York Times in which he elaborates on these concerns, and lays the blame on Keynesianism and what he regards as other destructive concepts, past and present.

Titled “State-Wrecked: The Corruption of Capitalism in America,” Stockman’s piece is powerful stuff and so, of course, has attracted the wrath of legions of the “progressive” members of the commentariat.  Taken together, their criticisms speak volumes about the impoverishment of the progressive mindset but almost nothing about Stockman’s concerns.

Indeed, one gets the impression that the important thing for the sort of people encountered at places like the Huffington Post, Washington Post, and New York Times was to be early to the scene; rather like a contest, the winner would be the person who scored on Stockman the first and punchiest ad hominem attack.

So it is that Stockman’s piece is variously described as “spittle-filled,” a “horrific screed,” and the “unfortunate rant” of a “cranky old man.”

None of this is unprecedented, of course, and in fact it positively guarantees that Stockman’s book will be a best seller. But there’s something a little creepy about the invective employed by people who profess to come by their opinions as a consequence of sweet reason.  Creepier still is the intolerance displayed by Krugman, who characterizes his employers’ decision to publish Stockman’s piece as “mysterious.”

Whatever else one might say, the only people who would question the Times’ decision to publish Stockman’s piece are those who think that only their own views deserve a hearing.

Nobody is going to agree with everything that the gentleman wrote, but the decision to publish his piece was not only not mysterious, it was correct and, if anything, belated.

                                            

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

 

Posted on By Patrick Maines

The Koch/Cato Settlement

It was announced yesterday that, in return for some changes in its Board and the resignation of the Cato Institute’s co-founder and CEO, Ed Crane, the Koch brothers are withdrawing their lawsuits against the organization.  Given the negative effect that the lawsuits were having on Cato’s fundraising, it’s no surprise that the Institute would eventually be obliged to give up something important in order to move on. But in accepting Crane’s offer to go, they’ve given up a lot.

Organizations that are moved by idealism rather than commerce, and that persist and prosper against all odds, are often the creatures of their founders and long-time leaders.  The late Bill Baroody, founder of the American Enterprise Institute, comes to mind.  And so too with Crane, who has led Cato for 35 years, during which time it has become one of the leading think tanks in the United States.

If, 20 years from now, Cato is still the powerhouse it has become, people in the know will say that Crane’s successors were good, but that Crane was great.  And they’ll be right.

                                  

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Politico Accuses the Post and Times of Media Bias: Reporters Detect a Disturbance in the Force

Every once in a while something happens in medialand that stirs up reporters. The most recent example occurred last Thursday when the editors of Politico accused the Washington Post and the New York Times of bias in their coverage of the presidential campaign.

Under a headline that read, “To GOP, blatant bias in vetting,” the authors added their own commentary in ways that suggested that Republican critics of media coverage of the presidential campaign are right.

“Republicans cry ‘bias’ so often,” they wrote, “it feels like a campaign theme.  It is, largely because it fires up conservatives….  But it is also because it often rings true, even to people who don’t listen to Rush Limbaugh – or Haley Barbour.”

And with that, the dawn came up like thunder among those whose calling it is to resist journalistic apostasy whenever it rears its head. Take, for instance, one Devon Gordon, who writes for GQ (“Look Sharp/Live Smart”). Gordon wrote a piece whose thrust was nicely summed up in its title: “Five Points About Politico’s Hatchet Job on NYT and WaPo.”

Or how about John Cook who, writing in Gawker, began this way: “Megalomaniacal supervillain Jim Vandehei and emotionally hobbled robo-reporter Mike Allen, both of Politico, have penned a rugged endorsement of Mitt Romney’s chief grievance today, agreeing with his advisers that the press corps is busy ‘scaring up stories to undermine the introduction of Mitt Romney to the general election audience.’”

And lest we forget our friends from papers across the pond, there’s the Guardian’s Oliver Burkeman.  Digging deep into his reservoir of profundities, Burkeman relieved himself of this penetrating observation: “This is always the problem with the charge of ‘media bias’: for it to be valid, it would have to be the case that ‘not being biased’ were a viable alternative option, and it isn’t.”

And then there’s the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple.  In (at last count) six separate pieces on his blog, Wemple makes points like the following: (1) Politico is jealous that they didn’t develop the Post’s story about Romney’s alleged bullying in high school; (2) Politico itself gave lots of attention to the Post’s bullying story; and (3) Politico’s claim that the Post’s story was overdone fails to acknowledge that “Bullying (a) schoolmate by pinning him down and cutting his hair is not only illegal but hateful, violent and destructive."

And there it is. Never mind the well documented history of Republican unhappiness with the media, or the larger issue of media bias as perceived by about half the people in the country, and what that portends for the future of the commercial media. 

No matter that polling organizations like Harris Interactive and Pew established without any doubt in 2008 that Republicans overwhelmingly thought the media favored Obama over McCain (indeed, the Pew poll found that Democrats and Independents felt that way too), or that a Gallup poll published just last September found that 47% of the people think the media are too liberal (a number that rises to 75% when polling Republicans only), while just 13% think they are too conservative.

It is, apparently, one thing for such data to be reported in the charts and graphs of pollsters, or in the words of known or suspected Republicans, but another thing entirely for a member of the MSM to break ranks and criticize the media along the same lines.

                                   

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

 

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Free Speech Is Real Loser in Rush Kerfuffle

Is it appropriate to defend free speech even when it’s harsh or degrading?  Whatever their political views, do people have a right to express them?  Not for the first time, such questions are being debated in the court of public opinion.

The proximate reason for the debate, this month, is some nasty things said about a law student by Rush Limbaugh, a man who – like Glenn Beck, Keith Olbermann, Michael Moore, Bill O’Reilly, Ed Schultz, Michael Savage, and Bill Maher – makes his living by saying provocative and sometimes ugly things through the media of TV, film, or radio.

For those who believe in freedom of speech, there’s a little bit of good news amid the bad in the Limbaugh kerfuffle, but a couple things demand to be acknowledged right from the start: Neither Rush, nor any of the other on-air opinionmeisters, are scholars, statesmen, or intellectuals.  They are, instead, political entertainers whose appeal reaches as far as those who share their political views, and not one inch further.

This, and one other thing: The coordinated attacks on Limbaugh and his show’s advertisers is the product of the calculated strategy of a group – Media Matters for America (MMA) – that was created precisely to try to silence, by whatever means, right-leaning organizations and individuals.

The bad news in the Limbaugh affair is that while some people are recommending that the FCC take him off the air (Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem), or think he should be prosecuted (Gloria Allred), and after a number of his advertisers have been cowed into dropping his show, most of the media and journalism organizations one might expect to defend him have remained silent.

From the professional journalism societies to the university-based journalism reviews and the legacy “First Amendment” groups, virtually nothing has been issued in opposition to MMA’s tactics of intimidation.

It could, of course, be argued that MMA is merely exercising its own free speech rights, and that is certainly true, but that fact need not strike dumb those people who, exercising their free speech rights, could and should criticize MMA’s tactics.

According to an AP story, the next step in the war against Limbaugh is a radio ad campaign in eight cities, using as a template MMA’s earlier campaign against Glenn Beck.  Meanwhile, the head of Media Matters, David Brock, is gloating about the negative impact his organization’s efforts are having on Limbaugh’s advertisers.

In a piece published in Politico, titled “Ad exodus dooms Limbaugh’s model,” Brock says he is confident, “seeing the reaction over the previous two weeks, that sponsors will take their ad dollars elsewhere.”  He also says, in a sentence sure to be admired by fanatics and totalitarians everywhere, that MMA “along with numerous other groups, have begun to educate (emphasis added) advertisers about the damage their financial support of Limbaugh’s program can do to their brands.”

Looking beyond the campaign against Limbaugh per se,one can see that if this kind of thing persists it won’t end well for freedom of speech.  Already, for instance, a piece in the American Spectator calls for Rush admirers to contact those of Limbaugh’s advertisers who have dropped his show, the kind of thing that, along with campaigns like MMA’s, may in time have the practical effect of moving advertisers out of radio altogether.

In addition, there’s the distinct possibility that conservative groups will ape the tactics used against Limbaugh, and begin themselves to use advertiser intimidation and/or government policy to effectively shut down speech they don’t like.  Just last week Brent Bozell, head of the conservative media watchdog group Media Research Center, which has used both tactics in the past, said of the MMA campaign: “We all have free speech.”

As mentioned at the outset, there’s a little bit of light breaking through the gloom of this matter.  Though he doesn’t reference the Limbaugh affair, liberal law professor Jonathan Turley penned a piece in the Los Angeles Times this month titled “Free speech under fire,” in which he bemoans the fact that “Western nations appear to have fallen out of love with free speech and are criminalizing more and more kinds of speech through the passage of laws banning hate speech, blasphemy, and discriminatory language.”

At about the same time, liberal icon Michael Kinsley wrote a piece for Bloomberg titled “Case Against Case Against Rush Limbaugh.”  Among other poignant observations, Kinsley says this:

Do we want conservatives organizing boycotts of advertisers on MSNBC, or either side boycotting companies that do business with other companies who advertise on Limbaugh’s show, or Rachel Maddow’s?…

As we all know, Limbaugh’s First Amendment rights aren’t involved here – freedom of speech means freedom from interference by the government.  But the spirit of the First Amendment, which is that suppressing speech is bad, still applies.  If you don’t care for something Rush Limbaugh has said, say why and say it better.

In a perfect world, one wouldn’t need to be a policy wonk or a constitutional expert to understand the wisdom in this. But in this world, who knows?                                             

                                               

This piece was first published in TVNewsCheck on March 26, 2012. The views expressed above are those of the writer and not those of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

 

Posted on By Patrick Maines

The Koch Brothers’ Designs on Cato

Political gift giving, whether in support of candidates for public office or ideologically active nonprofit organizations, is fraught with the risk that activists of a different stripe (or journalists who are themselves of a different stripe) may take offense and retaliate. 

Such has been the experience of the wealthy Koch brothers, Charles and David, two long-time funders of libertarian policies, politicians, and organizations who have been attacked without surcease by activists and journalists for about two years.  

In part, of course, attacks on them have happened because they’re easy targets.  As politically active billionaires, the Kochs quite naturally attract attention, and for all its intellectual strengths, libertarianism is a long way from being the “people’s choice.” 

Additionally, the Kochs have borne some of the brunt of the criticism that’s accompanied the Supreme Court’s correct undoing, in its Citizens United decision, of aspects of the McCain-Feingold Act.  From that time to this, advocates of campaign finance “reform” have been shrilly condemning  PACs, and particularly those, like the Koch-controlled Americans for Prosperity, that favor Republicans.

The motives of their critics aside, there have long been aspects of the Kochs’ philanthropy that are tiresome.  Take, for instance, Koch Industries’ and the Koch Foundation’s embrace of what they call “Market-Based Management,” a management philosophy developed by Charles Koch, and one that, it’s claimed, “can provide great value to non-profit organizations.”

A thing of some complexity – MBM features 10 “Principles” and five “Dimensions” – it can seem like about nine principles and four dimensions too many when pushed on grantees.

Now, though, comes the remarkable news that the Kochs have filed a lawsuit against the venerable Cato Institute, something that goes beyond the merely annoying to the virtually incomprehensible.  In a word, they want to take over Cato and fire its president and co-founder, Ed Crane.

To be fair, the Kochs have an important history with Cato.  Like Crane, Charles Koch was also a founder of the think tank, and the Koch Foundation has given millions to Cato over the years.  So if this were simply a management issue – that they wanted to replace Crane with someone else, or put new people on the Board – they’d clearly have the right to propose the idea, and whatever the merits of it, it wouldn’t be seen as an impossibly chowderheaded scheme.

Alas, issues with management are not the apparent reason for their lawsuit.  Instead, the Kochs’ designs on Cato seem to be a desire to more closely align the think tank’s policy analyses with the Kochs’ partisan political efforts, through such as Americans for Prosperity.

Taking advantage of the unusual fact that the nonprofit Cato has “shareholders” with the authority to select members of Cato’s board, the Kochs have lately been attempting to gain a majority among the directors (they already have seven of 16).

In a blog published on the Volokh Conspiracy on March 3, a senior fellow at Cato provided some background by revealing what was said at a meeting in November of last year between a Koch delegation and the chairman of Cato, Bob Levy:

They told Bob that they intended to use their board majority to remove Ed Crane from Cato and transform our Institute into an intellectual ammo-shop for Americans for Prosperity….  They’ve frequently complained … that Cato wasn’t doing enough to defeat President Obama in November and that we weren’t working closely enough with grass roots activists like those at AFP.

During a recent interview, Crane expressed contempt for those of the Kochs’ critics whose motive is political or ideological, even as he spoke of the “insanity” in the Kochs’ attempt to turn Cato into a partisan outfit.  “Were they to do it,” he said, “it would undo overnight 35 years of work and hard-won respect.”

Even though he personally would be a certain casualty if the Kochs succeed in their takeover attempt, Crane betrays little concern about that aspect of the battle at hand.  One might suspect that this is because, after 35 years at the helm of Cato, he’s had a good run, or because, like many of us, he’s reached an age where, professionally speaking, he can see the tunnel at the end of the light.  Or maybe he’s just confident that the Kochs won’t prevail.

Whatever, a few things are clear.  It’s been on Crane’s watch that Cato has grown into a leading U.S. think tank, along the way becoming one of the stoutest defenders of free speech in the country.  And none of that would have been possible if Cato had been perceived as a political front group.

One of Market-Based Management’s "Principles" is humility, described this way: “Practice humility and intellectual honesty.  Constantly seek to understand and constructively deal with reality to create value and achieve personal improvement.”

One wonders how much the Kochs thought about this Principle before they embarked on such an intellectually dishonest and destructive campaign.

                                  

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Republican Criticism of the Media (and Why It’s Ignored)

Imagine that you’re the head of a consumer products company, and it’s revealed to you that about half the people in the country don’t like some aspect of your product.  Is there any chance that you wouldn’t try to address that problem?

It is, of course, a rhetorical question.  So what, then, explains why the CEOs of the parent companies of the so-called mainstream media (MSM) – whose news operations are seen by Republicans as politically biased – do nothing about it?  

Several theories come to mind: It’s not a new problem; the “firewall” that separates the editorial side of media companies from the business side dissuades and/or impedes editorial reforms that issue from corporate management; the people who run the business side of these companies approve of their news departments, whatever Republicans think of them.

Taking them in order, it’s indeed true that rank-and-file Republicans and conservatives have seen bias in the mainstream media for many years.  But in earlier times this antipathy wasn’t as great as it is today, and for all their unhappiness there was no other place for them to go.  Pretty much the whole of the news business nationally was the province of the Big Three TV networks, the wire services, the newsweeklies, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.

These days, though, according to a Gallup survey released last September, 75 percent of Republicans think the media are too liberal, and all the candidates for the GOP presidential nomination have expressed similar criticism, some with brio and to roaring approval. Moreover, there are many places – from talk radio to FOX News to Republican or conservative websites – where they can, and do, go for news and commentary more to their liking these days.

The editorial firewall, a useful convention that prevents the wholesale marketing of news to advertisers, is a better explanation, though still not compelling.  Publishers, after all, have dominion over editors, not the other way around.

Then there’s the discomfiting idea that media company CEOs like the editorial slant that Republicans believe is biased against them, either because they don’t share the Republicans’ political views, or because they believe that the Republican/conservative criticism is without foundation.

Though this may play a role with some of the MSM, it too seems too farfetched to be a controlling factor.  After all, the MSM are for-profit companies, most all of which are publicly owned and traded.  It would be strange indeed if the CEOs of these companies would put their own political views ahead of their companies’ profitability.

So what, then, explains it?  The view from here is that it may be a little bit of all these things, but that it’s primarily something else.

The lugubrious truth about the MSM these days is that all of them are suffering, to one degree or another, from lost readership/viewership and diminished advertising revenue.  And that, in a nutshell, may be why journalism per se is not front and center in the thinking of media company CEOs.

In the face of threats like that posed by the ad-grabbing tactics of Google, and the ubiquity and popularity of the social media, it’s likely that the CEOs of the legacy media don’t have much appetite for involving themselves in what – especially because of the editorial firewall – would be a contentious and quite possibly futile effort in any case.

So that, perhaps, is an explanation, though almost certainly not enough of one to satisfy Republican critics.  Plus ca change, plus c’est pareil.

                                  

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

 

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Orts and All

Regulating the ’Net.  Much has been alleged in recent days about the risks to the independence of the Internet were the copyright bills currently before Congress to become law.  As mentioned here and here, the most extravagant of these allegations are flummery of the first water, but copyright issues aside, the ’net is indeed on the cusp of a significant transformation.

Evidence of this can be seen in the actions of the FCC, whether on its own initiative or by its implementation of regulations after passage of legislation into law.  The Commission’s codification of  "net neutrality" rules was the first example of the Internet’s capture.  The action currently underway by the FCC to promulgate regulations re the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, a law which, among other things, mandates captioning for online video, is another.

Goes without saying that making online video accessible to the deaf is a nice thing to do, and for many that’s the end of the story.  But people who are familiar with the way laws and regulatory policies evolve know that things like these have a precedential impact in Congress, the courts, and the regulatory agencies, and that very often these precedents are then offered up in justification of other laws or rules that are not so nice.

In any case, the point here is that it’s already too late in the day for people who have an idealistic interest in the Internet to fret the future loss of its independence.  Thanks to the majority at the FCC and/or in Congress, the Internet’s pristine independence has already been lost.

Media Matters.  The organization called Media Matters for America, which exists to demean and (where possible) destroy conservative journalists and organizations like FOX News, has now come out with a contrived accusation against George Will.

The gravamen of MMA’s contrivance is that, as a Board member of a conservative grant-giving group (the Bradley Foundation), Will should be required to mention this connection whenever he writes about or cites the work of any of the groups to which Bradley contributes!

Given that Bradley funds a very large number of conservative think tanks and other enterprises, this would mean, as a practical matter, that Will would have to include this disclosure pretty much all the time since he is, after all, a conservative himself and cites these organizations’ work frequently.

As the Washington Post’s executive editor put it, in reply to a request from MMA for comment: “Is it seriously a surprise to you that George Will quotes experts from conservative think tanks more often than he quotes experts from liberal think tanks?”

What a relief! The latest news is that Keith Olbermann, who is faithfully viewed nightly by at least 16 people, may be staying on at Current TV, a network that captures the imagination of dozens.  

It’s been a close call for the past few days, but as this is being written word is out that Olbermann and management of Current, who have been at loggerheads over something or other, have resolved their differences.  So a country that has been paralyzed with fear that things might not work out can breathe again. What a happy day.

                                  

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Christopher Hitchens and the Art of Persuasion

For those who believe in words as a medium not just of expression but of discovery, life is a journey made all the more fascinating by the prospect that one may occasionally hit upon a word or a sentence that reveals something profound, even to oneself.  Christopher Hitchens, a man of many words, was such a person.

For those who are unfamiliar with him, the gentleman was a British-American author and journalist.  A prodigious and eloquent writer, Hitchens is perhaps best known for his resolute atheism, ideological tergiversations (from confirmed Trotskyite to alleged neoconservative), and criticism of Islamic jihadism.

With his passing this month, journalism has lost another of the very small number of political commentators who combine the qualities of erudition, scholarship, and the ability to surprise with their take on things.

Not for Hitchens the kind of commentary that centers on campaign strategies, public opinion polls, or political horse races.  For Hitchens, as for William F. Buckley Jr., politics was the stuff of deeper meaning than the careers, or even the policies, of politicians.

The Hitchens-Buckley comparison is apt in another way, too.  Buckley’s Roman Catholicism was central to his political philosophy in much the same way that Hitchens’ atheism was to his.

Hitchens, of course, wasn’t the first person to condemn religion.  H.L. Mencken once defined an archbishop as “a Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.”  But as agitated atheists often do (because in a calmer state they’d be agnostics), Hitchens traveled way past such witty criticisms into the realm of the proselytizing anti-believer, a posture that, in its anger and simplicity, bears a striking resemblance to religious fundamentalism.

But never mind that.  The fetching aspect of Hitchens’ journalism, apart from the great writing, was its escape from the tiresome cant and clichés of contemporary liberalism – indeed, of all the “-isms.”  Though the man himself, early on and late, was a confirmed leftist, Hitchens’ catalog of the good and the bad gave left-wing ideologues migraines.  He was, for instance, a critic of the Vietnam War but a defender of the Iraqi invasion.  He wrote scathingly of Henry Kissinger and George H.W. Bush, but also of Hugo Chávez, about whom he said the following after a trip to Venezuela:

“After all [Chávez said] there is film of the Americans landing on the moon….  Does that mean the moon shot really happened?  In the film the Yanqui flag is flying straight out.  So, is there wind on the moon?  As Chavez beamed with triumph at this logic, an awkwardness descended on my comrades, and on the conversation.…

“Chávez, in other words, is very close to the climactic moment when he will announce that he is a poached egg and that he requires a large piece of buttered toast so that he can lie down and take a soothing nap.”

More evidence of Hitchens’ maverick ways can be seen in his earlier-mentioned crusade against what he called “fascism with an Islamic face.”  In 2008 he wrote a piece in Slate titled “To Hell With the Archbishop of Canterbury,” a criticism of the quaint suggestion by the archbishop that Britain should adopt a form of sharia law as an adjunct to British common law.  Hitchens’ criticism was greeted by much harrumphing by the politically correct, something that bothered him not at all.

As suggested at the outset, though, Hitchens has left something more than just the sum of his theological or political opinions.  He showed the way to greater readership and distinction for political commentators, editorialists, and columnists.

In a word, he demonstrated the virtue in not allowing oneself to become marginalized; to not write just for a tribe of people with similar beliefs; to be willing to tread even on the sensibilities of those who are often allies.

As seen by the wide and varied number of people who, since his passing, have written flatteringly of him, Christopher Hitchens, the man and the writer, enjoyed an appeal that went well beyond just those who agreed with him.  For one whose life involves the expression of strong opinions, it doesn’t get better than that.

                                  

First published in the Dallas Morning News, Dec. 26, 2011.  The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

 

Posted on By Patrick Maines

The Shrill and the Marginal: The Left’s Criticism of the Media

Readers of this blog know that it’s the personal opinion of the writer that the mainstream media are hurt by the years-long perception, among Republicans and conservatives, that the media are unsympathetic to their views.  Given their large and growing numbers, and the availability of competing sources of news and commentary, this perception seems like both a journalistic and a business problem for the MSM.

This said, we’re always on the lookout for those people who view this matter differently, even where they represent only the most marginal points of view.

Thus it is that we’ve come across a piece in The Nation magazine (than which nothing’s more marginal), by Eric Alterman.  Titled “The Problem of Media Stupidity,” the thrust of the thing is that journalists, unwitting victims of a so-called “cult of balance,” are much too fair to Republicans.

As Alterman so elegantly puts it:

There is a specter haunting America today.  It is the specter of stupidity.  A few months ago, I wrote a column I called “The Problem of Republican Idiots.” Believe me, this problem has not gone away.  No less alarming is that this stupidity is apparently contagious.  The men and women who inhabit the upper reaches of the U.S. media (and pull down the multi-million dollar salaries) appear to believe that to do their jobs properly, they must make themselves behave like idiots in order to be “fair” to the Republicans and their idiot ideas.

In support of this thoughtful view, Alterman cites the progressives’ favorite wordslinger, Paul Krugman, and quotes from an interview David Gregory did with Rick Santelli – seven months ago – on “Meet the Press.”

Santelli’s comments, this one especially, figure large in Alterman’s argument: “If the country is ever attacked as it was in 9/11,” said Santelli, “we all respond with a sense of urgency.  What’s going on on the balance sheets throughout the country is the same type of attack.”

Never mind that Gregory didn’t respond to Santelli, as other guests on the show jumped in with their own observations, it’s Alterman’s opinion that for Gregory even to countenance such a comment without criticism is proof of a kind of intellectual rot among mainstream journalists.  “On America’s most respected television news program,” he wrote, “it is apparently OK to equate a problem with your fiscal balance sheets with terrorist mass murder.  Here again, we see the ‘cult of balance’ destroying the brains of our press corps.”

Given the modest dimensions of his own intellectual attributes, one suspects more people will be struck by the chutzpah of Alterman calling other people idiots than will be put off by Santelli’s remark, in which the CNBC personality was obviously equating not the acts (9/11 and the nation’s balance sheets), but the societal impact of the two, and the need for the kind of urgent action re the latter as was the case with the former.

Still, there remains the larger issue raised by Alterman’s rant: Are the MSM too evenhanded in their treatment of Republican and Democratic policies and politicians?  Do they, as Alterman suggests, show undeserved respect for Republicans?  And if we wanted to test this hypothesis, how would we go about it?

It’s a tricky thing, this business of calling people idiots.  Dostoevsky titled one of his novels The Idiot, though in that case the subject of the pejorative, Prince Myshkin, was likened favorably to Christ, something that is probably not the way Alterman sees Republicans.  Clearer still is that Alterman is no Dostoevsky.

Which is just to say that, as a practical matter, we can’t vet Alterman’s claim just by taking his word for it, any more than we could subject it to the opinions of like-minded leftists, or conservatives for that matter.  This, because whatever “evidence” any of them might conjure up, it’s going to be tainted by their own subjective view of the world, by their ideological IDs, so to speak.

One way, perhaps, of getting around this problem is by looking at whatever evidence there is, anecdotal or scientific, indicating that Republicans themselves feel privileged by the quality of their media coverage, something one would expect to find if Alterman’s claim is true.

Unfortunately for the gentleman’s thesis, Republicans seem not to have gotten the memo. Whether measured by public opinion polls, the public statements of Republican politicians or conservative commentators, or simply by letters to the editor written by Republicans or conservatives, it’s pretty clear that the overwhelming majority feel, much to the contrary, that the media are largely in the camp of Democrats and liberals.

Perhaps, though, there’s another way of looking at this matter.  Call it, depending on your own political leanings, either the “democratic way" or the "way of the marketplace.”  I refer to the percentages of people who, as measured over the years by organizations like Gallup, classify themselves as liberals, conservatives, or moderates.  If, one could argue, these statistics show a much larger number of liberals than conservatives, media coverage of Republican policies might fairly be criticized if it could be shown that such coverage was at the expense of the larger number (of readers and viewers) who are liberals.

As it happens, though, the exact opposite is the case.  As shown by a Gallup poll conducted just last month, conservatives outnumber liberals by two-to-one, and in fact outnumber self-described moderates as well. Even more telling, for purposes of assessing Alterman’s accusation, is the poll’s percentage breakdown of those people who call themselves conservative or very conservative, in contrast with those who say they are liberal or very liberal.

Here are the numbers, as broken down by Gallup’s poll of national adults: Conservative, 30%; Very Conservative, 11%; Liberal, 15%; Very Liberal, 6%.  Apart from the much larger numbers of conservatives vs. liberals, the datum that is uniquely relevant to Alterman’s claim is the tiny percentage of people who consider themselves very liberal.

Why is this important?  Because Alterman, like all of the editorial contributors to The Nation, would admit to being “very liberal,” if not further to the left.  And as shown by the Gallup poll results, very few people share his views!

Seen this way, one can confidently say that whether one believes that the media, in a democracy, should proportionately represent the will of the people, or understands the need for the media, as for-profit businesses, to cater to the majority of their viewers and readers, there is as little evidence that they need to veer further to the left as there is that they need to take instruction from Eric Alterman.

                                  

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.