C’mon, y’all know the Adlai Stevenson story, right?
Woman in crowd: “You have the vote of every thinking American”
Stevenson: “that’s not enough; we need a majority”
And do we hear about his term in office (though, interestingly enough, there was–way beack when–a VP named Adlai Stevenson)?
IzzyR:
I think you missed some points in the link Gadarene and I both posted. The survey of 444 Washington-based journalists asked for their policy opinions on the following issues: protecting Medicare and Social Security; expanding NAFTA; mandatory employer-provided health insurance; stricter environmental laws; concern over concentrated corporate power; taxing the wealthy; impact of NAFTA; “fast track” trade authority; and government-guaranteed medical care. The responses were compared with responses from polls of the general public on the same questions. The journalists’ responses were more conservative than those of the general public on all the issues except environmental regulation.
I don’t see why you don’t consider “globalization” issues, with their strong impact on the economy and business/labor relations, irrelevant to the question of media bias in the first place; but even if you want to ignore them, there are evidently many other issues on which journalists are not as liberal as you think they are.
Why do you think this? Do you have more influence on what your job is than your boss does? Why do you claim that “what stories to write” is decided by reporters more than by corporate editorial policy, and what’s your evidence for thinking so?
Gadarene: blush Back atcha, honey! But it is kind of amusing to see the soapbox of the Krug and the Fried described as a “liberal newspaper.”
From a European perspective and in my experience of the States, I feel there is nothing whatsoever ‘Liberal’ about the US political parties and very little in the media. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing – or good – but any judgement shouldn’t be made solely on a country’s internal political alignment.
In comparison with Europe now (this being a period of relative first world affluence which tends, in Europe, to get elected even more liberals), the Clinton version of the Democratic Party is as far right as a European electorate would feel comfortable with, IMHO - perhaps too far right. He is by European standards right of centre and (maybe you won’t agree with this but…), seems to habe been in many area’s, somewhere around the same neighbourhood as the Republican Party of Richard Nixon,
It’s interesting that the Post and the NYT tend to position themselves between the Demo’s and Repub’s in the 2 ½ years after an election before they then start acting like a drunk dancing (feet planted but swaying both ways) .
In addition, what was ‘objective, factual’ reporting is then seen to become characterised by the more radical right as ‘liberal’. When was that election ?
Just making the point’s that you’re talking about moving targets, generation to generation, country to country, election cycle to cycle, old style media barons like Beaverbrook to Turner and Murdock… And also that there is not too much ‘Liberalism’ in US politics or the media when compared with ‘pinko lefty’ Europe. It’s all relative, I guess.
That should read, “I don’t see why you don’t consider globalization issues…relevant.”
Kimstu and London Calling: Great responses. I find it difficult to believe that attitudes on globalization, corporate accountability, Wall Street, and business/labor relations wouldn’t affect the tenor of reportage in some significantly illiberal way, especially when paired with the aforementioned profit motive and vested interest in the status quo.
Izzy: I think I see the confusion. You’re cleaving the mainstream Democrats and mainstream Republicans into a liberal/conservative polarity, and that just ain’t the way things are. The Democratic party hasn’t been controlled by liberals–that is, politicians for whom goals of social and economic justice achieved primacy over the interests of business–since the days of FDR, and even then men like Henry Wallace were perceived to be on the fringe. It’s simply inaccurate to state that the Democratic Party is liberal in any practical way. More liberal than the Republicans? Sure, but both parties operate from the same intellectual base most of the time, and the trend has been for the Democrats to move further and further right (vis a vis the DLC, Clinton’s ‘triangulation’, or Dick Morris) on many issues–some of which, like welfare reform, encompass both social and economic concerns. I’d suggest you read Walter Karp’s excellent book Indispensable Enemies, among others, to get a better picture of modern party politics.
To follow up on what London Calling said, too, I’d wager that Teddy Roosevelt was further left on many vital issues than every single one of the members of the so-called “New Democrats.”
Anyway, until we can get our terms straightened out, I think we’re at an impasse. To me, “liberal” and “Democratic” are hardly synonymous. To you, saying that the Democratic Party is mainstream liberal is a fair statement.
By the way, Or’n’ry Oscar, neither Cokie Roberts or Sam Donaldson is exactly my definition of a liberal, nor do I think either of them would appreciate it if you said they were.
I stand by my statement: What most people think of as a liberal media is actually a media which is generally secular.
Kimstu,
Okay, I looked at the link.
Consider the following quote “One of the basic findings of this survey is that most journalists identify themselves as being centrists on both social and economic issues. Perhaps this is why an earlier survey found that they tended to vote for Bill Clinton in large numbers. Clinton’s centrist “new Democrat” orientation combines moderately liberal social policies (which brings criticism from conservative anti-gay, “pro-life” and other activists) with moderately conservative economic policies (which brings criticism from labor unions, welfare rights advocates and others). This orientation fits well with the views expressed by journalists”.
This means that, according to the survey, most journalists are of the type whose political views are closer to those of those of Bill Clinton than those of his Republican opponents. The public, on the other hand, is far more evenly divided. They voted for him. This, to my mind, says all you need to know about this survey. Basically by identifying Bill Clinton as centrist, and Republicans, by implication, as right wing, it turns out that Journalists are centrist themselves. By Pat Buchanan’s perspective, he is mainstream, David Duke is rightwing, and the Republican Party is leftwing. As Gadarene pointed out, there has to be a normative standard to compare to. To my mind, the only standard is the results of numerous elections to all sorts of political offices over the past 20 years. These show public opinion roughly evenly divided between Repubs and Demos. Any group whose voting record significantly differs from this is skewed politically.
The rest is just semantics. To identify this or that issue as conservative or liberal and “prove” that the election results have lied is pointless.
One other point. Who is this group that made the survey? From the partisan language of the survey it did not seem like an unbiased group. If this is indeed the case, I would point out that the surveys of public opinion that they used for comparison were not taken by those who took the survey of journalists, and not taken in the same time period. It is a simple matter for someone to fish around for a survey that best suits their purposes of comparison.
I don’t think they’re irrelevent to the issue of bias - just to the issue of liberal bias.
When Al Gore runs against George Bush, or Hillary against Lazio, everyone knows who is more liberal without asking them what they’re position is on “globalization” issues. No one would call Pat Buchanan, or Ross Perot, more liberal than Al Gore because they oppose NAFTA. By the NORMATIVE use of the terms liberal and conservative, journalists are more liberal than average. To redefine the terms any other way is, as mentioned, a semantics game.
Major decisions, my boss. Minor decisions, me.
I don’t think when a reporter is deciding to write a heartrendering story about a family forced out of the homeless shelter by work requirement rules some corporate biggie is going to interfere based on the chance that by allowing too liberal welfare rules it will ultimately impact corporate interests. And if, whenever reference is made to George Bush’s tax cut plan, the word massive is prefixed, it is not likely that the reporter will get a call from corporate headquarters.
Well, picmr, that settles the whole issue. I can’t argue with you clear-headed reasoning so I will just go back to listening to Rush, being the loser that I obviously am.
Gadarene,
I sent my last post out before I saw your response. So it boils down to a quibble on how to define liberal. Okay. Let’s all agree. The majority of jopurnalists are biased in the direction, on a conservative/liberal scale, of the mainstream Democratic Party positions on most issues. End of debate. Just to let you in on a secret, however. When you hear people complaining about liberal bias, it is because they disagree with you about the definition of the term liberal. So you really agree with those people about the bias part.
Well, color me as absolutely shocked, Zambezi, that you listen to Rush Limbaugh. 
Actually, Rush isn’t that bad–as long as you realize that much of what he says is either deliberately inflammatory or just outright false. You do know that last part, right? As in, he’s prone to making statements which can be objectively refuted? Statements that aren’t a matter of ideological discretion but are just plain factually wrong? It’s amazing, really.
Izzy, I don’t have time at the moment for a longer reply, but I just wanted to point out a passage of yours:
That may be, but it’s no reason to discount globalization as being irrelevant to the question of liberal bias. Have you considered that the reason Gore, Bush, et. al. are all pro-globalization is not that globalization is irrelevant ideologically, but because on this question of ideology they all believe the same thing? Just because no one in the mainstream media deigns to acknowledge that opponents of IMF policies and WTO sovereignty have valid concerns about economic justice (in the words of a Post columnist, “it must by now have occurred to the swifter among you that you don’t possess anything that can coherently be called a cause”) doesn’t mean that dissent on the issue should be relegated to the fringes of political thought. Noam Chomsky and Pat Buchanan, representing the left and the right, oppose unrestrained free trade for very different reasons; the center of both parties, which includes Bush, Clinton, and Gore, support it for similar reasons. In short, support of globalization is a great indicator, usually, of corporatist centrism–a position, not coincidentally, mirrored in the Times and the Post and the Journal.
Gadarene,
In any event, the issue of liberal bias, as understood by most of the people who are debating it, does not concern these issues.
There’s no point in denouncing an issue, only to have it turn out that you have simply redefined the terms.
Gad, how do you know I wasn’t talking about listening to teh Moving Pictures album?
I don’t know that Rush really makes many statements that are objective. Sometimes he will read survey results, or he will read quotes. But honestly, I think 99% of what he says is just opinion. If you agree with those opinions, then Rush is OK. IF you disagree then he is an Ass.
Rush is also a bit paranoid. But I do not think he is any better or worse than the liberal talk show hosts. It is human nature to dislike those with whom one disagrees.
At the risk of sounding slippery, Izzy, that’s my whole point. I haven’t redefined anything–people who are excoriating the media for being ‘liberal’ have a shaky notion of what the term means. Certainly, you’ve helped explain the phenomenon–people believe there’s a liberal media because they equate liberalism with Bill Clinton, because they view globalization as irrelevant to popular ideology, and because they tend not to consider the ramifications of profit-driven corporations owning our networks and newspapers–but you haven’t rendered my point invalid in the least. I’m not the one changing the meaning of the terms: I’m defining liberalism, as practiced by Teddy Roosevelt and FDR, by Louis Brandeis and Thurgood Marshall, by Henry Wallace and Robert Reich, as the elevation of the public above the particular, of the common above the corporate, and of the interests of economic and social justice over the interests of the profit motive; this is hardly a new or shocking parsing of the term. The problem of definition arises because the mainstream press has itself reconfigured the popular perception of the two major parties as being wholly adversarial and as encompassing the entire spectrum of political thought, even as the range of debate on most issues narrows and the Democratic party lurches further to the right. There may have been a time when most Democratic politicians were truly ‘liberal’–progressive, humanist, whatever. That time has passed, and any labelling of the media as liberal in this vein is simply incorrect. If Al Gore Junior has more in common with George Bush Junior than he did with Al Gore Senior, it doesn’t mean that the definition of liberal has changed: it means that the tenor of party leadership has.
IzzyR wrote:
For What it’s worth…
I believe the most important and influential conservative media influence in this country is Readers Digest Magazine.
Thought I throw this out. I believe the word conservative is being incorrectly used also (please correct me if Im wrong). The RDM is just this side of a cristian magazine. Many articles contained in the RD deal with religious conversions (a lot of those thank god for saving me in the midst of adversity…), Getting tougher on Crime (see That’s outrageous) or generally pushing things back to the 50’s. You see very little on the poor, rights, and only occasionally enviormental issues. Where as some people seem to equate conservatism with business interest. As this demonstrates, i think some are equatimg it with morality or religion
Gadarene (and stuffinb),
Words mean what the people who say and hear them think they mean. Nothing more and nothing less. It makes no difference what they once meant, or should mean.
But I take it that there is agreement on the core issue.
Stuffinb,
It is for the reasons you outline that I made my earlier comment.
Why do you say leftist == willing to question? I don’t see the republicans quietly accepting Bill’s assertions that “He didn’t have anything to do with that Monica person.”
And I’d say Talk Radio is right leaning because the current status quo in government is democratic. It’ll change once the Democrats finally lose.
IzzyR:
Not that you’ve clarified for me what you mean by conservative. Then I’d have to agree that by that definition the media has a liberal bias. But I for one don’t think that’s a bad thing. Hijack coming
IMHO, religion belongs in church and morality is a subject open to debate. Let me give you an example:
Slavery was an accepted part of religious life in the OT, and even some southern pastors owned slaves while it was legal in this country. But you’d be hard pressed to find someone who claims slavery is morally correct.
What Im getting at is you can’t legislate morality. When you try you get things like, oh nearly a half million people imprisoned for crimes against themselves, ie the Drug War. The same goes for religion. Establishing some sort of religion in public life, say prayer in schools, runs the risk of people who don’t hold those views being ostracized because of their beliefs or lack thereof.
end of hijack
Interesting assertion, considering that the left really had nothing comparable during the Reagan/Bush reign. And that Limbaugh rose to popularity during Bush’s term.
Izzy:
Not quite the same thing as what we’re talking about, this normalization of language. In deciding whether or not the media demonstrate a liberal bias, it matters a hell of a lot what the word liberal actually means, as opposed to what people think it means. You can say that people believe the media to have a liberal bias, and I’ll obviously agree with you–the point is whether or not this belief is erroneously founded. If you examine the political proclivities of the mainstream press and those of politicians, and compare them to the tenets of modern liberalism, you’ll see that people who believe in a liberal media are mistaken, or are confusing their terms. Secular media, sure. Democratic-leaning media, possibly–depending on the paper or anchor or editor. Liberal? Nope, sorry.
Look at it this way: If Rush Limbaugh, hypothetically speaking, says repeatedly on his show that Bill Clinton is a communist, and millions of people thereafter accept this characterization of Bill Clinton as a communist, despite the actual definition of communism and the dramatic divergence of Bill Clinton’s policies thereof, it does not mean that Bill Clinton is, practically speaking, a communist. It means that those people don’t understand what a communist is.
I’m not disagreeing that the meaning of words can change; I’m just saying that the meaning of this one word hasn’t changed simply because people are misusing it. There’s no liberal bias in the media.
stuffinb:
Are you saying that because you happen to have a particular viewpoint you think it’s not a bad thing if the press in biased in that direction? Hey, maybe the reason you’ve got that viewpoint to begin with is because you influenced by a biased press.
What does this mean exactly?
So what?
Anyway there are many other issues that define liberal/conservative (according to the popular definition). Such as an emphasis on self help and individual responsibility, instead of governmental responsibility, punishment for crime instead of rehabilitation, and others.
Gadarene,
If people actualy begin using the term communist to mean “people like Bill Clinton”, knowing what the true policies of Bill Clinton are, than Bill Clinton will indeed be a communist. Your analogy is flawed because you are assuming that people still use communist to mean what it really means, only they will have been influenced by Rush to falsely believe that Bill Clinton is also like that.
Anyway, it boils down to this. People use the term “liberal” to mean X. People believe the media is biased in favor of X. You acknowledge that the media is biased in favor of X. However, you say that people erroring in calling liberalism X. Semantics.
No I personally don’t belive it’s a bad thing, because I don’t think the media should be playing any role in deciding morality or religion, they should just present the facts. (btw, ftr, when I say media, i mean news and information services primarily)
It means just that. Religion and politics shouldn’t mix. I think history tends to bear that out, otherwise there would be no USA.
So what?
So trying to cram one version of morality down everyone else’s throat is wrong, as morality tends to be fluid. Like my earlier example, religion once condoned slavery now it doesn’t.
Here’s another example. The SBC, recently redefined (or made official again, depending on how you look at it) the role of women in the family and the church, with woman taking a back seat to the man’s leadership role.
Suspose we decided to legisalate that issue to society as a whole. That’s the biblically correct position for women isn’t it, sub-serviant to men? It would set women’s rights back to the early part of this century.
Agreed, but like you said, so what?