VOICES
Listen Up, Bias Mongers! The Audience Doesn't Agree
With the start of a new election season, the debate about ideological bias in the news media has come back big time. This perennial issue was not high-profile during the Clinton years. It was hard to tag news organizations as too liberal while they feasted on Bill Clinton scandals. But the Bush presidency and September 11 have changed the landscape of media criticism. We now have Bernard Goldberg's book, Bias, in which he charges his former employer, CBS, and the news media generally, with liberal bias. And then there is Roger Ailes's Fox News — which has become to some the network that provides a conservative point of view for the sake of balance, and pro-American reporting of the war in Afghanistan.
Goldberg's book is a bestseller and Fox News is beating CNN in many prime news markets and among key demographic groups. But broad public opinion about political reporting is more complicated than a perceived liberal bias — and also more condemning.
Pew's national survey in November found that the public image of the news media had improved for the first time in sixteen years in response to the way the terror attacks were covered. Americans held more favorable opinions of the press's professionalism, patriotism, and morality than before September 11. But that poll still found a plurality that thinks the news media are often politically biased.
On the surface this finding, and others like it, would seem to prove public support for Goldberg's charges of bias and Ailes's sense that Americans want more balance in political reporting.
The problem with that assumption is that for most Americans political bias in the media is not partisan or ideological. While a small percentage of the public thinks news organizations favor the liberals, almost as many think the press is biased in favor of the conservatives; and a larger percentage see no ideological or partisan pattern in political bias.
This is true in poll after poll, and has been the case for a very long time. For example, a Gallup poll in the spring of 1998 asked respondents to judge the bias of seven types of news organizations — ranging from network news to local newspapers. On average about 27 percent saw a bias in favor of liberals and 19 percent in favor of conservatives. Thirty-six percent rated the media as fair and impartial, while 18 percent had no opinion on the subject. Two years later, Pew found only slightly more Americans saying that the media coverage of George W. Bush's election campaign was unfair (30 percent), than thought that about coverage of Al Gore's campaign (24 percent). The majority said both campaigns were treated fairly by news organizations. Gallup even found that 63 percent thought that coverage of the hyper-contentious Florida recount was unbiased.
What people often mean when they say the press is biased in its political reporting is that it is biased toward its own self-interest. The media are seen as exploitive, as needlessly stirring political controversy and offering too much contentious punditry. Surveys taken for the ASNE Journalism Credibility Project in 1998 found that 71 percent thought that the cause of bias in television news was a desire for higher ratings, while only 10 percent thought it was due to political bias. Similar answers were given about bias in newspapers.
The news media should not be complacent about the fact that so relatively few people see ideological or partisan bias. But the answer is not to create news outlets that tip in one direction or the other. For all the talk about the impossibilities of achieving objectivity, that is the public's aspiration for the news media. American audiences, except for the most partisan segments, have little appetite for news organizations that tell them only what they want to hear.
A good example is found in attitudes toward coverage of the war on terrorism. While the use of force in Afghanistan had nearly universal support, Pew polls found that a solid majority (64 percent) favored war coverage that is neutral rather than pro-American. An even larger percentage (73 percent) preferred coverage that portrayed all points of view, including those of countries unfriendly to the United States.
Yes, there are enough partisans looking for a cable channel that
provides news from a conservative or a liberal point of view.
But news organizations that hope to appeal to the broad majority
would do well to remember that complaints about bias in the media
usually mean self-interest, not a tilt to the left.
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