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at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater
I would like to thank you all
for giving me this opportunity to speak to you. Off the bat, I would like to say that due to a lack of time,
a lot of my supporting documentation has been left out of this presentation.
You can, though, view the little that I was able to chip off this
iceberg by visiting my Whitewater student website and clicking on my “media
bias”.
In addition, a follow-up study that I led in 2002 is available here.
Throughout
this semester we have talked about the media and it’s role in American
politics. We have touched on
elite theory and the participatory model of democracy, and the media’s
role in these theories. We have
found that people seem to not care about politics, and that this trend
continues on a downward scale. We
have also suggested that the media is one of the major problems contributing
to these factors.
Tonight, I want to offer a
reason why people are becoming disinterested.
I feel that this lack of interest is not necessarily in politics, but
rather, in our entire system as a whole.
The reason is a lack of objectivity in the mainstream, traditional
press, coupled with some issues that I will not address – corruption and
the politics of personal destruction. I
will document a definite liberal bias in the mainstream media, the fact that
the American people see this and are becoming disenfranchised because of a
lack of trust, and offer my personal opinion that this constitutes a serious
problem facing our system today.
National Results Media Results
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This fact strongly suggests
that the Washington media is of a strong liberal leaning.
Evan Thomas, in May 1996, commented on Speaker Newt Gingrich’s
charge that the media has a liberal bias.
He stated: “This is true. There
is a liberal bias. About 85
percent of the reporters who cover the White House vote Democratic.
They have for a long time. Particularly
at the networks, at the lower levels, among the editors and the so-called
infrastructure, there is a liberal bias.”
A Lexis-Nexis search of written
negative labels during the 2000 political conventions found that there was
much more negativism put to Republicans than there was to Democrats.
All news sources gave Republicans four times as many negative
Conservative labels (such as Right Wing or Hard Right) as Liberals were
given negative Liberal labels, totaling 702 to 182.
In addition, Republicans were labeled “Conservative” twice as
many times as Democrats were labeled “Liberal”.
Compare this to the fact that
the Republican convention was given 756 total minutes of network broadcast
coverage while the Democrat convention received 902 minutes.
Worst yet, we can look at the
way the election outcomes were reported in their individual states.
Al Gore won by six percent or more in 11 states.
Each of these states was called by the networks immediately after the
polls closed. On the other hand, George Bush won by the same margin in 9
states and the networks delayed them all from 25 minutes to three and a
quarter hours. And let’s not
forget that Florida was called for Gore 8 minutes before their polls in the
panhandle even closed.
A study conducted for the Media
Research Center by professor William C. Adams, in 1984, found that “both
CBS News and NBC News called the Republican party, its platform, or its
dominant leaders by conservative labels 113 times. They called the Democrats by liberal labels 21 times.”
This is the year that Ronald Reagan won re-election in a landslide
with 60 percent of the popular vote while the San Francisco Democratic
convention was shown in polls at the time to strike most Americans as too
far to the left.
Aside from being a member of
the Ku Klux Klan in his early years in life, Robert Byrd (Democrat), in a
Fox News interview in early March, 2001, used the phrase “white nigger”
several times.
Virtually no outrage was
expressed from the media, much like when Jesse Jackson called New York “Hymie-Town.”
Even Democrats and a spokesman from the NAACP say that had Jesse
Helms, a Republican from North Carolina, uttered these words, there would be
a massive call for expulsion and retirement.
Newt Gingrich, in 1994, tried
to accept a $4.5 million advance from Rupert Murdoch to write a book.
With intense pressure from the media, he bowed to political pressures
and only accepted a $1 advance with standard royalties.
Hillary Clinton, in December 2000, accepted an $8 million advance
from Simon & Schuster (owned by the media giant, VIACOM) for the same
reason. Unlike Newt, there was
minimal spotlight concentrating on the ethics of the deal, and she kept the
money and bought her home in New York.
There is definitely a liberal bias in the media.
It is not planned; it simply permeates because journalists let their
own views influence how they filter what reaches their customers.
As the news cycle has shrunk, the media simply says what they want.
They no longer report.
Bernard Goldberg, CBS
News correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, in February 1986, wrote:
“There are lots of reasons fewer people are watching network news, and one
of them, I’m more convinced than ever, is that our viewers simply don’t
trust us. And for good reason.
“The old argument that
the networks and other ‘media elites’ have a liberal bias is so
blatantly true that it’s hardly worth discussing anymore.
No, we don’t sit around in dark corners and plan strategies on how
we’re going to slant the news. We
don’t have to. It comes
naturally to most reporters.”
To deny the bias is simply
pandering to a left-leaning agenda. One
can argue that it does not exist, because, contrary to the mountain of
evidence that exists, and as reported by the Washington Post, there was a
total of $110.4 million spent investigating Bill Clinton’s administration
and his scandals; with the
media covering a lot of it. I
would disagree. At a time when
much more important crimes had been committed, from the selling of plots in
Arlington National Cemetery to the selling of arms to Iran and technology to
China; to Cattlegate to Whitewatergate; and his plethora of other scandals,
the media focused on the sex. Not
even his lying under oath, just the sex.
Something that Americans do not feel is a crime.
There is a bias in the
media. A Gallup poll of over 1000 adults in early December found that public
confidence in the accuracy of the news media was at a record low.
Two-thirds polled said that the news media does not get their facts
straight and that the information we get cannot be trusted.
The same poll found that 45 percent feel that the news media is
biased.
This proves to be a
problem for the mainstream television and print media, but beneficial for
alternate sources of news (like the internet and the Fox News Network which
is pummeling CNN in ratings). Informed
people will stay informed, and they will do what they must in order to.
I am not whining about the
bias. Nor am I suggesting that
conservatives use it as an argument in the war for public opinion. To do so simply makes one appear to be crying that he cannot
win in the current political climate. I
just want to point out the fact that it does exist, and that it is a large
reason that individuals are becoming more apathetic to the mainstream news.
They lack a high degree of trust in what they see on television, and
therefore, lack trust in the system as a whole.
One could argue that it is not
actually a liberal leaning press, but the fact that journalists lack the
time needed to make an objective argument with research and documentation.
That they have to live by ten second sound-bites to remain
competitive. But the simple
fact is that liberal elite’s are never questioned by the main-stream
press. Look at Jesse
Jackson’s finances and Al Sharpton’s racist comments compared to someone
like Clarence Thomas or Bob Livingston or Bob Packwood or the people of Bob
Jone’s University. Liberal
elite’s are never questioned about their ethics or double standards.
The decade of the 80’s is constantly bombarded by liberals and the
mainstream media never
questions the statements. There
is a definite liberal bias.
Until this issue is addressed
with sincerity, the problem will get worse.
Faith in the system and objectivity will corrode, and our great
republic runs the danger of turning into a real-life Animal Farm, with
citizens uneducated, ignorant, and apathetic.
In closing, for anybody
who loves American politics as much as I do, I would like to leave a seed in
your mind to ponder over the coming summer.
We have talked about the
bell curve in the last few weeks and its importance in the political arena
in regards to particular political action groups and policymaking.
With respect to the definition
of “center” remaining
constant, is it possible, with persistent bombardments from a willing media
establishment . . . and smart political leaders in one party or another, for
the bell curve to be moved in one direction?
Thank you for your time.
September 11, 2001
Never Forget
God Bless America
I Pledge Allegiance
To the Flag
Of the United States of America
And to the Republic
For which it Stands
One Nation
Under God
Indivisible
With Liberty
And Justice
For All