The Shield of Achilles: American Journalists Under Scrutiny [Updated]

"Hooked on News" by Karenwithak

Since I was just on the subject of BBC bias, here's a similar and downright amazing article from MSNBC about journalists in the United States. One reporter named Bill Dedman digs into the donor history of 144 colleagues, and finds that between 2004-2007, about 88% of them donated to Democrats or their political causes, while only 12% of them to Republicans or conservative causes. He makes an attempt to contact each one to question them about it, and some of their responses are downright hilarious. For example:

(D) New York Daily News, Matthew Roberts, photographer, $404 to John Kerry in March 2004.

Update: Roberts called to say, "It doesn't sound like this is going to be a positive story. This sort of story could not possibly be positive for me, so I'm not going to respond. Good luck. Goodbye."

I agree this is a problem, and that most of the US mainstream media is biased toward leftist ideology. However, Republicans are not being deliberately "shut out" of the process. The actual reason why this happens is entirely different than what most conservatives believe.

This isn't the first time this has been observed. For decades, studies of journalists who vote in US elections overwhelmingly support Democratic candidates (go here for a very good breakdown).

In the US, Fox News is the exception. It leans slightly to the political right, and is at the top of the ratings as well. Why is that? The answer is very simple. As the only conservative television news network, they have something different to offer viewers. ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN are all essentially competing for the same audience.

So why doesn't someone start up a "neutral" network without any political biases? I would consider this sheer heaven, but it's already been tried, and just does not work. Humans are imperfect, and their prejudices show up in everything they do. Such a network would still slightly drift one way or the other eventually, and in time the public will label it either left or right wing, and they would probably be right. Keep in mind that Fox News actually only very slightly leans to the right, while the other networks lean to the left rather slightly as well (anyone who thinks Fox News is a radical right-wing site can go to Michael Savage's web site for comparison, and anyone who thinks CNN is communist can to go check out the Indymedia and tell me what you find).

Even a web site like "Factcheck.org" that bends over backwards to be as fair as possible and not to favor one political party over another, still can't help certain biases on specific issues. For example, I noticed on any issue relating to civil tort reform, they side heavily with trial lawyers over doctors, businesses, or insurance companies. Here's a recent example where they take issue with an ad over lawsuit abuse. They take the ad to task accusing it of not separating abusive from non-abusive suits. But the problem is, the only way you can prove a lawsuit was abusive is in court, in which case the lawsuit would have been thrown out (in other words, it wouldn't count as a suit). They also make a blatant error here as well. They claim:

"the same [Tillinghast] study estimates the cost of all lawsuits at the lowest level in 10 years."

But the study didn't say that. It said the growth of tort costs was at it lowest level. The actual costs are still quite higher than previous years. If you don't believe me you can check this yourself on p.12 of the study.

In any case, I'm digressing. The point is, no matter how hard they try, no network can be totally free from bias. The best they can do is have open and regular discussion of the issue, and get rid of the few journalists who refuse to even make an attempt at impartiality.

But what is the reason for liberal domination of the press? Is it because they can't stand other points of view? Are they engaged in a conspiracy to silence conservatives? No.

To conservatives, I say: this is YOUR fault. How many of you chose to study journalism? Or even writing? When you complain about the preponderance of leftists in the University and in Hollywood, you similarly need to ask yourselves - how many of you decided to pursue a career in education, particularly in the social sciences? How many of you decided to get into acting, modeling, directing or scriptwriting?

In my experience, most of you went into more stable, less esoteric careers instead. Many into business or business related fields, but also plenty of computer science, engineering, law, medicine, or the military. Of course, there is nothing wrong with any of those professions, but the fact remains that for the dearth of conservative journalists you have no one to blame but yourselves. And yes, I know, I didn't become a journalist - I joined the military instead. Well, first, I am not a conservative in the sense most people see it, but in any case, I hope I'm partially tipping the balance with this weblog. I also hope to take up teaching after I retire. We'll see.

I remember many years ago, my boyhood hometown newspaper, the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, bemoaned a disturbing study that said the military was overwhelmingly conservative in outlook. The irony is that the same newspaper is overwhelmingly leftist in outlook, and didn't see any problem with that at all.

Incidentally, if you are curious about exactly where you are on the political spectrum, here is one tool to help you do it, the "Political Compass". It puts me almost squarely in the middle, so maybe that means that I am almost free from bias. I can only hope.

Update 06/26/2007 01:36:00PM: Courtesy of Gateway Pundit:

[Documentary] Producer Martyn Burke said this during the airing of the special on the liberal agenda at PBS:

The first thing they (PBS) told me- "Fire your partners... Because they are conservatives."