Fairly Balance ... Yourself

By: Matthew Felling
Topics: Media Issues

(CBS/AP)

The San Francisco Bay Guardian has come out again with its yearly list of ten stories "censored" by the mainstream media – or, to the bloggers out there, the 'traditional media.'

While it goes without saying (so instead of saying it, I'll write it), the stories are left-of-center oriented: secret trade agreements, slave labor in Iraq and something about the neoliberal invasion in India. (Though, to its credit, the Guardian decided to take down one of its brethren and criticize The Nation in a companion piece.)

It's mostly an ideological exercise, this list. But since one man's "censorship" or "bias" is another man's "editorial discretion," I always find these lists interesting. It's one thing for an ideologue to cry bias over this story or another, but it's far more productive to offer a solution or an alternative. 'Biased' isn't synonymous with 'wrong,' after all. And these sorts of pieces – whether from the right or the left – can serve a purpose, as long as we read them knowing the author's agenda.

I felt the same thing with a piece earlier this week from conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg, who argued the point that the media got the Hurricane Katrina story so, so wrong due to its liberal leanings:

The Washington Post proclaimed in a banner headline that New Orleans was "A City of Despair and Lawlessness" and insisted in an editorial that "looters and carjackers, some of them armed, have run rampant." … the distortions, exaggerations and flat-out fictions being offered by New Orleans officials were accelerated and amplified by the media echo chamber.

It was as though journalistic skepticism of government officials was reserved for the White House, and everyone else got a free pass.

The deluge in New Orleans elicited a deluge of wish fulfillment in the media, as though the hurricane was a biblical sign that something was very wrong in George W. Bush's America.

While I disagree with some of what Goldberg puts out there in this piece – alarmist media in the wake of a hurricane, maybe .. but liberal bias? – I think it's a sound reminder that stories should be checked and double-checked even when Mother Nature gets in the way.

But it's important to acknowledge that the Guardian's and Goldberg's views speak to sizable constituencies. (As a pre-emptive response: Yes, the former's expose is more robust.) And that one of the major obstacles to a truly informed debate in America today is that, all too often, we treat newsmedia like comfort food. We seek out information, opinions or angles that don't challenge us too much. Every once in awhile, it's healthy for us to give ourselves a media workout.

If you're a Rush listener, try Ed Schultz. If you like Keith Olbermann's take, change channels afterwards and see what Sean Hannity has to say. Likewise, if you see something coming down the pipe that looks like the "Censored" list or Goldberg's liberal media smoking gun -- and you initially resist it -- don't dismiss it offhand.

Until we push ourselves out of our media comfort zone, we risk continuing to argue past each other -- us of the by-now-trite 'red' and 'blue' Americas --wearing blinders and not connecting at all. So even if you like your blinders and feel intellectually justified in wearing them, don't be afraid to swivel your head once in awhile to get a fuller view.

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by romperroom2 September 7, 2007 8:21 PM EDT: CBS news could push itself out of its media comfort zone by relocating its newsroom HQ out of Manhattan to a place such as St. Louis or Little Rock. In NYC, conservative ideas are not only scarce, but are frowned upon.

By getting away from the Manhattan cocktail circuit and the city''s suffocating political correctness, CBS newsers could remove their blinders, swivel their heads, get a fuller view, and connect with the real world.

(Thanks for letting me borrow those metaphors)

All kidding aside, it would improve CBS''s reporting.; Reply to this comment


by one_american September 7, 2007 4:38 PM EDT: "Until we push ourselves out of our media comfort zone..."

In case you have missed the message all along, Matthew Felling, that is EXACTLY what the general public is asking YOU and your fellow CBS liberals to do - to stop being complacent by allowing yourselves to continue with the same-old liberally-biased attacks on conservatives that you have been pushing since the days of Edward R. Murrow.

It has to stop now, and the end has to start with the media before America can heal the divide.; Reply to this comment


by mattcat25 September 7, 2007 1:42 PM EDT: I was always told to read 2 or 3 newspapers and, I did found it interesting to see the different way people reported the exact same facts. A lot of the time the largest divergence I noticed was between Male and Female writers.

Today, with our ubiquitous instant media technology, and even future reporting taking place, it is more of a task to consistently absorb as much as possible to distinguish actual facts from reporting conjecture.

As for the non-active participating news audience that seem to only want to hear comfort feel-good reporting, the Chinese have a proverb "You can%u2019t wake a man that is pretending to sleep".; Reply to this comment


by memekiller September 6, 2007 10:32 PM EDT: Questions of bias are an existential exercise. When you call Pollack and O''Hanlon converted war critics, are you dupes or fiends? I don''t know. I don''t care. It doesn''t matter why fake war critics get a bunch of free air time while folks actually risking their lives fighting this war have their criticisms ignored. It%u2019s dysfunctional, regardless. I don''t see you as comfort food. I tune in to find out what%u2019s going on. I need you to dig a little deeper and not just give a lot of air time to a ruse the flacks are pushing. I need you to tell me the relevant facts: is Patreus writing this report, or Bush? Is it accurate?

I mean, after all the damage the media did to their reputations with Bush''s war, I can''t believe you''d bank your reputations AGAIN on this shell game.

As for suggestions: if someone uses your show to inject disinformation into the media bloodstream, follow up next week with a "fact check". If your tip turns out to be baseless slander, be a little more skeptical next time. If the flacks are pushing O''Hanlon, look to see if there''s a third guy who was there the bookers aren''t pushing. Look to see if they were actually ever critics. Report other studies that are far more credible yet contradict these kabuki stage directions. If someone has a pattern of lying, stop giving them the benefit of the doubt. Stop assuming the best, when the past hundred times the reality has been far, far worse than you told us.

We''re telling you so. Again.; Reply to this comment


by rray52 September 6, 2007 9:16 PM EDT: Nice idea, but a little late. For too many people their ideology is their faith, their religion. Having bought into the belief, they are emotionally invested in it. Logic doesn%u2019t apply. Their team is good, the opponents are evil. Have you ever tried to have a conversation with a true believer? Not very receptive to a deferent point of view are they. Unfortunately their numbers appear to be growing.; Reply to this comment