Liberal bias
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"Liberal bias," or "liberal media," in American political discourse, are common phrases used to explain that the American media generally has a liberal bias. This phrase is often used to summarize allegations that a left-wing agenda is promoted because of a "slant" or "spin" in news. In particular, the targets of this phrase are often the network news stations of CBS, ABC, and NBC, as well as major newspapers and newswires, especially New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, and others.
People who use the phrase "liberal bias" believe that liberal biases are evident in both the choice (what stories are favored, or "played," over others) and coverage (how stories are research, portrayed, and presented). Others seriously dispute this, with some claiming that there is a conservative bias.
Claims of "liberal biases" prevail mainly in the American media; however, some prominent figures on the right-wing in Britain have also claimed that the British media is left-wing, in particular the publicly funded BBC.
History
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One of the earliest claims that liberal bias dominates the media dates back to November 1969, when then-Vice President Spiro Agnew made a landmark speech denouncing media influence on politics.1
Particularly from the 1990s onwards, some American conservatives have increasingly voiced their perception that liberals dominate the American mass-media and correspondingly that the mass-media presents a liberal point of view. Many see this argument as "attacks" on print and television, and deny any such bias. Liberals, meanwhile, view these statements as attempts to intimidate the media.
Among the chief complaints from American conservatives is that the US media allegedly tends to present issues in a very personality-driven way, in which the personalities of politicians are focused on more than the actual issues. They allege that the media routinely portrays Republicans in an unflattering light, often making them appear stupid and bumbling. Ronald Reagan, Dan Quayle, and George W. Bush are often cited as leading victims of unfair media portrayal. The Media Research Council is a conservative organization devoted to exposing purported liberal bias in the media.
Several conservative authors have written books on liberal bias in the media:
- Bernard Goldberg wrote Bias in 2001, rehashing and expanding on an op-ed piece about "liberal bias" at CBS, which was then his employer.
- Bob Kohn wrote Journalistic Fraud giving copious examples of what he called bias, from the pages of the New York Times.
- Ann Coulter wrote Slander in 2002, in which she cited examples of liberal bias in American television and print news due to what she viewed as an over-representation of ex-Democrats in positions of media power.
Opposing views
Liberals often heatedly deny that they, or the institutions they supposedly dominate, harbor or exhibit any such bias -- maintaining instead that it is conservatives who are biased.
Critics of the concept of liberal bias argue that it is largely invention of the conservative right. They point to the control of most media outlets by wealthy individuals and institutions who are virtually all right in political orientation and whose interests tend to coincide closely to that of the U.S. government. Moreover, they say, both the print and broadcast media survive from advertising revenues, which makes the media rely to an extent on corporations. Critics also point to the worldwide perception that US media is more right-wing than most other democracies, and less likely to challenge an official position than most other countries' media.
Certain neoconservatives, such as Irving Kristol, have said that the charge of "liberal bias" has been exaggerated for rhetorical purposes.
Eric Alterman, author of What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News in one of those who argues against any significant liberal bias. Reviewer John Moe sums up Alterman's views:
- "The conservatives in the newspapers, television, talk radio, and the Republican party are lying about liberal bias and repeating the same lies long enough that they've taken on a patina of truth. Further, the perception of such a bias has cowed many media outlets into presenting more conservative opinions to counterbalance a bias, which does not, in fact, exist." [1]
The article 'spiking' contains an account by film critic Roger Ebert in which a reporter from the Tom Brokaw news show approaches a story with preconceived conservative bias.
It can often be seen that foreign news agencies break US anti-conservative news stories before the domestic press. For example when the BBC ran allegations that the state of Florida had been over-aggressive about removing alleged criminals from the voter register, no US news agency ran the story.
Notes
1 The speech is available here.