Is the Media Fair? -- The Misanthrope's Perspective

In the United States today we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H Club—the "hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history."
Spiro T. Agnew (1918 - 1996), U.S. vice-president

Are American journalists reporting national news fairly? No. The Misanthrope believes the media actually leans right or even nationalistic in its coverage of politics. Conservatives know this and realize that by bashing the media as liberal they are cut more slack.

“I admit it,” William Kristol said, “The liberal media were never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures.” It is this myth of the liberal media that empowers conservatives to control debate in the United States to the point where liberals cannot even hope for a fair shake anymore.

However, the problem is that people do not know the definition of news. Let’s take David versus Goliath as a metaphor for this example. Goliath beating David is no big deal it is expected. Goliath squashing every David that comes by eventually becomes a business success story. Everybody loves a winner. A reporter will eventually look at the situation and asks questions about why Goliath is beating all the Davids. The reporter looks to see if there are unfair business practices taking place. Goliath knows that a reporter is snooping around and will mount a campaign saying that the reporter already has an agenda and is looking for ways to support it. The people who love a winner and the people profiting from Goliath will also rally around behemoth. The reporter is labeled liberal, the reports are discounted, and the people continue to pay hirer prices because there is no competition.

It’s unfortunate but the mass public has shown little to no interested in serious news, whether there is too little time or they feel that it doesn’t matter anyway, but in either case there is someone willing to take advantage of that apathy.

As far as the war on Iraq, all the media wanted to side with President George W. Bush and the media blindly went along rather than research or question what was going on. It was difficult for the media too, because Bush used access and favoritism against reporters that didn’t side with the administration. He still has not met for an interview with a New York Times reporter. As a result of not having a strong enough media, or citizens who care enough, we are once again stuck in a war quagmire where thousands of people on both sides are dying unnecessarily.

Honest journalists are rarely appreciated by the citizens they serve, even less so by those on which they report. Large corporate entities own the major media and they are in the business of packaging news in order to sell advertising. The public will ultimately get what it wants, hence the rise of poor journalism and the rise of people and agencies that know how to manipulate the press to their advantage. A recent case in point is the Armstrong Williams case, we can expect much more such corporate and government agenda-pushing reporting.

(resource: What Liberal Media? The Truth About BIAS and the News By Eric Alterman; 2003 Basic Books)