EVERY NOW and then a liberal apologist will come along and try to convince the public that the mainstream American media does not present a liberal bias. The truth is evident, however; the liberal media is alive and well within this country. As the viewpoints belonging to the mainstream press continue to shift away from the rest of society, a negative backlash will no doubt appear.
Some will claim that the media certainly could not be biased because they enjoyed criticizing Clinton nearly as much as they criticize President Bush. To this I will concede the point that the media is sensationalist and negative, but they are also liberally biased. The sensationalist press of course could not resist a scandal based on oral sex, but at the same time the liberal media let other transgressions slide. While the press ate up every detail of the sex scandal, Clinton's nearly unilateral actions in Kosovo were not met with the same fever that the most recent war has been met with. Various reports indicate that as many as 2,000 innocent Serbs were killed, and Clinton's bombing only accelerated the ethnic cleansing. Such facts were notably absent from the "unbiased" pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post.
The sensationalist and negative press prey upon the war in Iraq today, and the existence of much bad news does not alone prove the existence of a liberal press. However, it is in what is not reported where we clearly see the bias. A recent government report detailed that housing prices in downtown Baghdad have doubled in recent months -- a sign that the Iraqis are confident in the future of their new country. Such positive signs are not reported. One would think that a sensationalist media would have no problem referring to the enemy as the enemy; the people that we are fighting are referred to as "opposition forces" and "illegal militias." The press refuses to correctly delineate the radical Islamic terrorists that we are fighting as the enemy.
So where does this bias come from? A new study shows that the members of the media themselves are far left of the general public. The report was released by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. The results were not shocking, but firmly illustrated a bias in the mainstream media. One-third of the national press described themselves as liberal versus a mere 7 percent who identified themselves as conservative (the remainder described themselves to be moderate). This is out of line with the rest of the country (20 percent liberal, 33 percent conservative) but does not quite illustrate the full degree of the problem.
Many self-described moderate members of the media hold viewpoints far to the left of the rest of the public. Nearly 60 percent of the public believes that one must believe in God to be moral; only 6 percent of the national press agrees. A full 88 percent of the national press believes that homosexuality should be accepted by society while only 51 percent of the rest of society agrees.
Even more striking than the fact that the members of the media are significantly left of center is the fact that the liberals within the media are so caught up with their own agenda that they cannot see the liberal bias.
Nearly 70 percent of self-described conservatives could identify a news outlet that was "especially conservative" (Fox News and the Wall Street Journal topped the list) and the same percentage could identify one that was "especially liberal." (The New York Times and CNN topped this list) Of the self-described liberals, 79 percent could identify a conservative news organization, yet only 24 percent were able to identify an especially liberal news organization. The liberals within the media are so caught up in their agenda that they do not even recognize it.
With regard to the war on terror and the president, only 8 percent of the national media thinks that the media has been too critical of the president. Thirty-four percent of the public thinks that Bush has been treated unfairly. This is indicative of a growing trend of negativism and anti-Americanism within the press.
As the viewpoints of the media become more and more out of line with that of the public, a backlash will become inevitable. Already polls show the majority of Americans believe that the media is liberally biased; it will not be long before Americans actively seek out news sources that are closer in line with their own political beliefs.
Daniel Bagley is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. He can be reached at dbagley@cavalierdaily.com.
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