Liberal Media, Conservative Failings . . .
Posted on October 12th, 2009
by Clark Stooksbury |
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On Friday, Matt Welch linked to a Columbia Journalism Review article imploring journalists to “Own its Liberalism.” The most interesting part comes at the end:
Although it is the subject for another essay, the fact is that there are very few good conservative reporters. There are many intellectually impressive conservative advocates and opinion leaders, but the ideology does not seem to make for good journalists. In contrast, any examination of the nation’s top reporters over the past half-century would show that, in the main, liberals do make good journalists in the tradition of objective news coverage. The liberal tilt of the mainstream media is, in this view, a strength, but one that in recent years, amid liberal-bias controversies, has been mismanaged. (emphasis added)
Movement conservatives have been complaining about media bias for as long as I can remember, and I have even joined in at times. It only recently occurred to me, however, that the cons never seem to look at liberal bias as a product of their own failing. Why do so few conservatives become reporters and why are rightwing news outlets second rate, at best? The Washington Times has been around for more than twenty-five years but I rarely hear of it breaking an important story. Pajamas Media and its spawn, PJTV deal almost exclusively in opinion, and they aren’t very good at that. The CJR article appeared because the Times was slow picking up on the ACORN expose of Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website. But while the Times was ignoring a story of middling importance at best, it was at work on a lengthy and far more important story about food safety:
The frozen hamburgers that the Smiths ate, which were made by the food giant Cargill, were labeled “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties.” Yet confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.
Using a combination of sources — a practice followed by most large producers of fresh and packaged hamburger — allowed Cargill to spend about 25 percent less than it would have for cuts of whole meat.
Although agribusiness is deeply involved with big government, I don’t expect one of Breitbart’s operations to do this sort of investigation because it would be too expensive and there are no obvious ideological benefits to right wingers: Republicans are as much or more in bed with agribusiness as Democrats and discussing food safety tends to lend credence to environmentalists. That is one big reason why, with all of their faults, I hope that the Times and other MSM outlets keep going and I could care less if the pay attention to the investigative product of the rightwing blogosphere.
Filed under: Conservatism, media
Dear Mr Stooksbury,
Seriously, are you serious? You concentrate on the Washington Times and Breitbart’s BigGovie like they are the only conservative news outlets in existence.
Have you forgotten the highly influential and wildly successful Wall Street Journal or the up an coming Washington Examiner?
AmCon is a great read “sometimes.” However, with pieces like this I am often left to wonder if you guys don’t suffer from just a little bit of journalistic and blogging envy.
I think there’s a little bit of a false dichotomy being set up in this defense of the Times. It’s not as though they have one reporter on staff and he’s agonizing over whether to cover this (huge) food safety story or this (big) ACORN story.
The Times should be praised for doing investigative reporting into dirty food, and I think it’s wonderful that they devote so many resources to breaking such stories, but they have a Washington, DC beat, too, and I’m willing to bet that they ran a good many trivial, nondescript, lazy stories in between the breaking of the ACORN sting and their acknowledgment of it.
Similarly, if the shoe had been on the other foot, I think it’s plausible to suppose they might have gotten to it faster.
Two, or maybe one, cheer for the NYT
Is there anything rightwing about the WSJ other than its worst part—the oped page? Not as far as I can tell. I’m still waiting for journalistic greatness from the Washington Examiner. Perhaps Mike can give me some examples.
You wrote, “It only recently occurred to me, however, that the cons never seem to look at liberal bias as a product of their own failing. Why do so few conservatives become reporters and why are rightwing news outlets second rate, at best.” There was a time when Right-Wing investigative journalism was second to none. That, changed beginning with the Reagan Administration. Exposing lefties and left-government gave way influencing friendly administrations.
As to conservatives becoming reporters; what makes you think that conservatives survive in today’s newsrooms, or be hired in the first place? The press today is largely a monoculture like the academy. Given its small size, the conservative press labors under the knowledge that the MSM will always ignore or downplay their findings, confident in the knowledge that they are the real arbiters of what’s important to know.
That said, you’re right that there is too much opinion and not enough shoe-leather reporting from the right.
Near as I can tell, here at The American Conservative blogsite, we run about 1/3 each:
- Conservatives with some Republican sympathies
- Conservatives that are anti-war, anti-republican, anti-Rush, anti-Bush, anti-Palin, and picture themselves as the “leets”, complaining that they have no power
- A mixture of Libs, more likely to comment (or even author the thread), split between the stealths who pretend to be conservative, and the openly-lib folks, some sincere, and some here simply to spread their snark and tear down anything that seems successfully conservative.
While this third group as twice as vocal as the others, I suspect the demographics of readership are pretty evenly split between the 3 main groups.
Actors, neer-do-wells from rich families (I DIDN’T say ALL rich people), teachers who came from academic rather than business backgrounds, politicians who have never worked in business, Hollywood folks who have never owned a business, and newspaper people (editors and columnists) who have never run a business… All these are the natural breeding grounds for LIBERALS. Take intellect, add nobility, a bit of dishonesty, and a desire to centralize decision-making so they can impress their “nobility” upon others, and codify it into law.
Our job as conservatives, is to educate these others about the unintended consequences and slowness to react of central-planning. The tendency to kill personal incentive of the socialist systems. And the denial of God-given (or philosophy that sees superiority in human-ness, and equality of all persons’) rights, that is a hallmark of the “leets” that would put rules on the populus that they think are inherently theirs to command (while often excusing themselves from those same rules).
We on the right must remember to cherish the LEFT for it’s attempts to remind us that unfettered individuality can allow corruption of politicians and people in power (ie. big corporations, military, or big money). With the impending death of the Forth Estate, we bloggers must step up and cover that necessary function of government and communication.
Is there anything rightwing about the WSJ other than its worst part—the oped page? Not as far as I can tell.
You can tell right. People point this out all of the time; I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone even try to refute it.
I, for one, would welcome a conservative version of TPM, for example. Their political slant is worn plainly on their sleeves, but at the same time they are the real journalistic deal and base their opinions on the facts that are out there. One is free to agree or disagree with the commentary but there’s no denying their work ethic and basic integrity. In other words, I think that they *earned* their spot in the WH press corps and ‘bravo’ to them.
It’s easy (sorry, TAC, it’s true) to be a commentator. Opinions come easily to us all. If all that you do with the news is *react* to it instead of *reporting* it, then an important dialogue goes missing, to the detriment of all.
My $0.02,
mongo
“Liberal Media”? WTF.
How anyone can continue to use that phrase with a straight face after witnessing a whole eight years of stary-eyed fluffing directed at the most corrupt, partisan and failure-ridden Administration in modern American history just boggles my mind.
The American Media of today exists to carry water for the Republican Party, with a side order of depicting anything to the left of your average Blue Dog Democrat as crazy and out of the mainstream. They’ll continue to do so as long as their paymasters tell them to, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
I would say the MSM are certainly culturally liberal, with heapings of cultural Marxism on the side. The business media is at times more conservative, but that “conservatism” didn’t stop it from supporting America’s blundering into Iraq and other Mideast wars, for example.
Virtually ALL American MSM are soft-authoritarian centralizers, except the “conservative” media pretends to be otherwise when the country is being run by Democrats.
Today’s MSM generally reflects the ignorance and failure of generations of Christians and Americans to put the brakes on corrupt and greedy centralizing forces, which from the days of FDR have clearly trended towards Big Brother — on the Right via the military industrial/war profiteering complex and Wall Street banking interests, and on the Left via Wall Street banking interests and the welfare state. (Remember, it was bankers like Schiff that underwrote the Communist coup in Russia; Big Government can be a very profitable enterprise if you’re a “made” guy. That’s why Murdoch will regularly cozy up to “liberals” when it suits his business interests.)
The decline of the MSM into banal ignorance reflects America’s utter abandonment of the Constitution, which was designed, in part, to prevent inherently coercive and, when unchecked, corrupting government from taking over the role in society of moral authority.
The MSM is generally comprised of Big Government boot lickers who, even when they have done good investigative work to discover a problem, inevitably prescribe bigger government as the solution.
First off Stooksie, in reference to the Washington Examiner I am speaking about its potential. And I was correcting you on the fact that their are other viable news sources which are conservative, viable, reliable,and successful.
Nevertheless I will happily indulge you with some examples of its prowess and potential for solid investigative reporting.
1) Timothy Carney scooping the NY Times on Edward Liddy, CEO of AIG, owning about 3 million bucks in Goldman Sachs stock. The Examiner released the story on April 9 the NYT on April 16th.
2) The Examiner’s reporting back in May that at least half of the countries’ major Union pensions were underfunded.
3) They were one of the first to report on ACORN’s and other left wing advocacy groups could being eligible for receiving billions in federal aid because of the “stimulus package.”
There are many other examples of this little pub’s tough conservative-minded reporting. Maybe you should try reading it once in awhile.
On the WSJ not being severely conservative tilted, are you kidding me?!?!?!? Let’s just look at today’s headlines, non-oped.
1) Rage at Government for Doing Too Much and Not Enough
2) U.K. Considers Privatizations to Cut Its Debt
U.K. Considers Privatizations to Cut Its Debt
3) Pelosi Key to GOP 2010 Playbook
Oh and wait there is the very small fact that they have been owned by News Corp, which is owned by Ruppert Murdoch, since mid-2007.{sarc on} And we all know that Murdoch aboslutely despises anything remotely resembling Right-Wing populism. {sarc off} Lol.
Peace, Paleos!
Love,
The Burkeans
Ooops, forgot to add my Examiner and NYT links in the first example.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/TimothyCarney/AIG-heads-3M-in-Goldman-stock-raises-apparent-conflict-of-interest-42779802.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/business/17liddy.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
It’s easy (sorry, TAC, it’s true) to be a commentator. Opinions come easily to us all. If all that you do with the news is *react* to it instead of *reporting* it, then an important dialogue goes missing, to the detriment of all.
TAC might be more or less a journal of comment, but they do actual reporting and break real stories. You can google [Vlahos + Burn pits] for recent confirmation,and if you don’t want to do that, you can read this month’s cover story, which also brings new information into print.