Disposable Media
Memo to Matthew Furman: When 68% of your potential audience doesn’t trust you, you don’t have any reason to brag.
Now, to give Furman his due, while CNN’s trust numbers are horrible, they’re still miles beyond a couple of old-line news stalwarts. CBS News shuffles in at only 24% credibility, and the New York Times stumbles across the finish line at only 21%–and that’s among all the people surveyed. When the numbers were broken down along partisan lines, things got much, much worse.
Only 15% of Republicans believe what they see on CBS News. The numbers are scarcely better for NBC (16%) and ABC (17%). The Times clocks in at an unsurprising by still pathetic 14%. CNN easily tops all of the above, but still slides to 26%. According to the Pew analysis, “CNN’s once dominant credibility ratings have slumped in recent years, mostly among Republicans and independents.”
Look folks, this is a Big Deal, and I’m not even talking about media bias per se.
For all intents and purposes, more than half of the populace (everybody except partisan Democrats, and even their numbers for credibility are nothing for most of the press to brag about) has written off the vast majority of the national press. And they’re doing so because they believe that the press has written them off.
Things have gotten to the point where the President of the United States sees no reason not to ignore the networks and the New York Times. If the coin of your realm is trust, and influence is what you buy with that coin, what do today’s viewership realities say about the state of the realm?
The trust in the media continues its downward spiral in terms of trust (and, arguably, credibility). Actually, didn’t the Bush administration recently say pretty matter of factly that they don’t pay attention to the TV news?
June 11th, 2004 at 12:23 am
Uncle:
I’m going to sound like a moonbatty conspiracy theorist to some on the right here, but the reason that people — especially people on the right — believe that the media is heavily biased and unworthy of trust is because for years, the right has been telling them over and over again that the media is heavily biased and unworthy of trust. It’s a classic self-fulfilling prophecy.
Once the public expectation has been set like this, it becomes easy. When the media inevitably does fail on something (say, for example, the Jayson Blair debacle), the people who sold this picture can say “see, I told you so!” Except that they were no more right than Sylvia Brown or John Edward (the Sci-Fi guy, not the senator whose name ends in “s”) when they get lucky and score a “hit.”
I have to admit, it’s a brilliant strategy. If we say it enough times, eventually people believe it and it “becomes” true.
June 11th, 2004 at 8:47 am
First, it isn’t about bias. It’s about credibility and trust. People don’t trust them, particularly after some bad apples (like blair). And, of course, the perception that they don’t cover things as in depthly that they should. nick who?
June 11th, 2004 at 8:54 am
Maybe Eason Jordan(formerly of CNN)’s little revelation that the network buried negative stories on Saddam’s Iraq prior to the invasion because they were afraid the despot would close down the Baghdad bureau has something to do with it.
June 11th, 2004 at 10:57 am
Pres. Bush’s remark about not reading the papers has been (surprise surprise) misreported and misconstrued. If you dig around in Jay Rosen’s Pressthink archive you can find an in-depth look at that.
What he said gets back to Unc’s and Forman’s point. Bush in essence doesn’t read the papers because he doesn’t believe they represent the interests of the people of America. Rather, they write and report *for each other*, ie. the national media and press. They represent themselves and so Bush feels that they are just another Washington special interest group and treats them that way.
Remember Bush’ last press conference, where four reporters wasted valuable an uncommon air time trying to get Bush to apologise for Abu Ghraib? Polls show that the overwhelming majority of Americans don’t care about that (apologising), but that “gotcha moment” is important to the press then, so it was pursued. Just a couple of weeks ago, Bush specifically and formally apologised for Abu Ghraib during some remarks (or an interview, I don’t recall at the moment; you can look around for it; it wasn’t the apology to Jordan, either). Did that get covered? No, because the press had already got the “he refused to apologise” story and doesn’t care now!
And Tom’s comment above is just the new sophistry of the Left to explain why this lack of credibility exists without taking any responsibility for it. “Bias never existed, but they went looking for it so hard that every little mistake looks like it to them!” Keep doing that guys. The cliff is getting closer and closer.
June 11th, 2004 at 1:25 pm
Mike:
They represent themselves and so Bush feels that they are just another Washington special interest group and treats them that way.
He kowtows to them? 🙂
And Tom’s comment above is just the new sophistry of the Left to explain why this lack of credibility exists without taking any responsibility for it. “Bias never existed, but they went looking for it so hard that every little mistake looks like it to them!” Keep doing that guys. The cliff is getting closer and closer.
Sorry, dude, but you’re absolutely full of it on this one. I’ve put my proverbial money where my mouth is on this, offering several direct challenges to demonstrate this supposed bias. Let’s just say that the “examples” people have come up with have been less than compelling.
Do biases occasionally find their way into news reports? Of course they do. Are those biases overwhelmingly liberal, or even egregious in either direction? Almost always not. In fact, every objective study of media bias I’ve seen has found a mild conservative bias in the news — even on NPR.
Even Buchanan and Kristol have gone on the record admitting that the whole “liberal media” thing is largely a conservative construct, not founded in reality:
Sophistry my ass.
June 11th, 2004 at 1:27 pm
Uncle:
First, it isn’t about bias. It’s about credibility and trust.
How can you allege rampant bias without simultaneously attacking credibility?
And, of course, the perception that they don’t cover things as in depthly that they should.
There’s truth to this one. Of course, if the press had been as in-depth as they should have been, we likely wouldn’t have engaged in this Iraq war.
June 11th, 2004 at 2:14 pm
I should point out that our media does indeed have some credibility issues, but they aren’t related to bias toward one side or the other. It has to do with the seeming inability or unwillingness to ever ask tough questions when it’s appropriate to do so.
June 11th, 2004 at 2:44 pm
“How can you allege rampant bias without simultaneously attacking credibility?”
One example: James Ridgway of the Village Voice. Rampantly biased to the Far Left but scrupulous in his gathering of facts and his reasoning. He starts with different assumptions (very different) than I do, but I enjoyed reading him because I believe he is honest within his bias. He was always a good window for me into a particular category of Leftist thought. He’s wrong, wrong, wrong, but I trust him on his facts and assertions.
As for documenting press bias, read my blog. I post this stuff all the time. One example, on my blog, is Nick Cohen writing in England of getting calls from numerous reporters wanting him to know about the Marxists roots of International ANSWER, this just before 2003’s big marches. When he asked why they didn’t write this up, he reported that they all told him “our editors won’t let us.” Look it up. The Guardian, I think. Or search for his name on my blog in last week’s archive.
Are the national media and press *monolithically* and *only* liberally biased? Of course not. There are numerous biases at work in any newsroom or news company. But politically speaking, the media and press *are* strongly biased to the left.
June 11th, 2004 at 4:07 pm
Ah, and Tom, from the mouth of the beast itself:
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/TheNote/TheNote_Feb1004.html
June 11th, 2004 at 5:09 pm
Mike:
But politically speaking, the media and press *are* strongly biased to the left.
I strongly, strongly disagree. I think you’re falling into the old trap that things that are not biased toward your point of view, they must be biased against it, and this simply isn’t so.
As far as the ABC News link, I’m still not buying it. If certain attitudes on abortion, gun control, etc. are considered the “default,” it’s because that’s the status quo; not because of any overriding liberal bias. Legalized abortion, for example, is the “default” position because abortion is currently legal. Attempts to restrict access are conservative positions. Attempts to widen access would have to be considered a liberal position. Attempts to maintain the status quo would generally fall into neither category.
June 13th, 2004 at 12:07 am
You skipped the important question, Tom, so I’ll repeat it for you: Did Bush ever see that memo and was it ever implemented as US policy? Or was it a case of “out of the box thinking” that was filed for not being “real world” practical? I await your reply.
June 13th, 2004 at 9:21 am
On guns, the reporting is slanted and often just plain ignorant (they can’t seem to get the difference between semi-automatic and automatic, e.g.), but what’s worse is the non-reporting. Thousands of cases of defensive use of guns every year get no play at all in the national media. Some nut goes on a shooting spree at Appalachian College until he is stopped by two students with guns – the reports say he was stopped by other students, but don’t mention that they were armed.