I’ve said similar things before
The problem isn’t so much the stories that appear as the ones that no one thinks to do. Journalists naturally tend to pursue questions that interest them. So when you have a press corps that’s heavily Democratic — more than 80 percent, according to some surveys of Washington journalists — they tend to do stories that reflect Democrats’ interests.
When they see a problem, their instinct is to ask what the government can do to solve it.
You see this all the time, the most recent example was Katrina and what shoulda/coulda been done and what the .gov can do to fix it.
I’ve also said that I don’t think there’s a liberal bias in the media, per se, but that there’s an issue bias. See, media stories tend to be pro-abortion, anti-death penalty, anti-gun, pro-establishment and pro-government. I think the latter two are merely so that the press can maintain their access to the powers that be. Throw in issue bias and a bit of sensationalism, and that is the modern media.
October 21st, 2005 at 10:56 am
You forget the artificial balance issue, that’s probably one of the biggest media problems we currently face. So much attention is given to giving “equal time” to both sides of any issue, that you often wind up with a skewed perspective, with the minority opinion getting wildly disproportionate coverage. Look at the evolution/Intelligent Design “controversy” for a good, recent example of this. Global warming is another. In both of these cases, the consensus is overwhelmingly for one side of the issue, and the other gets way too much coverage in the interests of “balance.”
It plays in to your sensationalism point. “Controversy” makes for better ratings than simply pointing out that side A is almost certainly right, and side B is almost certainly wrong.
I’ve long argued that the media should be biased, but not to the “left” or “right,” or in favor of Democrats or Republicans. Instead, they should be biased toward the truth. Unfortunately, truth doesn’t get great ratings.