Oh That Liberal Media

Jamison Foser remembers a bit of media history that wasn't in my history books

In 1971, Edith Efron purported to expose the liberal bias of the news media in The News Twisters. The dubiousness of Efron's conclusion was matched by that of her methods, and critical reaction was harsh. But, under orders from Richard Nixon, Chuck Colson spent $8,000 buying copies of the book in order to vault it onto the New York Times best-seller list.

Even before Efron's book was published, undermining the news media was among Nixon's top priorities. In 1969, Nixon aide Pat Buchanan had proposed blunting media reports about Vietnam by accusing the networks of being biased in favor of the antiwar movement. In 1971, Nixon told top aide H.R. Haldeman, "[M]uch more than any single issue that we are going to emphasize, the discrediting of the press must be our major objective over the next few months."[i]

[From Media Matters - "Media Matters"; by Jamison Foser]

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

The "discrediting of the press" Nixon demanded succeeded in every way he could have hoped. Longtime Washington Post reporter Tom Edsall, now of The Huffington Post, described the effect the right's assault on the media had on journalists:

The conservative movement has been very effective attacking the media (broadcast and print) for its liberal biases. The refusal of the media to disclose and discuss the ideological leanings of reporters and editors, and the broader claim of objectivity, has made the press overly anxious, and inclined to lean over backwards not to offend critics from the right. In many respects, the campaign against the media has been more than a victory: it has turned the press into an unwilling, and often unknowing, ally of the right.

But no matter how far reporters "lean[ed] over backwards" to appease the right, conservative critics were not appeased. Stoked by the Two Minutes Hate offered up daily by the likes of Michelle Malkin and Rush Limbaugh, conservative distrust of the media remains high.

And that isn't likely to change any time soon. The millions of conservatives who have spent decades learning to loathe the "liberal media" aren't going to change their minds just because much of the news media cover John McCain the way Teen Beat covered Menudo. For reasons having little to do with his reliably right-wing voting record, a sizable chunk of the GOP base has never trusted McCain; the media's embrace of him will simply confirm their doubts about both McCain and journalists rather than warming them to either.

But months of reporters' fawning over McCain will alienate many Americans who have not already tuned out the "mainstream" media. Every year, more and more people lose faith in the news media, not because of trumped-up claims of "liberal bias," but because of a clear pattern, more than a decade long, of reporters (intentionally or not) trafficking in conservative misinformation.

And yet, the corporate media still continues kowtowing to the loud-mouths on the Right instead of attempting to either be factually objective, or at least balanced.