I'm not sure what you think the "Demicratic news station" are
CNN
Not even...not even close. Maybe to something like Rush Limbaugh, CNN has a “Demicratic” bent. But from a nonpartisan perspective, CNN and most of the mainstream media in general suffer from a ratings-driven cultural pandering phenomenon that causes them to behave sympathetically toward the Christian right, and, by extension, the administration.
As you know, the media are supposed to be objective. In journalism there is the notion of a wall between news and opinion, and the strength of this wall is the signature of journalistic integrity. In a proper piece of objective journalism, you’ll get the facts, all the facts, and nothing but the facts. You’ll never hear the word “I,” and you’ll never get a spun story. There is no slant, framing, and no bias. Story angles are never used to advance an agenda. I have to hand it to the Fox News advertisers, because their two slogans, “Fair and Balanced” and “We Report, You Decide,” when taken together, capture the essence of what journalism is supposedly all about. And although Fox itself is a brazenly unethical racquet, with no operational respect for the wall between news and opinion, its viewers are drawn to the idea of journalistic objectivity. (That they also enjoy Fox’s conservative slant alongside this is a testament to their own integrity, but that is a discussion for another time.)
However, the wall between news an opinion is far from the everyday truth of news reporting. Every step of the news production process is another pressure on the wall of objectivity. Let’s talk about CNN, since that’s the network you mentioned:
First you have to decide which stories you’re going to cover. There is always more news than there is time or space to report it. So you have to pick the stories that are most important. Sometimes, the biggest bias in news is the stories that never get told at all. CNN did this yesterday. There were two big stories that day, one of them being Hurricane Rita and the other being an antiwar protest. Hurricane Rita was big news for obvious reasons, but the antiwar protest was big news not only because it was the largest protest in Washington D.C. since before the war even started back in 2003, and not only because D.C. was but the flagship of simultaneous antiwar demonstrations in New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, London, Paris, Rome, Madrid, and elsewhere around the globe, but also because the majority of public opinion in the Iraq war has
finally turned against the war, and especially against the administration’s handling of it. So the protests happened, and in Washington D.C., hundreds of thousands of people showed up. It was a very big deal indeed. But you wouldn’t have realized that by watching CNN, where the entire story got very little exposure. Instead, CNN used the hurricane as a convenient excuse to almost bury the other story. On their website, they didn’t even publish an in-house story. Instead they used the AP wire. So where were their reporters? Many of them were standing in a raincoat in Texas telling us “It’s windy!” But many more of them were dispatched elsewhere, rather than to the antiwar rallies. That’s journalistic bias, and, incidentally, it’s a bias very convenient to the Bush administration and to those in America who still support the war. On CNN’s website, they didn’t bother producing an in-house story at all. Instead, they just ran the AP wire report,
found here. That’s pretty brazen journalistic bias.
Once you’ve decided which stories you’re going to cover, next you have to decide
how you’re going to cover them. This is called choosing the
angle of the story. The angle is a way of presenting the news so as to demonstrate why it is newsworthy. For instance, one good angle in which to present yesterday’s simultaneous worldwide antiwar demonstrations would have been to point out that these protests are a byproduct of the increasing unpopularity of the war, especially here at home. But choosing an angle is one of the easiest steps of the news production process in which to introduce journalistic bias. CNN, in the limited coverage it gave to the protests, did not choose this angle. Instead, it chose the angle that the war protesters were a motley bunch who had grown disgruntled at the American casualties. The angle focused heavily on families of soldiers who had died, and presented the war as a good idea that had gone bad. The article even mentioned one Republican in the crowd who was against the war, but still supported Bush on everything else. Yes, my friends, CNN found a way to praise Bush in an antiwar article. If that’s not bias, nothing is. And what about the angle that I suggested? In fact, it wasn’t until
eighteen paragraphs into the story that CNN even mentioned the simultaneous protest rallies being held elsewhere. Nowhere in the story at all was it mentioned that public opinion is now firmly against the war, or that, consequently, these rallies are now representative of the American mainstream.
After you have decided on an angle with which to present your story, you have to include the facts, all the facts, and nothing but the facts. This is crucial, because if you were to report the facts of a story selectively, by spinning key facts or leaving them out altogether, you would be presenting a biased story. But, sadly, this is oftentimes what the media do. For instance, sticking with the example of the CNN coverage of the antiwar protests yesterday, CNN completely failed to mention the underlying causes for public dissent against the war. First of all, there was no mention that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, which was the entire rationale for the war. Second of all, there was no mention of the fact that Iraq has become a terrorist state, responsible for creating and training tens of thousands of terrorists who did not exist in 2003. This is important because, after the WMDs didn’t turn up, Bush started saying that we actually went there to get rid of Saddam Hussein and liberate the Iraqi people. Well, what we have today is an Iraq where most people live with a raging insurgency. The post-invasion Iraqi casualties are in the tens of thousands, and the quality of life in much of Iraq is worse than it was two years ago. Third of all, there was no mention of the fact that Iraq is about to become an Islamic state. Bush promised left and right that the Iraqi people loved democracy, wanted democracy very badly, and to have a chance at freedom. Well, by golly, we gave it to them, and what did they do with it? Well, first they declared martial law, which is hardly a democratic way of life, but, more to the point, the Iraqi people elected a government that favors turning Iraq into an Islamic state, governed by Islamic law. Sharia, of course, is barbaric, and because it leads to the enslavement of the female half of the population, our war is therefore responsible for enslavement, rather than the liberation, of tens of millions of Iraqis. Furthermore, democracy doesn’t function under Islamic law, and in the years to come, barring an outright civil war, the entire Iraqi population in general will therefore be slowly pushed away from the secular freedoms enjoyed under Saddam and previous Iraqi leaders. Put all of this together, all of these facts that CNN failed to mention, and the public dissent against the Iraq war has very little context, and thus very little sense of legitimacy. CNN has consistently failed to point out the absurdity that Bush’s rationale for the war changes every time the previous rationale is discredited. CNN has consistently failed to point out that the antiwar movement was right all along. CNN has consistently failed to point out the fact that the aftermath of the war has gone to hell, and that our government is responsible for handling it so poorly. By leaving all of these facts out of the antiwar protest coverage, CNN makes it possible for war apologists to raise their voices and say “We got rid of Saddam; what are you complaining about?”
Anyhow, there you have it. Choosing the news stories, giving the stories and angle, and reporting all the facts: Those are the three institutional dangers to objective reporting, and, as you have seen, CNN has failed on every count just with this one story of yesterday’s protest demonstrations. These same failures are repeated in its general coverage.
However, beyond the institutional risks, there are other forms of news bias, some of which are even more maleficent. But before I get into those, let me explain to you the problem in mainstream news journalism in America today. The United States of America is becoming more conservative ideologically. The neoconservative movement controls the government, while the religious right has a firm grip on popular American sentiment. Neoconservatism is fast on the way to burning itself out, but this religious problem is very deeply rooted and isn’t going to go away anytime soon. Like a mob, as the religious right gains more power and more prominence, it becomes more vocal and more resentful of its ideological enemies. Its actions become more brazen, and its sphere of influence expands with increasing momentum. It is the religious right that has convinced mainstream Republicans that their way of life is under attack despite that the Republicans presently control everything—excepting CNN, whose addition to the list of “everything” is the present topic of discussion. This is a trademark evangelical tactic. One of the best ways to create a movement is to appeal to people’s inclination to root for the underdog. And when the people themselves become a part of that underdog, friend, that’s how you grow yourself a movement. You’ll see every radical Christian here on the Compendium, from Sentenal to Daniel Krispin, insist in one way or another that this so-called “vast left-wing conspiracy” is extremely powerful and very well-organized. Whether they realize it or not, they are contributing to that illusion by talking the talk, which is why I am sitting here on my Sunday evening writing about CNN. Ironically, they are the only ones who belong to anything even remotely resembling a vast conspiracy in this nation.
And so, the problem facing journalism today is that, even though many journalists themselves are liberal, the American people are not. Fox News found enormous success on cable in only a few short years, while the other news networks have suffered rations erosion. The companies who own the news media are controlled by conservative people, and so some liberals say that the bias in the news is the result of decisions passed down from corporate boardrooms. But I am not impressed by that line of thought. Certainly, that’s what happens at Fox News, but Fox is an anomaly in the mainstream media. I think the other big-name news organizations still try and follow that vaunted journalistic ideal of the wall between news and opinion, and, on the whole, I think they still respect the institution of journalism and the ethics of journalism.
But they have this problem of a conservative public who has turned against them by the manipulations of the powerful neoconservative and evangelical Christian movements. As a result, the media are desperate to appear impartial and avoid any appearance of bias against the conservative establishment. Not a day goes by when you don’t hear someone like Bill O’Reilly slander the “liberal mainstream media” on national television, and a lie repeated is a lie that sticks. Consequently, the news media believe that opposing these powerful conservative interests will
erode their audiences rather than add to them. Thus, the media have no incentive to criticize conservative America.
Unfortunately, this isn’t occurring in a vacuum. Conservative America is egregiously abusing its power, stifling or reversing social progress (e.g., sexist birth control and abortion policies), trampling on human rights (e.g., prisoner abuse scandals), destroying the environment (e.g., the Clean Air Act), disenfranchising minorities (e.g., anti-gay marriage amendments), oppressing the poor (e.g., bankruptcy reform), bankrupting the nation (e.g., unchecked federal spending), mortgaging the future (e.g., social security privatization), repressing scientific advancement (e.g., stem-cell research ban), abandoning our children (e.g., No Child Left Behind), destroying the middle class (e.g., tax cuts for the rich), establishing Christianity as the official American religion (e.g., religious displays on public property with public money), antagonizing the rest of the world (e.g., economic hegemony), and ravaging entire nations (e.g., Iraq). In essence, the conservatives are slowly turning America into a third-world country on any topic you wish to name. But the news media, rather than hold their ground and follow the powerful journalism of the ‘60s and ‘70s, have abandoned some of their practical respect for impartial reporting and now devote very little attention to any of the things I mentioned, or any of the countless more I did not. Instead, they focus on the controversy surrounding an issue rather than the issue itself. And, of course, they devote a great deal of their energy to rubbish news—the talking heads, the pundits, the political analysis, the shouting boxes, and all that stuff that has nothing to do with real news. And, finally, they do a lot of what’s called “soft” news, which is to focus on stories that may feel nice but aren’t important, like a cat saved from a tree.
Yet, being still respectful of the institution of news journalism, they want to try and honor the ethics of impartial reporting. How do they reconcile that with a nation that is opposed to being offered impartial news?
So that’s the complete problem facing mainstream news journalism in America today. The religious right and the neoconservatives control everything there is to control, not least of which is popular opinion. Popular opinion disdains conventional journalism, especially in that it would be highly critical of conservative policy. Therefore, even though the media wants to be impartial, they have every incentive to slant the news in such a way that makes them more competitive in a conservative market.
Consequently, this problem manifests itself in the form of bizarre media coverage, which brings me to the allegation that CNN is a liberal bastion. Of course that’s loony, but it is true that there’s something “not quite right” about CNN and the other media. It follows from the inherent institutional obstacles to objective reporting that I mentioned earlier—choosing a story, giving it an angle, and including all the facts—but it also follows from other forms of bias.
I mentioned earlier that there are some other ways to slant the news, besides the three inherent institutional risks. These other “tactics,” let’s call them, can be either deliberate or unintentional, but in both cases they serve to bias the news. I want to talk about these, becomes in some ways they are even worse.
One such news-slanting tactic is to appear impartial by creating a false dichotomy in order to shift the focus of an issue. Personally, this is the one that bothers me the most. I am sick of the media tripping over themselves to appear impartial by treating every crackpot opinion as legitimate. How this works is pretty simple. Consider the evolution controversy. Academically, there is no controversy. Evolution is accepted science that has withstood a great deal of valid criticism for a very long time, and has emerged even stronger for it. But some Christians don’t like evolution because it discredits part of their religious mythology. So they fight against evolution, and a popular controversy breaks out. But the real controversy is the fact that Christians do not accept evolution theory as valid science,
despite the fact that it is valid science.
However, due to their outspokenness, and due to the stick-together nature of Christianity in this country, these evolution naysayers have a very popular voice amongst the evangelical Christian right, and their viewpoint earns significant media coverage. But their point of view is not “We do not accept this valid science.” Obviously, that would put the issue to rest right then and there. Instead, they say “We do not accept this science as valid.” And the media reports this, and suddenly the controversy is shifted.
Is evolution legitimate? Suddenly we’re not arguing whether the Christians are nuts for being opposed to the parts of science they don’t like. No, now we’re arguing if the science of evolution is correct. The tables have been turned in one fell swoop, without any regard to the underlying veracity of evolution theory itself.
That’s the thing about public opinion. It doesn’t matter what the truth is. What matters is what the public perceives that truth to be. That’s the underpinning flaw in democracy, and, unfortunately, in this case it has put the entire institution of science under siege by Christian nutcases who believe that biology should be based on a literal interpretation of the Bible. And the media helped make this possible, by, as I said earlier, treating the Christians’ crackpot opinion as legitimate.
Let’s take a look at CNN’s coverage of an
upcoming evolution trial in Philadelphia.
Nowhere in the entire article does CNN say anything to the effect of “Some Christians oppose this valid science,” even though that’s where the true controversy rests. Instead, there’s a whole lot of he-said / she-said, and the controversy is painted as a conflict between a ragtag bunch of scientists and teachers who say that intelligent design violates the separation of church and state, and Christians who want a dubious scientific theory to share the spotlight with their own, much more well-thought-out “intelligent design” theory.
Only one paragraph in the entire story addresses the root controversy:
[The plaintiffs] also argue that intelligent design is unscientific and has no place in a science curriculum.
That’s it. That’s all the attention CNN gives to the true controversy beneath this issue.
And that brings me to the second news-slanting tactic that the media use to bias their reporting. In the case of this evolution story, notice how more paragraphs in the story are devoted to the Christian point of view, while most of those that favor the opposing viewpoint are framed weakly, ignoring the true controversy of Christians being against science, to instead focus in terms of the separation of church and state. This is a variation on the straw-man logical fallacy. The “correct” side of a debate is given more coverage, while the “incorrect” side is given not only less coverage, but weaker support. Take a look at this:
Number of pro-intelligent design paragraphs: 10
Number of anti-intelligent design paragraphs: 7
Number of neutral paragraphs: 3
“Neutral” paragraphs are those that present only factual information, without reporting on the opinions of those involved. But look at that…the pro-intelligent design coverage enjoys three more paragraphs than the other side. It’s a subtle trick, but it’s one that affects people’s perceptions heavily.
But more than just disproportionate coverage, the CNN article prints the Christian side’s best arguments, and some of the other side’s worst. Consider this particularly stirring emotional appeal by an intelligent design proponent:
Dr. John West of the Discovery Institute, which sponsors research on intelligent design, said the case displayed the ACLU's "Orwellian" effort to stifle scientific discourse and objected to the issue being decided in court.
"It's a disturbing prospect that the outcome of this lawsuit could be that the court will try to tell scientists what is legitimate scientific inquiry and what is not," West said. "That is a flagrant assault on free speech."
The logical fallacy is that intelligent design is not a legitimate science. Scientists are not opposed to scientific discourse; they’re opposed to pseudo-science. But how forcefully is this rebuttal made?
"Intelligent design is ultimately a science stopper," said Dr. Eugenie Scott of the National Council for Science Education, a pro-evolution group backing the Dover parents.
"It's a political and religious movement that's trying to insinuate itself into the public schools," she said.
That’s a very poor rebuttal! It lacks the eloquence of the other side’s statement, and it fails to label the intelligent design scheme as the anti-science bullshit that it is. If I were a reader of this article who had not had an opinion on the subject previously, I’d be more likely to side with the argument that is better-presented.
But CNN is not done enabling the Christian viewpoint in this. They also invoke the will of the American people—something they failed to do in their antiwar protest rally news story—and the authority of God:
But the American public appears to back the school district.
At least 31 states are taking steps to teach alternatives to evolution. A CBS poll last November found 65 percent of Americans favor teaching creationism as well as evolution while 37 percent want creationism taught instead of evolution.
Fifty-five percent of Americans believe God created humans in their present form, the poll found.
Earlier this month a top Roman Catholic cardinal critical of evolution branded scientific opponents of intelligent design intolerant and said there need not be a conflict between Darwin's and Christian views of life's origins.
Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, a top Church doctrinal expert and close associate of Pope Benedict, said Darwin's theory did not clash with a belief in God so long as scientists did not assert that pure chance accounted for everything from "the Big Bang to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony."
And what is the anti-intelligent design rebuttal to these five straight paragraphs favoring the Christian side? There is none. The article ends there.
Not surprisingly—and I hope you’re still reading this, nightmare975—genuine liberals are very dismissive of CNN, and of the mainstream media in general. If you ask a run-of-the-mill liberal his or her favorite big-name news source, they’re more likely to say NPR or BBC. Very few would pick CNN. So, those who say that CNN is a liberal news organization, are not only ignoring the fact that it isn’t, but they are even ignoring the fact that liberals themselves do not flock to CNN for their news needs.
So, that’s two news-slanting tactics that the media use to bias their stories—creating a false dichotomy and using it to shift the debate in a preferred direction, and creating a straw-man argument that weakens one side of a debate by giving it less coverage and by less effectively reporting its viewpoint. There are many more tactics. Let me just touch on a few of them.
A popular neoconservative tactic, made famous by people like Karl Rove—who, admittedly, does not work for CNN—is to attack the critic without addressing the criticism itself. (Also called “killing the messenger.”) This is not as common in the mainstream media as it is within the right wing itself, and Fox News, but you do see it from time to time. I mention it, because this tactic is particularly effective when it does happen. If the argument shifts to the legitimacy of the critic rather than the legitimacy of the criticism itself, then the critic has already lost the debate.
One of CNN’s preferred tactics is to report the talking points of the conservative establishment—especially the government—rather than actually report the news. “Talking points,” for those of you who don’t know, are a type of bias that consolidate a larger piece of news into a quick nugget of information with a specific point of view. For instance, when Bush won reelection with a slim but definite majority of the vote in 2004, he said in a speech that he now has a great deal of “political capital,” a talking point which CNN has since used very often. His supporters also said that his win gives him a “mandate for conservatism,” another talking point that shows up in the media from time to time. Does Bush really have political capital and a mandate for conservatism? No, neither. He won with a slim majority, and the country remains sharply divided. He was given a mandate to govern, not a mandate to be a conservative. The chairman of the RNC has a mandate to be a conservative. The president has an obligation to the American people—even the ones from the blue states who did not vote for him. As much as he is my president, despite the fact that I voted against him twice, I am his constituent, despite the fact that he doesn’t much care for what I have to say. That’s how it works, and talking points be damned. Except, it’s easier said than done, when the media regurgitate those talking points so readily.
Another kind of news-slanting tactic is to distort a story with statistics. Getting back to that CNN article on evolution, the statistics it cited were not contrasted, for instance, with a statistic showing how many
qualified biologists oppose evolution theory, or a statistic from a recent New York Times article indicating that 20 percent of all Americans believe the sun revolves around the Earth. Golly! As they say, you can use statistics to prove anything. 80 percent of people know that. (The other 20 percent believe that statistics revolve around the Earth and cause volcano eruptions.)
Of course, spin is also a tactic. I mentioned spin earlier when talking about including all the facts in a story. When the media spin their facts, they can distort the news. CNN, for instance, gave about the same coverage today to a pro-war rally as it gave to the antiwar rally yesterday. The only difference is that yesterday’s rally attracted hundreds of thousands of people and was accompanied by companion demonstrations all over the world, whereas today’s pro-war rally consisted of a couple hundred people in Washington D.C. only, which is barely newsworthy. People protest all the time; those couple hundred were only reported to spin yesterday’s antiwar demonstration. The purpose of the spin? To create the perception that the pro-war movement is alive and well. Alive and well? Bullshit! Reverse the words: “Well, it’s alive.” And that’s about all it is.
Let’s put all of this together and try to make a generalized statement from it. As I see it, the news media in this country are certainly biased. And I don’t think anyone who isn’t a spokesperson for those organizations would disagree with me. But biased
liberally? CNN of all things? No. CNN, and the mainstream media in general, are not liberally biased. If anything, they are conservatively biased, but it would be much more accurate to say that they have a vested interest in not antagonizing conservative America, which is dominated by the neoconservatives and the religious right, because their ratings depend on the viewership of conservatives who don’t want to be told that their government is corrupt, who don’t want to be told that their religion is causing evil in society, and who don’t want to be told that liberals are not to blame for everything.
I’ve worked in journalism myself, and I’ve been an avid follower of the news for many years. Liberal news media include organizations like The Guardian and Air America Radio. Go check them out for yourself, and then compare them to CNN. Just because Fox News calls CNN liberal, does not make it true.
