(By Ray D.)
SPIEGEL ONLINE is on the warpath again.
The objective: Convince the German people that the American media is "gleichgeschaltet" or dominated by George W. Bush and his government's neo-conservative agenda.
Last month, we reported on a SPIEGEL ONLINE article entitled: "Bush's Perfect Propaganda Machine". The article complained that the Bush administration was producing PR films that were being used by the media without reference to the producer. Naturally, the authors failed to mention that the Clinton administration produced the very same sort of PR films. And only in the article's final paragraph did they admit that it was the sole responsibility of journalists to cite the sources of their material and to inform readers that the PR films in question are in fact government produced and represent the government's view. In our posting, we also pointed out that SPIEGEL ONLINE failed to mention that the mainstream media was clearly biased against President Bush in the critical period immediately preceding the 2004 election, a fact that contradicted the entire premise of the "Bush's Perfect Propaganda Machine" article.
Now we have the latest installment in SPIEGEL ONLINE's "gleichgeschaltet" series: An piece entitled "Press Policy of the Bush Government: Bite-Sized Propaganda Films". The first striking aspect of the article is that it repeatedly labels PR films produced by the Bush government as "propaganda." This time, however, the authors don't wait until the final paragraph to blame journalists who use the government-produced films without citing the source. They also have the decency to mention that the Clinton administration produced the same sorts of PR films. But they go on to bitterly complain that the Bush government has spent twice as much on these films as his predecesor and continue by criticizing the government's payments to journalists to support state policy, a practice which the Bush administration has long since declared out of bounds.
After reading "Press Policy of the Bush Government: Bite-Sized Propaganda Films", most readers are left with the impression that the Bush government is deviously attempting to manipulate and dominate the US media in order to brainwash the American people with pro-government "propaganda."
But, as always, a vitally important piece of information about the American media has been repeatedly kept from the German public by the German media. Why? Because this vitally important piece of information is at least as applicable and damning to the German media's credibility as it is to the American media's.
Endemic Leftwards Bias
Many Germans have picked-up the erroneous impression from the German press that the American media is dominated by conservatives in Fox News, talk radio, the blogosphere and the Bush administration. This impression has been largely created by journalists at publications like SPIEGEL ONLINE who feel deeply threatened by conservative, free market ideals and whose intent it is to convince the German public that the American media is dominated (i.e. gleichgeschaltet) by a sinister cabal of scheming neo-conservatives pulling the US media's strings in the background and secretly plotting to control the minds of America.
But the evidence collected over several decades tells an entirely different story that the German media has ignored time and time again: Surveys and studies of American journalists conducted over a period of more than thirty years have repeatedly and consistently revealed a long-standing, widespread and overwhelming bias in favor of Democrats and liberal ideals and against Republicans and conservative ideals.
Here is just some of that evidence:
I. A survey of 547 journalists and media executives conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press in 2004 found the following:
"Journalists at national and local news organizations are notably different from the general public in their ideology and attitudes toward political and social issues. Most national and local journalists, as well as a plurality of Americans (41%), describe themselves as political moderates. But news people especially national journalists are more liberal, and far less conservative, than the general public.
About a third of national journalists (34%) and somewhat fewer local journalists (23%) describe themselves as liberals; that compares with 19% of the public in a May survey conducted by the Pew Research Center. Moreover, there is a relatively small number of conservatives at national and local news organizations. Just 7% of national news people and 12% of local journalists describe themselves as conservatives, compared with a third of all Americans.
In this regard, Internet journalists are similar ideologically to local journalists: 57% describe themselves as moderates, while 27% say they are liberals and 13% conservatives. Local TV and radio journalists include the lowest percentage of liberals of any of the journalist groups surveyed (15%). Even among local TV and radio journalists, however, just 13% describe themselves as conservatives."
II. A study of the media conducted by Columbia University's Project for Excellence in Journalism in late 2004 found the following:
"In the closing weeks of the 2004 presidential race, the period dominated by the debates, President George W. Bush has suffered strikingly more negative press coverage than challenger John Kerry, according to a new study released today by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
More than half of all Bush stories studied were decidedly negative in tone (1). By contrast, only a quarter of all Kerry stories were clearly negative. (...)Stories primarily about the President were more than three times as likely to be negative than were stories mostly about Kerry (52% Bush versus 17% Kerry).
Negative Bush stories also outweighed positive ones. Only 15% of Bush stories on TV cast him in a clearly positive light. The largest number, 33%, were neutral.
Kerry fared far better. Indeed, his coverage was more than twice as likely to be positive during this period as negative. Fully 57% of stories primarily about Kerry were positive and another 26% were neutral.
Most of the network TV stories were not solely about Bush or Kerry but discussed both candidates. While these stories tended to be more neutral than stories about primarily one candidate or the other, even here there was a pattern of Kerry coming out better. In all, 11% of these stories were clearly negative about Bush, versus 4% for Kerry. Likewise, 16% were positive about Kerry, versus just 7% about Bush."
III. A survey of 1,149 journalists from print, television and radio conducted in 2002 and sponsored by the Knight Foundation found:
"Compared with 1992, the percentage of full-time journalists who claim to be Democrats has dropped 7 percentage points in 2002 to slightly above 37 percent, moving this figure closer to the overall population percentage of 32 percent, according to a July 29-31, 2002 Gallup national telephone poll of 1,003 adults. This is the lowest percentage of journalists saying they are Democrats since 1971.
Slightly more journalists said they were Republicans in 2002 (18.6 percent) than in 1992 (16.3 percent), but the 2002 figure is still notably lower than the percentage of U.S. adults who identified with the Republican Party (31 percent according to the Gallup poll mentioned above)."
IV. According to MediaResearch.org:
"The "National Survey of the Role of Polls in Policymaking", completed by Princeton Survey Research Associates for the Kaiser Family Foundation in collaboration with Public Perspective, a magazine published by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, was released in late June 2001".
The poll questioned 1,206 members of the public, 300 "policymakers" and 301 "media professionals, including reporters and editors from top newspapers, TV and radio networks, news services and news magazines."The Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that members of the media were four times as likely to identify themselves as "liberal" than as "conservative:"
V. A survey of 1,037 newspaper journalists at dozens of newspapers conducted by the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1996 entitled "The Newspaper Journalists of the '90s" found the following:
144. What is your political orientation?
T
'88 F
W
B
H
AA
G
Democrat or liberal 36
34
44
35
41
39
50
64
Republican or conservative 8
11
6
8
1
2
3
3
Lean to Democrat/liberal 25
28
25
25
30
35
30
22
Lean to Republican/conservative 7
11
5
7
2
6
5
1
Independent 24
17
19
25
25
18
12
9
- T = Percentages of the total responses from the original workforce sample (n = 1,037).
- '88 = Overall percentages from the 1988 ASNE workforce survey (n = 1,200).
- F = Female journalists in the workforce sample (n = 379).
- W = Whites in the workforce sample (n = 903).
- B = Blacks in the workforce sample and further survey of black journalists (n = 154).
- H = Hispanics in the sample and further survey of Hispanic journalists (n = 92).
- AA = Asian Americans in the sample and further survey of Asian American journalists (n = 98).
- G = Gays, lesbians and bisexuals from the sample and further survey of gay/lesbian/bisexual journalists (n = 181).
More key facts on historic bias in the US media can be found here.
The numbers are even more striking when compared to the general political leanings of the American public. Depending on what poll numbers you look at, around 30-40% of Americans describe themselves as conservatives while only around 15-25% of Americans describe themselves as liberals.
If Germans really knew about the long-standing, visceral and deep-seated bias in the US media against conservative ideals and values, they would probably have a little more sympathy towards the PR efforts of the Bush administration. Unlike the Clinton administration, Bush's government has to fight a daily uphill battle of ideas in a media environment in which political opponents and hostile journalists have predominated for decades. With these facts in mind: Is it any wonder that the Bush people have spent twice as much on PR films?
If SPIEGEL ONLINE wants to talk about "propaganda" in America, they ought to start by pointing out how the left-leaning mainstream media in America has worked in favor of the liberal, Democrat agenda for decades on end. The cold, hard facts simply do not bear out wild conspiracy theories that George Bush has any significant advantage or control of the mainstream media, let alone the ability to call the shots. The facts have clearly and repeatedly demonstrated that the very opposite is true.
Just as the 9/11 conspiracy theories running rampant in Germany were publicly challenged and debunked in the German media, so too must the "gleichgeschaltet" myth eventually be exposed and debunked for the garbage that it is. But right now, Bush-bashing is still much too lucrative for large German media publications to tell the German people the real truth about the American media.
Above all, criticizing the leftwards bias in the US media would be an unimaginable breach of political principle for a hard left-wing publication like SPIEGEL ONLINE that actually views itself as mainstream. Such criticism would put the publication in an awfully awkward position: It would be comparable to a hardcore heroin addict condemning a recreational pot-smoker as a junkie.
Clearly: The main problem is that it is difficult to convince most Germans that the US media is biased against Bush when many of them can't even recognize the obvious bias and widespread anti-Bush conformism in their own media...
One step at a time as they say.
Ernie continues:
" If the New York Times turned around tomorrow and became perfectly objective in 100% of their stories, or even leaned slightly to the right, conservatives would still use it as a strawman to claim a raw deal. So clearly, reforming the professional media won't satisfy conservatives anymore, and having a media where the Limbaughes, Hannities, and Crossfires dominate public opinion is just as biased against liberals and cheapens public discourse. But it's got to be one of these options."
~ ~ ~ ~
Sort of like the strawman you have created here Ernie? I am always amused at how well liberals know what conservatives think and what their reactions will be before they even happens.
I get positively giddy when I see what I consider an alternative/ or conservative thought spoken on a MSM news program. It is just that except for specific programs, it is so irritatingly rare. When it starts to happen with a semblence of regularity I will settle down into a level of comfort about the
"objectivity" of the "reformed" MSM.
You seem to miss the same point most from your side of the argument miss. I choose none of the above.
I am not arguing for a "conservative media!" I am not arguing for more liberal bashing shows. I am arguing for alleged objective MSM news and political shows to present a more genuinely diverse set of opinions than are currently being presented. I would like to spend my half hour or hour and walk away feeling informed or curious and thinking about what I just heard.
As far as Crossfire/Hardball/et al, all the argumentive formated shows are clown shows. When FOX started I enjoyed it tremendously, but now it is little more than a running clown show of Michael Jackson exposes, Charles and Camille redux, and any missing child anywhere in America. That FOX is still cited so often by the left is instructive though. (maybe you all, inspite of your incesant complaints about it ~ don't really watch it? or listen to Limbaugh??)
THings that make you go HHHhhmmmmmm..... Bottom line, there is still very little genuinely conservative thought happening in the MSM.
Tyranno
Posted by: Tyranno | April 29, 2005 at 01:28 PM