Balanced Reporting
By Michael R. Bowen (03/04/03)
In the mid-1990s, concerned that my conservative viewpoint was a result of reading only one side of the news, I took an inventory of my monthly news reading.
On the liberal side:
My home city's paper, seven days a week: 30 issues
The paper from the adjoining city, five days a week: 20 issues
The Washington Post each morning in the doctor's lounge: 20 issues
Newsweek at the office: 4 issues
Time at the office: 4 issues
Total: 78 issues from the liberal side.
On the conservative side:
The Wall Street Journal weekdays: 20 issues
National Review twice a month: 2 issues
The American Rifleman (thrown in, although it really is a single-issue publication): 1 issue
Total: 23 issues from the conservative side.
I don't watch television, so I don't count the NBC/CBS/ABC/NPR/CNN/MSNBC exposures, although television is everywhere and we are all exposed. I gave up on NPR when their politics became inescapable. No longer could I skip the news 'reporting' and listen to the entertainment, when Garrison Keillor indulges in cracks about Republicans and even Click and Clack make fun of conservatives. So in the final count, I had 3.4 exposures to the liberal point of view for every conservative one. I guess I wasn't being brainwashed by the Right.
Unfortunately, most of the people with whom I have heated political debates do in fact suffer from brainwashing. The majority get their information from Dan Rather and Peter Jennings, while a few go beyond the superficial by reading newspapers; even then, they read only the Boston Globe, Washington Post, or the New York Times. Periodic surveys of the publications found in the waiting room of my hospital have never revealed a single issue of any publication which could be called conservative. I frequently encounter the journals of liberal advocacy groups, especially animal-rights and environmentalist organizations.
For people so immersed in the left-liberal point of view, an encounter with conservative thought is shocking; it is so at odds with the world as presented to them by Dan Rather that they naturally view it as extreme. This, I believe, is part of the explanation for the vitriolic reactions I get to my ideas. It also explains why it's so hard to have a true debate: when you argue with a brainwashed person you don't get counter-arguments, you just get slogans and stock phrases; if you refute these, they are repeated in a louder voice, and when that fails, they fall back on name-calling (racist, homophobe, sexist, greedy).
How else to explain the following taxpayer-funded diatribe from Bill Moyers, if not that liberal domination of the media is so complete that no one notices how extreme it is?
"The entire federal government--the Congress, the executive, the courts--is united behind a right-wing agenda for which George W. Bush believes he now has a mandate. That agenda includes the power of the state to force pregnant women to surrender control over their own lives. It includes using the taxing power to transfer wealth from working people to the rich…….. Above all, it means judges with a political agenda appointed for life. If you like the Supreme Court that put George W. Bush in the White House, you will swoon over what's coming. And if you like God in government, get ready for the Rapture…….."
An informed person will recognize this for the garbage that it is. Unfortunately, for much of America, recognizing the presence of the liberal bias in the media would be akin to a fish feeling wet.
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