Election-time media bias
The American media have publicly analysed charges of bias against themselves in the coverage of the 2012 Presidential election.
It’s all so different from the situation in India, says AJITHA MENON.
Charges of bias in coverage are largely ignored by the Indian mainstream newspapers and television channels, complacent as they are in their readership or audiences. For most, it’s a worthless proposition to even put up a show of adhering to objective, non-partisan reporting, sitting pretty in tilted splendour with the backing of their commercial and political mentors.
In this context, it is interesting to note how the American press has handled charges of media bias in the coverage of the 2012 Presidential election. While the charge of partisan coverage has been levelled by political camps and organisations involved in media research, several players within the American mainstream media have picked up those charges and put them on record, while others have not only taken note but have also got into the act of analysing the charges--in the public domain.
When Paul Ryan, the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate, went on record on “Fox News Sunday” in September: “I think it kind of goes without saying that there's definitely a media bias. We've--look, I'm a conservative person, I'm used to media bias. We expected media bias going into this’’, the anchor, Chris Wallace, did not try to change the topic as is the wont on Indian prime time where any discussion on media is sacrosanct. Rather, it was Wallace who had actually posed a question to the effect, “Do you think the mainstream media is carrying water for Barack Obama?” to which Ryan had given the above answer.
In fact, Wallace pursued the matter, pushing Ryan on whether he thought the mainstream media wanted Obama to win, allowing Ryan to say: “I think most people in the mainstream media are left of centre and therefore, they want a very left of centre President than they want a conservative President such as Mitt Romney”.
This was just a small part of the long interview, but left or right wing “media bias” has been a topic of discussion in articles, blogs, and comments in the run up to the Presidential election.
In the New York Times, David Carr, who quoted a Pew Research Centre for the People and the Press survey to first say that only 33 per cent Americans today depended on mainstream media for news, wrote: “Even if legacy media still maintained some kind of death grip on American consciousness it would be hard to claim that the biggest players in those industries are peddling liberal theology”. His argument was that the Wall Street Journal, the paper with the highest circulation or Fox News, “which continues to pommel the competition’’ in cable TV, had conservative leanings, implying that any bias--if it existed--was likely to be in favour of the Republicans in the coverage by the most-read paper or most-watched television news channel.
Erik Wemple, former editor of the Washington City Paper and media critic, posted the following portion of an “Open Letter to a Biased Media” put out, as he says, by “Brent Bozell and his Media Research Centre” on his blog in the Washington Post: “This election year, so much of the broadcast networks, their cable counterparts, and the major establishment print media are out of control with a deliberate and unmistakable leftist agenda. To put it bluntly: you are rigging this election and taking sides in order to pre-determine the outcome. In the quarter century since the Media Research Centre was established to document liberal media bias, there has never been a more brazen and complete attempt by the liberal so-called “news” media to decide the outcome of an election”.
While Wemple’s article did not specify, but assumed that the readers would know Bozell and other signatories such as Rush Limbaugh, Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer, and Ed Meese as conservatives, David Carr, who also quoted from the same letter in his article, had underlined them as “conservative royalty”. The letter was aimed at the leading broadcasters ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN.
Presenting the other side in the argument, Wemple pointed out on the same blog that the Media Matters for America had found Wall Street Journal not making proper disclosures regarding the identity of columnists writing op-eds. Apparently, the Journal had published an article by former Attorney General Michael Mukasey but failed to mention that he is a Romney campaign adviser. Wemple also quoted another Media Matters of America finding that the Journal published pieces by Karl Rove without disclosing that he heads pro-Republican groups working to defeat President Obama. In fact, Media Matters of America, according to Wemple, found that “the paper published op-eds by nine Romney campaign advisers without disclosures of their role”.
Fox News went further and aired the Media Research Centre’s findings on how broadcasters gave different weightage to gaffes by the Presidential candidates. It said that the ABC, CBS, and NBS spent 88 minutes on morning and evening shows and carried 42 stories on the video showing Mitt Romney’s gaffe, saying he cannot persuade Obama’s “47 per cent” (Americans dependent on the government and not paying tax) to vote for him. The Fox News report also said that against this, the same broadcasters spent just six-and-a-half minutes and eight stories on Obama’s video where he had told students at Loyola University, years ago, that his plans included “giving the government the power to redistribute wealth”.
Other commentators such as Kirsten Powers, Fox News political analyst, writing for the www.dailybeast.com, say that the media have focused on trivial issues, ignoring the larger ones involving the Obama administration’s shifting stand on the attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. She points out that instead of worrying about how much Mitt Romney had paid in taxes, the media should have focussed on why the government didn’t acknowledge for quite some time that it was an Al Qaeda attack. Instead, it kept on blaming the whole thing on an impromptu protest caused by an anti-Islamic You Tube video. Powers says that the media’s inability to ask proper questions had actually allowed the Obama administration to get away by saying it was not a pre-planned attack, despite it happening on the anniversary of 9/11 and with the attackers carrying sophisticated weapons and also an Islamic flag. To quote her: “They say curiosity killed the cat. In this case, lack of curiosity on the part of the American media very well may kill more Americans.”
While the debate rages in the US on the role of media, one thing does emerge: organisations such as Fox News, Wall Street Journal are pro-conservative, while the prestigious New York Times and the Washington Post might be pro-liberal. Well the tilt is accepted and apparent here too. The difference being, the media here put almost all of it in the public domain-- about themselves too.