Media Critics: More Than Bashing Stars?

Over the summer months of slow news, the media and their critics have treated us to a feast of opinions about what is good and bad in our national news coverage. Noted pundits have spread their positions across the spectrum, some “admitting” that there is a “liberal bias”, others insisting that there is not, and the remainder stroking their chins in sage concern.

Even Congress--prohibited by the Constitution from making any law “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”--has hailed network executives to Capitol Hill, and excoriated them before their own cameras for their coverage of the TWA hostage crisis. Perhaps we will all forget these episodes with the others we enjoy in our summer novels, but there may be something more important going on.

Any journalist or news medium that promotes itself as a star--someone more important, more credible, or more attractive than the substance reported--deserves to be criticized for any personal or political bias. He is offering himself for others’ criticism under the same protection that encourages his own opinion.

The only question is whether the criticism is valid. The only answer will be given by public opinion. If newspeople strive to be loved, adored and paid regally, they have no basis to complain that they should be shielded from the views of others because they are doing the First Amendment’s work.

Nor should this recent flurry of criticism be viewed merely as long-overdue news star bashing. National figures who are not threatened for reelection, generals determined to improve their national reputation and political figures who can afford to make a point by suing the media are all reminding us of something Madison, Franklin and Jefferson knew and experienced firsthand: People naturally identify with one who criticizes the reporter when he brings unpleasant news; it is easy to capture public sympathy by saying it’s the reporter’s fault. Yet, if we are to be well and continually informed, we must provide some buffer between that natural inclination and the dissemination of news.

To be sure, our media too often hide behind something they call the First Amendment when called to account for using their lofty status to insinuate wrongdoing by a lifted eyebrow or verbal inflection. While they are entitled, indeed encouraged, by the Constitution, to engage in the free, robust and wide-open “debate”, they take sides when they do. If they assert neutrality, they should practice it and let the facts speak for themselves; if they take a position, they are fair game.

This does not mean that the media’s choice of what news to report requires taking sides. A journalist’s selection of news is inherently personal and subjective, a product of professional and individual judgment. That the freedom to select may result in a concentration of dramatic reports or stories about conservatives or innocent victims does not prove the existence, or even the threat, of some subversive cabal. This was just as true 25 years ago, when the news focus was on liberals and “fellow travelers,” not conservatives.

These trends in news coverage mean only that most independent journalists think that the public should know about such things. Those who proclaim an insidious epidemic of political partisanship among our national press should be clearly examined themselves for a deeper agenda. Is their criticism not simply an age-old attempt to change the substance of reports or to shift the focus from their favored views to some other “news”?

To be sure, the media have erred, and will again; and there should be effective, peaceful and deliberate means to remedy any resulting harm. But the vigor, independence and dedication of news journalists are precious ingredients of our national health. We should not be deluded into believing that we can change their unpleasant message by public humiliation or congressional threats.

If there is no report, there is neither a message nor a messenger to criticize. For their part, the media news stars have no ground for offense or complaint when they have used their position to express their opinions, however subtly conveyed.

STUART F. PIERSON

Washington, D.C.