Media Bias--Once a Sin, Now a Virtue

So how come media objectivity is suddenly a bad thing? Conservative press critics are in another tizzy about objectivity and balance in American journalism. Only this time, their complaint isn’t the lack of these fine qualities but that there’s way too much of the stuff. They don’t call it objectivity or balance; they call it neutrality. But it amounts to the same thing. It means an effort to report the facts without developing--or at least without revealing--an opinion about them.

On the subject of Osama bin Laden (and the current festivities in general), the critics are anti-neutrality and in favor of bias, which on this occasion they call patriotism. They jump on any suggestion that a news outlet or individual journalist might be reluctant to express an opinion that Bin Laden is evil and that at least the broad outlines of the U.S. campaign against him are beyond dispute.

Virtually everyone in mainstream journalism does in fact share this opinion, which adds a further irony to the press critics’ new gripe. The traditional conservative media critique is that journalists bend the news in a liberal direction because they’re liberals. But in the current situation, the notion that journalists covertly sympathize with a mass murderer who may well be targeting journalists specifically is too far-fetched even for radio talk shows. So the new gripe blames journalistic standards themselves. Journalists are accused of upholding the very lack of bias that they usually are accused of betraying.

It’s a bum rap. No one who watches, reads or listens could have any doubt that the American media are flagrantly pro-America and anti-Bin Laden. On a few occasions when media outlets have allowed neutral, objective standards of newsworthiness to trump overt support for the cause--for example, on the issue of broadcasting Bin Laden’s propaganda tapes--the journalists have backed down quickly when criticized.

ABC News President David Westin will be licking his wounds and talk show host Rush Limbaugh’s boots for months after saying that objectivity requires him to have no opinion about whether the Pentagon was a legitimate target. At CNN, meanwhile, they’re officially encouraged to remind viewers of how many people died Sept. 11 whenever they report on civilian casualties caused by U.S. bombing in Afghanistan. This is not objectivity or balance. It is pure pro-American bias. No one watching CNN needs to be told what happened Sept. 11. And there is no parallel requirement that references to the fatalities Sept. 11 be balanced with reminders that the U.S. is killing innocent civilians in Afghanistan.

There’s nothing wrong with the media being biased in favor of the U.S., against Bin Laden, in favor of freedom, against terrorism, in favor of the Pentagon (as a building, not as a set of policies) and against crashing a plane full of people into it. Whether patriotism alone justifies a degree of media bias is a tricky question: During the Vietnam War, media skepticism served the country better than unquestioning support would have. But the current situation is an easier case. Though there’s plenty of room for argument over sub-issues, the basic justice of America’s cause is beyond serious dispute.

The difference between fact and opinion is not a bright line; it is a spectrum. At one end you have “2+2=4,” and on the other you have “Social Security should be privatized.” In between are most of the issues involved in controversies over media bias. Where you choose to draw your line on that spectrum is not merely a question of judgment on which reasonable people can disagree. It is to some degree a question of taste on which they can all be equally right.

There is nothing inherently contradictory or hypocritical about Limbaugh objecting to media bias in some cases while demanding it in others. Most of us would agree that “terrorism is bad” is permissible, indeed admirable. It would be nice if the conservative critics would agree that even justifiable biases don’t justify abandoning all skepticism--even nicer if they acknowledged that their position is complex and that those who think differently may not be traitors.