‘Bias’ that bends over backward to right itself

Coverage of antiwar protests across the globe has triggered anew complaints among conservatives that the mainstream news media have a liberal bias. Of course, conservatives have been making that complaint for the past 50 years.

Eric Alterman says they were right -- 50 years ago. And as recently as 22 years ago.

But not today.

Alterman, an avowed liberal, is a columnist for the Nation magazine and the author of a new book, “What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News.” He makes a persuasive case that there really isn’t a pervasive liberal bias in the media -- and he does so in part by documenting the media’s hostility toward President Clinton and presidential candidate Al Gore.

But what Alterman doesn’t do in his book is offer any reasonable explanation for the persistence and widespread acceptance of what he calls the “myth” of liberal media bias. That’s what I wanted to talk with him about when we had lunch together recently.

There can be no doubt that, myth or not, this perception does exist. Without it, without a large number of people believing it, Bernard Goldberg’s “Bias” and Ann Coulter’s “Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right” -- both of which argue that there is a pervasive liberal bias in the media -- would not have spent seven and six weeks, respectively, atop the New York Times’ bestseller list. Without it, Fox News (“We report, you decide”) could not have overtaken CNN as the top-rated cable news network. Without it, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and their fellow Ranters on the Right could not have come to dominate talk radio.

Sure, Fox has captured the show-business zeitgeist of the current media climate in a way that the stodgier CNN has not, and Limbaugh et al are -- as I have argued before in this space -- better and more entertaining at what they do than their few liberal counterparts have been.

But the success of conservatives in the media relies heavily on the argument that, as Alterman characterizes it, there is a “liberal cabal/progressive thought police who spin, supplant and sometimes suppress the news we all consume.”

If that’s not true, why do so many Americans seem to believe it -- and to put their eyes and ears and dollars behind that belief? After all, it isn’t as if conservatives are a majority in the country. According to the most recent Harris Poll, only 35% of adult Americans consider themselves conservative, a number that’s been relatively constant for about 30 years.

But Alterman says conservatives are more passionate about politics than are most liberals, and the conservative message is “simple and historically resonant.”

“Ronald Reagan said the same three simple things for 40 years -- ‘Cut taxes, fight the communists and get the government off our backs,’ ” he says. “Liberals have no such simple message.”

Most important of all, in Alterman’s view, conservatives have been far more successful than liberals in manipulating the media -- in coercing reporters, editors, news directors, anchors and program directors who know they’re liberal to “bend over backward” to avoid being biased.

A 1964 watershed

In his book, Alterman notes that “Dwight David Eisenhower received one of the biggest ovations of his life when, at the 1952 Republican convention, he derided the ‘sensation-seeking columnists and commentators’ who sought to undermine the Republican Party’s efforts to improve the nation.”

At our lunch, Alterman said, “What conservatives say about the media now was true then.”

He then traced the beginning of the decline of liberal domination of the media to the defeat of Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election. The very next morning, he said, Richard Mellon Scaife, the conservative billionaire, “woke up, surprised that Goldwater wasn’t elected, and realized that no conservative could be elected president without some kind of conservative media infrastructure.”

My first thought on hearing this was, “Gee, how could anyone dumb enough to be ‘surprised’ that Goldwater lost that landslide election be smart enough to spell ‘infrastructure’?”

Alterman had no such qualms and continued to weave his tale.

“Scaife decided to bankroll conservative causes. Meanwhile, Bill Kristol [now editor of the Weekly Standard] and Robert Bartley [editor of the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal from 1972 to 2002] went to Wall Street and said, ‘You’ll never get the kinds of profits you want unless you have friendlier people -- conservatives -- in the White House.”

So, his theory goes, a vast right-wing conspiracy provided even more money for conservative causes -- foremost among them a continuing assault on the “liberal” media?

OK.

“But liberal bias was over by 1981,” a year after Ronald Reagan became president, Alterman said, suggesting a line of demarcation that seems a bit artificial in its precision.

Conservatives are not stupid, though.

“Their tactics had been so successful -- getting Reagan in the White House, getting the liberals to bend over backward to be fair -- that they kept hammering away at the same theme,” Alterman said.

He acknowledged that “most big-city journalists are liberal. I personally don’t know ... well, I don’t have to my house for dinner anyone who’s not pro-choice, pro-gun control ... pro-campaign finance reform.”

Alterman also said that conservatives who think “the mainstream media hold them and their way of life in contempt” are largely correct.

“Dan Rather and Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw want nothing to do with the people who listen to talk radio and drive pickup trucks,” he said. “In the high levels of the New York media, these people are regarded as yahoos.”

But Alterman said none of this matters. The journalists’ “professional obligation to be objective, the pressure from the conservative critics and their own bosses keep them from acting on that liberalism.”

I agree with the first of those points, and maybe the second. But I think it’s the demonstrable presence of so many liberals in the big-city news media -- and their coverage of antiwar activities and the civil rights, feminist, gay rights, consumer and environmental movements -- that has enabled the conservatives to make their case for liberal bias.

To many conservatives, the very fact that the media covered these movements means the media were sympathetic to them and the coverage was, ipso facto, tainted by a liberal bias.

Moreover, journalists are skeptical, confrontational and iconoclastic, which means they challenge the establishment, while conservatives want to conserve it.

So the better journalists do their job, the more likely conservatives are to see them as liberal.

At least, that’s my explanation. It may be every bit as self-serving as Alterman’s, but at least it doesn’t rely on conspiracy theories. And, unlike Alterman, I’ve not only had a couple of anti-gun control friends to my house, I’ve gone on vacation with one of them. Twice.

David Shaw can be contacted at david.shaw@latimes.com.