The Liberal Bias Newspaper Snipe Hunt

The Record, a newspaper in northern New Jersey, is conducting a six-month investigation into possible "liberal bias" in its pages:

We were asking readers and non-readers about the jobs they expected our newspaper to do for them. "Tell me the truth" emerged as the top job, but then several added that they wanted it objectively and not from a reporter's personal angle. Fair enough.

Now this led to people saying they thought The Record was politically liberal, according to our market research manager. Some even thought our Opinion section was "sneaking over" to the news section, both of which I personally oversee. Yikes. We are against that sort of opinion creep, and my fellow editors and I work at keeping the two separate, just as we do to keep news and advertising separate.

Still, some of those folks offered views such as these: "It's prejudiced, politically [liberal]." ... "Editorial could be less biased - slant is always going to be for Democrats." ... "Biased in certain ways - The Record is more liberal - does not present both sides of a story."

I am familiar with the Record by its (good) reputation only, but this is, of course, faintly ridiculous, and reveals something about the crisis in American newspapers today. The editor of a daily newspaper shouldn't have to investigate himself. For six months. This Freudian-analytical approach to journalism won't work.

This isn't complicated. An editor should be aware of bias in news coverage and be correcting it both daily and in overall strategy, the choices in who covers what and how they do it. If the charge of bias is wrong, unfair, or misguided, the editor should be out there knocking it down. I have no idea if the Record is New Jersey's answer to Granma, but what's going on here is that market research (always a poor guide for journalists if taken too literally) is revealing not creeping liberalism in the news pages, but a more global disconnect between the newspaper and its readers. This about the breakdown of a consensus in society over the past generation, not with whether running a photo of an anti-Bush protest is "bias" or straight news.

Consider what we've seen just in the past eight years: A massive terror attack in the Record's backyard. Aggressive attempts by government officials to manipulate the media and public opinion to back a disastrous war. The near-destruction of an American city, abetted by massive government failure. The continued political/demographic sorting of society into self-selected "red" and "blue" socioeconomic groups. And, in the media world, the proliferation of opinion on the Internet and cable news.

When readers say "tell me the truth," they want the paper to make sense of all of this. Rush Limbaugh at least has an explanation. But newspapers and other traditional media outlets haven't done a great job explaining/interpreting these events - after all, they're slow-moving institutions unaccustomed to stuff blowing up so often, or to high officials propagandizing them on matters of life and death, or to being whipsawed by bloggers on the left and right. And of course, right now nobody can claim to know where all this is going.

The success of a newspaper once depended not just on a steady stream of advertising revenue, but on a certain, general idea shared between readers and editors about what was fair, what was out of bounds, what was biased, what not. After all, the newspaper was a principal source of information about the world. That agreement has been dead for some time. In terms of national news, that train went off the rails quite a while back. Locally, you'd think it wouldn't be such a problem - local issues and politics are of course more pragmatic, less ideological. But any newspaper is judged on the whole package, and far more of those judgments will be harsh today than they were a generation ago.

The problem is, the Record's market research notwithstanding, I doubt very much that there is genuine agreement among readers about what's wrong with the paper. "Liberal bias" is sort of a catch-all phrase, code for presenting unpleasant stuff readers don't like (which is inevitable). And it can also mean readers sense the whole form of the newspaper, with its traditional stylistic tics, its faux-objectivity, its stilted writing, just isn't doing a good job of reflecting the reality of the world around them.

The problems we face today, such as global warming or tightening energy supplies, don't fit well into the "liberal vs. conservative" culture-war frame. And a newspaper should have better things to do than spend six months investigating the political shadings in each paragraph of school board coverage.

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Comments

[MikeDu]

New to newspapers. All you have to do to be 'liberal' is report that Bush lied whenever he lies, Report that his numbers are phony when he puts out phony numbers, and to fact-check your daily RNC talking points memo before printing its contents. Oh, and report that the sun rises in the east. Pure unabashed liberalism!

[Cathexis]

Liberal Bias: (noun) An attribute of any communications organization that questions or criticizes a member or action of the Far Right.

[aberforth]

If the media were liberal then it would have given the same coverage of McCain's use of the c-word about his wife as it did Jane Fonda's use of it on the Today Show.

[3fingerbrown]

When did it become a sin for a paper to have a political bias, left, right, or center?

The newspaper industry was at its most vibrant when papers had very definite opinions and biases. When I was a kid, we all knew which was the Democratic paper and which was the Republican, and neither felt the need to apologize for it. In fact, the publishers were proud of it.

In an era when anyone can get the straight-down-the-middle wire service story at the push of a button, I would think newspaper editors would take a cue from sites like this one and encourage their staff to get more opinionated, not less.

In newspapering, as in all things, when you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one.

[Aramingo]

Did anyone in that survey point ot a specific article in the paper as an example? I actually did that to someone who complained about "Liberal Bias" in one of my local papers, the Philadelphia Inquirer. I made him go through the entire paper, and aside frome the editorial page, nothin'. You might want to try that some time.

[TroubleNYC]

What people perceive as "bias" is so incredibly subjective at times. It's no point trying to get rid of the "bias".

Someone will always perceive a bias.

[FW]

Hello!

The first amendments says the press must be FREE!! It doesn't say anything at all about it being fair or balanced

That's the problem, it's been watered down to the 'milk toast press', to frightened to upset the apple cart ! Why else would the NYT hire smile'n Bill Krystal.
Newspapers would be better off declaring their point of view and defend it! This is what's happening on the internet and it works.

[hoopesaz]

The internet works because it is real time, convenient to access, and free. Not because the content is better than that which newspapers produce. The best sites for real information on the internet is still the newspaper and news websites, not the opinion section of blogs.

[Uselessboy]

They insist facts are just opinions.

So they oppose journalistic "fact checking" as "inserting opinion" into the "news" and failing to give "both" sides of the story "equal weight."

They have to. Every major modern Republican policy would be opposed by a voting majority if presented and analyzed factually.

[Indubio]

How does a rational intelligent media outlet give weight to a policy that is blatantly stupid? Let's take deregulation...

In 2000, Congress voted to deregulate oil commodities controls that had successful controlled the price of crude sold in the US. Everyone who needed to know understand the system wasn't broken; in fact, they knew it worked fine. Today we have $140/barrel oil because oil commodity speculation is out of control...because of deregulation. Does the word "DAH" mean anything to conservatives? If this situation wasn't so predictable perhaps we could forgive the GOP and a compliant media for being asleep when Enron proposed this harebrained idea. We understand Republicans are ideologically driven but the media should have called conservatives n this and not given their radical and patently unworkable idea "equal time." Media have an obligation to give equal time but a sows era should be called by its name.

[CellarDoor]

Misdirection. Substance? None. Only misdirection. Liberal media? Well of course. All media is liberally biased. Why aren't they reporting on the atrocity that is the Bush administration? Well because the liberal media can't find any wrong doing and you know they're trying nonstop to destroy him! Hence, Bush is the greatest president of all times.

Liberal media hates Bush. Bush = America. Liberal Media = hates America. Terrorists = hate America. Liberal media = terrorists.

See how the neo-right logic works? Neat, huh?

[GuyRC]

Did you see the documentary about Philomath OR? Perfect example of what is meant by liberal bias by the people that see it. When asked exactly what they disliked about the school superintendent the conservatives couldn't exactly say, they just felt that he was an outsider and that something bad was going on. It was hard for them to admit they are bigots. There were events for gay rights, school mascot changes for native american sensitivity, kids wearing scary clothes, (interracial dating?, Bahai religion?), you know, liberal bias.

[Woody25]

As Stephen Colbert noted, reality has a decidedly liberal bias.

[ProfessorDuh]

No, when readers say "tell me the truth," they want the newspaper to confirm their bias.

[research]

Thanks for the NJ Record reference. I watch and see if I thinks it's liberal. There are no liberal national papers. Somehow the NYT's has some liberals fooled into believing it's liberal.

[vipersdad]

If you ask someone a question, you'll get an answer. "Liberal Media" has been an effective buzz-phraze since the Reagan years, but you're quite right - it's meaningless.

What a newspaper can do really well is in-depth analysis of issues, over multiple issues. Cable News, Radio, or TV news are miserable at this. If a newspaper wants to survive and thrive it needs to become something DIFFERENT than Radio and TV.....not try to be a printed version of what's available elsewhere.

Perhaps "The Record" should take this opportunity to do an examination of bias in the media at large and EDUCATE their readers in the process.

The history of the phrase "liberal bias?"
Give people examples of it - and CHALLENGE people who throw the phrase around as a talking point
Give people examples of propoganda
Give people examples of Conservative bias.
Talk about the role of a newspaper and news people in general - we are taking it on faith that people all have a common vision for what newspapers have done historically and what they might do in the future.

[PuppaX]

You should read "The Republican Noise Machine;" it's an absolutely incredible book that will almost certainly blow your mind.

The reason I mention it is because the author demonstrates that the charge of "Liberal Media" was introduced as Republican propaganda during the Nixon years.

[MitchW]

"The problems we face today, such as global warming or tightening energy supplies, don't fit well into the "liberal vs. conservative" culture-war frame."
Sure they do.
The conservatives dont buy into Global Warming and see it as another tax scheme , apply "supply and demand" when it comes to energy, and want to increase the supply by drilling for oil in the US.
The liberal view disagrees with the conserative approach, instead seeking to combine alternative energy solutions to address both the energy crisis and global warming.
I'm open to other views but thats how I see it in both camps.