The 'left-wing' media? - Review of the Month

Monthly Review, June, 2003 by Robert W. McChesney, John Bellamy Foster

If we learn nothing else from the war on Iraq and its subsequent occupation, it is that the U.S. ruling class has learned to make ideological warfare as important to its operations as military and economic warfare. A crucial component of this ideological war has been the campaign against "left-wing media bias," with the objective of reducing or eliminating the prospect that mainstream U.S. journalism might be at all critical toward elite interests or the system set up to serve those interests. In 2001 and 2002, no less than three books purporting to demonstrate the media's leftward tilt rested high atop the bestseller list. Such charges have already influenced media content, pushing journalists to be less critical of right-wing politics. The result has been to reinforce the corporate and rightist bias already built into the media system.

The main target of this propaganda campaign is television network news programs, but the campaign has also extended into radio broadcasting, newspapers, and other media. Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which controls broadcasting outlets and newspapers throughout the world, launched the Fox News Channel in the 1990s as a more conservative rival to CNN and the news programs of ABC, NBC, and CBS. According to the New York Times (April 7,2003),

In the United States, Mr. Murdoch's creation of the Fox News Channel has shifted the entire spectrum of American cable news to the right. Convinced that many people found CNN and the major broadcast networks too liberal, Mr. Murdoch and the former Republican political consultant Roger Ailes chartered Fox to be more conservative--or, from their point of view, more centrist. Last January, Fox became the top-rated cable network and it now draws more than 2 million viewers in prime time....From the start, the network displayed an American flag waving on its screen. Its newscasters speak of American and British troops as "we," "ours," and "liberators." After other networks reported setbacks to American and British forces [during the invasion of Iraq], the Fox commentator Bill O'Reilly denounced its competitors as "liberal weenies" who were exaggerating the difficulties of the fight and underestimating the American public's toleration for casualties.

The current attack on media content is presented as an attempt to counter the alleged bias of media elites. In reality, however, it is designed to shrink still further--to the point of oblivion--the space for critical analysis in journalism. In order to understand the form and content of the conservative onslaught on the media it is necessary to have some comprehension of the role played by professional journalism beginning in the early twentieth century.

Prior to 1900, the editorial position of a newspaper invariably reflected the political views of the owner, and the politics were explicit throughout the paper. Partisan journalism became problematic when newspapers became increasingly commercial enterprises and when newspaper markets became predominantly monopolistic. During the Progressive Era--as was chronicled in these pages a year ago--U.S. journalism came under withering attack for being a tool of its capitalist owners to propagate anti-labor propaganda. * With profit-making in the driver's seat, partisan journalism became bad for business as it turned off parts of the potential readership and that displeased advertisers. Professional journalism was born from the revolutionary idea that the link between owner and editor could be broken. The news would be determined by trained professionals and the politics of owners and advertisers would be apparent only on the editorial page. Journalists would be given considerable autonomy to control the news using th eir professional judgment. Among other things, they would be trained to establish their political neutrality. Monopoly control over the news in particular markets was not especially important--so the argument went--since, whether or not there were multiple newspapers, trained professionals would provide similar reports, to the extent that they were well trained. There emerged a professional code that, following The Elements of Journalism, by Bill Kovack and Tom Rosenstiel, might be reduced in its most ideal form to nine principles:

1. Journalism's first obligation is to the truth.

2. Its first loyalty is to citizens.

3. Its essence is a discipline of verification.

4. Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover.

5. It must serve as an independent monitor of power.

6. It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.

7. It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant.

8. It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional.

9. Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience.

Needless to say, such principles are mere ideals in a society where the media are ultimately controlled by those who hold the purse strings. Under these circumstances, the field for the application of journalism's professional code is narrow, and it has been altered to conform to the political and commercial requirements of the media owners, and the owning class in general. In practice, professional journalism has adopted three biases that have tended to institute an establishment bias: (1) government officials and powerful individuals are regarded as the primary legitimate sources for news; (2) to avoid the controversy associated with providing context, there has to be a news hook or news peg to justify a news story, which further tilts the news toward established institutional actors; and (3) journalists internalize how to "dig here, not there," as Ben Bagdikian put it. In other words, stories about corporate malfeasance are far less likely to be considered newsworthy than stories about government malfeasan ce.