The Media Elite revisited - relevance of 1986 book by Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman and Linda Lichter - Special Section: The Decline of American Journalism

National Review, June 21, 1993 by Ted J. Smith, III

OF all that has been written in the last thirty years about liberal bias in the media, no single work has had a more profound impact than The Media Elite by Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman, and Linda Lichter. Published in 1986, its most dramatic findings derive from a survey, completed in 1980, of 238 journalists randomly selected from America's most influential news organizations: ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal.

The survey revealed a group of individuals at once remarkably similar to one another in background, status, and beliefs and strikingly different from the general public. In 1980, this "media elite" was predominantly white (95 per cent), male (79 per cent), college-educated (93 per cent), and well paid. Four out of five had been raised in relatively affluent business or professional families; two out of three came from states in the Northeast or industrial Midwest.

In terms of beliefs, one distinctive characteristic was a strongly secular outlook. In marked contrast to a 1977 Gallup poll of the general population in which 94 per cent of respondents professed a religious faith, 50 per cent of the elite journalists listed their religion as "none." And while 86 per cent of respondents from the general population said their religious beliefs are very or fairly important to them (and 42 per cent had attended a religious service in the preceding week), an identical 86 per cent of elite journalists said they seldom or never go to church.

But the most significant findings concern political beliefs: 54 per cent of the journalists described their views as left of center, 29 per cent as "middle of the road," and only 17 per cent as right of center. This ratio of more than three liberal journalists for each conservative contrasts sharply with the distribution among the American public: every relevant poll conducted in the decade from 1975 to 1985 found conservatives outnumbering liberals in the electorate, often by a ratio of three to two or more.

Of course, partisan or ideological labels provide only a very rough indication of political orientation. Thus one of the great strengths of the Media Elite survey is that it also included several sets of more precise questions about political attitudes and behaviors. One set asked how the journalists had voted in each of the last four presidential elections (i.e., 1964-76). It produced what is now probably the most frequently quoted datum in the media bias debate: Among elite journalists who voted for a major party candidate, support for the more liberal Democratic contender ranged from 81 per cent for McGovern and Carter, to 87 per cent for Humphrey, to a high of 94 per cent for Johnson.

An additional set of questions elicited attitudes on 21 economic, political, and social issues. The responses showed little support for egalitarian socialist economics but strong endorsement of liberal social views in such areas as welfare, affirmative action, environmentalism, and, in particular, individual morality. For example, only 13 per cent of the journalists agreed that large private corporations should be nationalized, while 86 per cent endorsed the statement that "people with more ability should earn higher salaries." Similarly, fully 90 per cent agreed that "it is a woman's right to decide whether or not to have an abortion," while only 25 per cent agreed that homosexual sex is "wrong." Indeed, fewer than half (47 per cent) agreed that adultery is wrong.

The authors also sought to provide insight into the future by conducting a separate survey of students at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, a principal training ground for prospective members of the media elite. They found that while the students were more diverse in race and gender than the existing elite they were even more homogeneous in background and beliefs. In particular, self-described liberals outnumbered conservatives 85 per cent to 11 per cent, a ratio of almost eight to one. The obvious prospect: less political diversity and a further shift to the left.

RESPONSES to The Media Elite were intense but largely predictable. Presented with a sophisticated scientific study by respected scholars that strongly supported their complaints, conservatives reacted with something approaching open glee. In contrast, journalists and their liberal supporters fought doggedly to minimize its significance. Some simply dismissed the findings out of hand; others argued that the research described only elite journalists, not the profession as a whole. But the most common response was to assert that, regardless of journalists' private views, their reporting is scrupulously objective and fair.

The argument that elite journalists are unrepresentative of the wider profession is at best only partially relevant. Elite journalists are enormously influential, because their reporting sets the tone and content of coverage in smaller media as well. More important, there is every reason to believe that the argument is false. More than a dozen studies of journalists' attitudes have been conducted since 1980, most by media-related organizations. All have produced very similar findings and all generally support the conclusions of The Media Elite.