Press Bias Clouds Election Reporting

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 4, 2000 | by Paul M. Rodriguez

It has come down to this: In the face of a potential constitutional crisis, press bias has fanned the flames of American discontent with the electoral process. Beyond the double-whammy mistakes on election night involving Florida, causing voters already in line to walk away, the press has compounded its blunders with shameful bias by reporting the results there out of context.

No sooner was the election over than Democrats began hoofing and hollering and getting massive press play concerning alleged irregularities in Florida that included Palm Beach County's screwy butterfly ballots, designed and approved by Democrats on the model of those used in Chicago! Yet, as the stories continue to cascade, if this is mentioned it is done only as an afterthought and with a discernable disdain for Republicans who point it out.

Then there's the issue of voters who screwed up the ballots. The way the television mavens tell it, the alleged confusion is an outrage and Democrats have been wronged. But when Republicans respond with the facts that in previous elections similar numbers of ballots have been thrown out for precisely the same human errors, it gets nary a mention, let alone explanation in context.

Now what about Missouri? By law no dead person can be considered for public office, yet hardly a mention has been made of how Democrats insisted on proceeding with the election of the deceased Mel Carnahan under a legal theory that would allow his widow to be appointed to fill his seat. Sure, incumbent Sen. John Ashcroft has said he won't bring a legal challenge, but there are Republicans aplenty who are madder than hell about it. Why has hardly a word about this cruel trickery appeared in the general press?

And what about the estimated 1 million voter-identification cards mailed out to immigrants in this country in predominately Hispanic areas (see "Chicanery Roils Election 2000," p. 26.)? Where's the outrage by the press at this White House-sponsored shenanigan inviting voter fraud? It's okay to provide a constant drumbeat about the Florida mess but not to so much as mention the voter-card scam? As nearly as we can tell, the failure to report on the latter centers on a journalistic decision somewhere that exposure now would have no effect on the vote count between Al Gore and George W. Bush.

Military personnel by the thousands also have complained that they did not receive ballots in a timely manner and/or never got them when requested. We suspect this would be a running news story if there were a hint or a whiff of possibility that absentee military ballots might favor Gore. But they don't, and hence there's neither daily coverage of the military absentee balloting nor so much as a sign of press outrage.

We raise these issues not as political partisans but as loyalists to a strange notion that the role of the press is to report the news honestly, in context and without favor.

Consider the polls: How many media stories created false impressions by suggesting that Gore was leading (or Bush was ahead) without ever pointing out that other polls gave far different results? What's appalling is how media bias routinely skews the reporting of polling statistics and thus, we are told by experts, manipulates the body politic.

There were stories aplenty we saw in big-city newspapers and on broadcast news that reported how the rich and powerful backed Bush. Yet stories on Gore supporters tended always to make it appear that, except for those crazy (but popular) actors in Hollywood, only the poor and the downtrodden backed the vice president.

Then there was all of that worker support for Gore from the unions. But it turns out that more than one-third of the rank and file voted Republican. The tens of millions of dollars from union dues spent to promote Gore simply were bled off by fatly paid union bosses who often receive more than the so-called captains of industry. But routinely the press doesn't make such distinctions. And we've come to believe this is deliberate. For example: Reporting on rumors about alleged Bush drug use and, lately, his 1976 drunk-driving conviction, has been steadily and loudly heard. Yet concern about Gore's illegal drug use -- allegedly even while a senator -- gets no play. Neither does Gore's own White House e-mail scandal, detailed in Insight two weeks ago, not to mention new information that clearly raises issues of lying by the vice president and his staff (see "E-Mail Paper Trail Leads to Gore," Nov. 20).

We long have thought the fact that the majority of Americans eligible to vote do not cast ballots is a national scandal that reflects poorly on the character of our country. But what's worse is having a press which, while free, has created a patina of unbiased news-reporting that is in fact utterly dishonest. Whatever the standard that any one news organization wishes to employ ought to be steadfastly followed when reporting on every facet of the same issue. But that hardly has been the case, such as, for example, in reporting on drug or alcohol abuse by the candidates.