Well, I'm back. Actually, I have been making lists of any number of press issues undergoing public consumption and indigestion, from the old media bias debate to Dan Rather and CBS to bloggers and journalism, but various deadlines and, more recently, a cold that won't shake, caused me to fall behind in my writing plans. But I'm back and plan to change the website and do other things soon. In the meantime, let me call your attention to something that really gets me in the mood to throw tomatoes.
Van Gordon Sauter, president of CBS News in the 1980s, wrote this piece for the Los Angeles Times, and it appeared other places, including the Courant, where I read it. Without any examples or evidence of critical thinking, he picks up the old "CBS is a Liberal network" complaint, which he sees as one of the reasons for the end-of-journalism-as -we- know- it. This is really dangerous thinking because the editors who are buying into this "the news has a liberal bias" argument are making great pains to get "balanced" reports that further obscure the truth; it's like everybody but these executives are in on the fact that there is no such thing as pure objectivity. Caving in to the right-wing or status quo is what helped push the country into Iraq--and even some of the people on the right would have to admit that wasn't such a good idea, after all.
Sauter's remarks are just as knee-jerk as a man who was part of a tour group I traveled with through Italy a couple of years ago. A nice guy, the man, who was in his 30s, like to talk sports and politics over dinner. One night at dinner he said something like "I hate Dan Rather because he is unAmerican." A statement so lacking in nuance can only be met with a "Wow, we're not real capable of seeing gray, are we?", but I did manage to ask for an example. He cited the fact that Rather interviewed Saddam Hussein. Okay, it was a controversial interview; some people wanted him to bitch slap Saddam. But of course, various protocols were at work that shaped the interview just so, in the same way that interviews with the President of the United States is shaped by certain deference for his role. These points, however, were lost on the critics. And it wasn't like the interview was a love fest.
But I digress. The point is that Sauter isn't doing much thinking in the piece; there are no solutions, nothing to advance the conversation. He starts with the assumption of a liberal bias, but doesn't give any examples.
It's sort of like some students who complain about political correctness. I happen to be someone who thinks certain aspects of political correctness, euphemisms like height-challenged instead of short, for instance, go too far. But there are also good reasons why we don't allow racial slurs and other put-down language in everyday speech.Nonetheless, I always try to get students to clarify what it is they feel they aren't being allowed to do. Are there words they want to use? Names they want to call people? Help me on this. I never get a straight answer.
That's my problem with Sauter's piece. What makes CBS News, which has skewed various issues, particularly economic policy, in ways much like media in general, so liberal? Are there more sympathetic stories about the poor or gays? Are more people of color featured? Is it the tributes to the people who lost their lives in Iraq?Without concrete examples, we can't examine Sauter's claims for his biases.
News does come with certain biases that aren't helpful to any point of view --I hate saying "both sides" because of the false dichotomy that sets up -- but we can't get at it so well when the media start from the assumption of liberal media bias and don't dissect what it is the writer actually means when he makes that charge. I'm rather glad that Van Sauter is no longer in the newsroom. Clearly, the issues have grown too complex for him to sort. As I have said before in these pages, it's not about a liberal or conservative bias; it's about journalistic routines and formats that obscure the truth and ultimately support and reproduce the status quo, keeping the powerful right where they are.
