Thoughts on bias

Although the readings on bias were a few weeks ago, it's taken me a while to digest the articles and try to put my thoughts into words about this complex topic. Actually, I had read both Goldberg's and Alterman's books shortly after they were published a few years ago, and found both very compelling and well-written.

Bernard Goldberg has become very well known from the WSJ article and then the full book about the apparent liberal bias in mainstream news reporting. I sense that he honestly felt that the major newspapers and network TV journalists had been acting unethically for many years by letting their personal views and attitudes influence their reporting. His stance is not that of a conservative ideologue, but rather (no pun intended) as a veteran journalist who became disillusioned by the pervasive tendency to report favorably about issues important to liberal-minded people, such as affirmative action, and unfavorably on issues advocated by conservatively-leaning people, like tax relief. I do find it disturbing that he was shunned by the network news anchors and many other colleagues in his field after his initial article came out. This tends to gives more creedence to the view that he was exposing a dirty secret or viewed as a traitor/informant by the news industry.

Eric Alterman's article and book also make very compelling points about the modern media from the opposite direction. He points out how many conservative politicians and activists like to frame the news outlets as being heavily biased toward the left, which provides a way to position themselves as the underdogs and beleaguered keepers of the flame. Whether they actually believe the bias exists, or use that belief as a way to manipulate the media, is a very fair question.

What I found most interesting in Alterman's book is his discussion of how there is one bias that one can say likely influences modern media - the strongly pro-business attitude. He extensively shows how this is most significant media trend over past two decades - how basic business interests have become the main guiding force - for both newspapers and broadcast media. While for many years, media company stockholders were content to have a paper make a modest profit, most now want a highly-profitable enterprise, so increasing revenue and restraining costs is the major priority for managing editors.

After pondering the points of their books, my distilled take on this is that they're both right. This probably sounds indecisive and hedging, but it's really how I feel. It's like many thorny questions where both sides have a lot of truth behind what they say and their perceptions are valid for the most part. However, one usually finds after analyzing the views of each side that one is a bit "more right" than the other, with more facts, logic, and reasoning behind them. On this issue, I feel that the Alterman viewpoint is the better informed and closer to the truth of the matter.