Press Going Too Easy on Bush

June 9, 2004 11:18 PM

Bottom-Line Business Pressures Hurting Press Coverage, Say Journalists. "Press Going Too Easy on Bush" survey finds. This and more in the annual State of the News Media report, paid for and sponsored by The Pew Charitable Trusts (non profit established by the children of Sun Oil Company founder Joseph N. Pew).
posted by stbalbach (19 comments total)

Quotes from Commentary: A Crisis of Confidence

--

News people are not confident about the future of journalism. Overall, they appear split over whether journalism is headed in the right or wrong direction. At the national level a slim majority are pessimistic. At the local level a slim majority are optimistic. Broadcasters are more pessimistic. Print people are more optimistic. Internet journalists are the most optimistic of all.

Roughly eight-in-ten in the news business feel the news media pay "too little attention to complex issues,"

In such a landscape, the Internet should be a glimmer of hope, and in many ways it is. The State of the News Media 2004 report found that the Internet was one of the few places where news audiences were growing.

Privately, some of the country's top newspaper executives report that they now have more readers on the web than they do in print.

The Internet is the most likely place in journalism to be suffering staff cuts (62%).

..the news business has lost confidence in the basic economic principle that had fueled its development for much of the last 200 years: Namely, that if you can aggregate a large-enough audience in one place, the revenue stream will work itself out eventually. Yet the companies who produce online news apparently do not have confidence that will happen with the Internet.

Journalists Confidence with the Public: The percentage of national journalists who have a great deal of confidence in the ability of the American public to make good decisions has declined by more than 20 points since 1999.

..whatever the cause of declining faith in the public, the implications are troubling. Even if the economics of journalism work themselves out, how can journalists work on behalf of a public they are coming to see as less wise and less able? A cynical view of the public becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that leads journalists to produce a shallower product because they think the public cannot handle anything else.
posted by stbalbach at 11:24 PM on June 9, 2004

My friend who reports for the SJ Merc (and may be reading this) has the bumper sticker:

The 'Liberal Media' is only as liberal as the giant corporations that own it.
posted by scarabic at 11:28 PM on June 9, 2004

Again, today, I'm listening to "National Reagan Public Radio"

I'm so pissed off at this point in Public Radio's drift - not only rightward but towards dumbed down coverage - that I'm considering actively persuading anyone I know who gives money to public radio to redirect their contributions to small independent stations or the small number of online news sources which do not filter the news like Pravda under the Soviet Union.

Seriously.

There are real, significant stories out there getting blacked out. Not completely, of course. Just blacked out enough to prevent them from ever getting any legs.

Like the Florida Voter Purge story. I don't expect to hear that one on "Liberal" public radio anytime soon. Or covered by the NYT...... fat chance.

For that matter, I can't recall hearing much, if anything, on the US media about the re-emergence of Afghanistan as the World's #1 opium producer. The BBC has been covering this story, so I guess the US media figure they don't really need to.

Yup, that's it. What a shame that hundreds of millions or billions of opium profits from Aghanistan are going to terrorist groups and that the trade threatens to destabilize the entire region.

I haven't heard - or read - much at all about "Torture-Gate" in the last few days, although my small local city newspaper considered that front page news.

I guess it's just so much more heartwarming for Americans to worship their fallen demigod Reagan than to pay attention to or contemplate how bad the US now looks in most of the World's eyes for it's recent, GW Bush era love of unilateralism, invasions, and torture.

All of the torrents of predigested crap being shoveled out by the US media, over the past week, on the Reagan "legacy" would be less offensive if the mainstream media weren't resorting to simply making shit up about Reagan's record, such as the NYT's bogus "Longest US economic Expansion in US History" claim for Reagan's eight years in office (hint - it wasn't) or refusing to acknowledge certain - errr - "troublesome" incidents from the Reagan years such as the Reagan White House press conferences during which White House spokespeople openly joked about and ridiculed the emerging problem of AIDS.

If the NYT runs that one as a front page story, I'll pull a Werner Herzog and eat my shoe.

Honest.

I'll cook my shoe and eat it - and film the whole process, even if I throw up.

But I don't expect I'll need to put a big pot on to boil anytime soon.
posted by troutfishing at 5:25 AM on June 10, 2004

You are exactly correct troutfishing!

Liberal media my ass! Stupid, corporatist media is what we have.
I used to think that we at least had NPR to tell the truth and shine light on all the cockroaches but not anymore!

Shall we have classes in how to properly genuflect in the video presence of Dear Leaders next?

No one expected that the book 1984 would be used as an instruction manual. When does the inquisition begin?
posted by nofundy at 6:25 AM on June 10, 2004

Overall, they appear split over whether journalism is headed in the right or wrong direction.

then overall, i'd have to say they are bigger idiots than they appear to be.
posted by quonsar at 7:47 AM on June 10, 2004

Like the Florida Voter Purge story. I don't expect to hear that one on "Liberal" public radio anytime soon. Or covered by the NYT...... fat chance.

Ahem.

And NPR has definitely convered it too.

Want to see all the latest stories on torturegate - try this for chrissakes.
posted by CunningLinguist at 8:05 AM on June 10, 2004

Cunninglinguist - It would be nice if the NYT had considered that front page news. No mention of the NAACP lasuit over the 2000 election, of Ashcroft's "suit" against Florida counties, or of the Florida election supervisor's resignation.

The NYT's "coverage" ignores a surprising amount of surrounding facts. It's a nice signpost, though, to which they can later point :

"We DID cover that story!"

In terms of NPR, I was referring actually to NPR's almost unbelievably dense coverage of Reagan's death (and I won't use the "H" word either, altough it still applies) which nicely crowded out a wide range of breaking stories that were rather embarassing to the Bush Administration.

Sure, NPR has covered torture extensively. Every media outlet in the US down to single sheet flyers used for breakfast place settings in the International House of Pancakes probably has too. So what ?

Evidence - suggesting that Bush had some knowledge of the torture at Abu Ghraib - surfaced but is being ignored, it seems, by most US mass media - NPR included. 24-7 coverage of Reagan's casket seems to be a higher news priority.

Bush Was "In The Loop" on torture, reveals memo

"President Bush has claimed that the prison abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib was "disgraceful conduct by a few American troops,"1 and had nothing to do with broader administration policy. But according to a March 2003 Pentagon memo, Bush administration lawyers issued legal justifications for torture, specifically claiming, "President Bush was not bound by either an international treaty prohibiting torture or by a federal anti-torture law."2 The revelations have now forced the President to backtrack from his previous denials of culpability, with the White House yesterday admitting for the first time that Bush did, in fact, "set broad guidelines "for interrogation in Iraq - a tacit admission that Bush himself "opened the door" to the torture tactics in the first place.

Now, the U.S. Senate is demanding the full Pentagon memo from the Bush administration. But the President has refused, instead dispatching Attorney General John Ashcroft to tell "lawmakers he won't release or discuss" the memo, even if he is cited for contempt of Congress."
posted by troutfishing at 8:49 AM on June 10, 2004

What are you people going to do with yourselves if Bush wins?
posted by techgnollogic at 9:16 AM on June 10, 2004

It's a sad day when my favorite news source is one that openly refers to itself as fake.
posted by adamrice at 9:17 AM on June 10, 2004

What are you people going to do with yourselves if Bush wins?
Personally, I'll mourn the death of America's election system and try to watch the rest of the country's decline into totalitarianism from a safe distance. The only thing left to be decided is whether they'll follow the Chinese model of a Capitalist one-party state or go for an Iranian-style theocracy (and the fight between the two factions will be plenty of fun to watch... from a safe distance).

And the press failed to note when they reported that Abu Gharaib prison was going to be torn down that they'll be shipping it here and rebuilding it just outside Waco.
posted by wendell at 10:17 AM on June 10, 2004

A little more back on topic (this was not intended to be a Bush bashing post it's about journalists).. the article seems to conclude that on the one hand journalists see the Internet as the one bright hope in an otherwise dark landscape of corporate money interests and an uncaring public forcing dumbed down news stories. But is the Internet what caused this to begin with? Do journalists know what we (MeFites) already know, that the best information is on the Internet and traditional TV/Radio broadcast press is somewhat of an archaic medium of a dieing age? Could this be why newspaper owners are running scared, making staff cuts to the Internet news branches trying the only way they know how to preserve the old medium.. is there an internal conflict going on between the old world and the new world.. we blame conservative business owners but is it really just the old journalistic guard protecting the turf of traditional media.
posted by stbalbach at 10:36 AM on June 10, 2004

Is this a case of, once again, the right-wingers using reframing to great effect?

Get the public believing that the media is liberal, and suddenly the "right" is viewed as liberal, the "far right" is viewed as being just plain ol' right-wing, and any "liberals" are viewed as being akin to commies.

Basically, it shifts the entire political palette one step to the right. A wonderful job of reframing.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:37 AM on June 10, 2004

I haven't heard - or read - much at all about "Torture-Gate" in the last few days

I listened to more NPR than I care to think about whilst driving from Toronto back to D/FW Tuesday and Wednesday, and there was abundant coverage of the Abu Ghraibh torture and hearings, as well as abundant coverage of the "torture is legal" memos (including noting that the memos and recent testimony to the Supreme Court by the solicitor general take opposite positions).
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:59 AM on June 10, 2004

ROU_Xenophobe - There was some heavy coverage this afternoon. I take some of my bile back : I'm grouchy, I think, because the first thing I heard this morning (Morning Edition) seemed to be one nonstop Reagan disinfommercial.

The media in the last few weeks is - in fact - paying much more attention to stories I consider important. But that doesn't make me want to let them off the hook completely.

stbalbach - I apologize for derailing your original question. I blame in on coffee.

"Could this be why newspaper owners are running scared, making staff cuts to the Internet news branches" - perhaps. Or perhaps many invested too lavishly in their internet depts. during the DotCom boom.

But - neither "meatspace" physicality nor the traditional economy vanished quite so rapidly as predicted. Newsprint still brings in most newspaper revenue ( right now ).
posted by troutfishing at 11:49 AM on June 10, 2004

One more point - according to Editor and Publisher Magazine, major print media has tended to endorse Republican candidates in presidential elections since the 1930's.

I'm not sure if that stems from "bottom-line" pressure though.
posted by troutfishing at 11:52 AM on June 10, 2004

In that regard, the poll finds that many journalists especially those in the national media ­ believe that the press has not been critical enough of President Bush. Majorities of print and broadcast journalists at national news organizations believe the press has been insufficiently critical of the administration. Many local print journalists concur. This is a minority opinion only among local news executives and broadcast journalists. While the press gives itself about the same overall grade for its coverage of George W. Bush as it did nine years ago for its coverage of Bill Clinton (B- among national journalists, C+ from local journalists), the criticism in 1995 was that the press was focusing too much on Clinton's problems, and too little on his achievements.

"Shame on us, we were too hard on Clinton, and we're too easy on Bush."

What liberal media?

So their major failing in 1995 was they were too hard on poor Clinton, and their major failing in 2004 is they're too easy on that rat Bush. Nothing but negative press and defeatism since about 11/01, and they think they're being "too easy" on Bush. And what's motivating this 'kindness'? "Bottom line business pressures," in other words: "We'd be even more frothingly negative and defeatist about this Republican president if it weren't for the fact that general public would finally give the fuck up and stop wasting their time reading our bullshit propaganda."

And you people eat this stuff up like it's "proof of the conspiracy to hide the truth" or something. Journalists are telling you straight up that they would like to be even more insanely negative and critical of Bush than they already are, but they have to tone down their agenda because otherwise they couldn't get anybody to buy it.
posted by techgnollogic at 7:19 PM on June 10, 2004

Wow. That's an amazing spin you've put on that, techgnollogic. Rabid, even.
posted by five fresh fish at 8:51 PM on June 10, 2004

Also, this is an intriguing rebuttal of the original "Liberal Media" ur-research by the Freedom Forum, by Robert Parry.

He finds that The Freedom Forum's "study" was anything but scientific - they sent close to zero questionaires to conservative media, for example, and few to major, mainstream media.

"what was most dramatically missing from the list were many of the principal conservative journals. The Washington Times did get four questionnaires; Human Events one; The New York Post one; and another Murdoch newspaper, The Boston Herald, one -- the seven equalling about two percent of the total. But the other big-name right-wing publications got zero.

A likely reason for the absence of these prominent conservative journals was the fact that many are organized as non-profit corporations so they can accept tax-deductible donations from individuals and foundations. But non-profits have difficulty getting credentials from the Congressional Press Gallery. And it was from that credentialed list that the survey recipients were selected.

So the Freedom Forum survery appears to have dramatically undercounted the scores of conservative journalists in Washington, despite their significant influence in setting the national agenda. Many of these conservatives appear regularly on TV pundit shows and their opinionated columns resonate across the country through conservative radio hosts and on the op-ed pages of newspapers.

The Freedom Forum survey gave much greater weight to the voting choices of reporters from small publications who have next to no influence in the nation's capital. These work-a-day reporters rarely, if ever, appear on TV and their stories concentrate on the hum-drum actions of local members of Congress, not on national affairs.
It may be interesting that a large percentage of modestly paid reporters from small- to mid-sized dailies favored Clinton over Bush. But there is little evidence that those presidential preferences translated into soft media treatment of Clinton or into especially tough handling of Bush or the GOP congressional majority."
posted by troutfishing at 9:53 PM on June 10, 2004

five fresh fish: I can imagine 2 reasons why "bottom line business interests" would keep the press from being more negative on Bush:

1) The people would stop buying the media because recognize it as biased bullshit propaganda.

2) The people would stop buying the media because it "threatens" their assumptions, whether it's true or not, and they're in collective denial about the state of reality.

I'm just not paranoid, cynical, and ignorant enough to believe #2.

Oh, a third option just occurred to me: 3) Business concerns are keeping the press from hiring enough people to cover all the failings of the Bush administration. There just aren't enough loafers on the ground, and the Bushorists have drowned the media in so many options for critical news stories that there's chaos and panic as the press tries to pick and choose which disasters and incompetencies to cover.

Hmm, nah, I don't believe that one either...
posted by techgnollogic at 3:04 AM on June 11, 2004