Liberal Bias at CBS News?
The problems with the pre-election 2004 CBS Bush-National Guard story will probably become the most convincing circumstantial evidence for the liberal media bias hypothesis.
Producer Mary Mapes' sloppy journalistic practices are already proof enough of liberal bias within conservative circles. This is based upon the assumption that her actions were explicitly or implicitly motivated by a liberal political bias against George W. Bush.
There were clearly problems with the reporting at CBS news -- whether they were solely caused by an overriding political bias is probably overstating it. It probably figured into the picture somehow. But at the same time, the other structural biases of media production shouldn't be overlooked.
POLITICAL BIAS OR INCOMPETENCE?
STRUCTURAL BIASES AT CBS NEWS
WAS IT BIAS?WAS IT BIAS?
POLITICAL BIAS OR INCOMPETENCE?
Tim Rutten explains that it is harder to determine whether CBS News' journalistic mistakes were due to an intentional liberal political bias or unintentional incompetence in his LA Times article "CBS and Bias: Answer Elusive"
The allegation that CBS News' conduct in this matter was not merely incompetent but also motivated by politics is the crux of the issue...
Unfortunately, while the 224-page Thornburgh-Boccardi report meticulously documents the details of what already is known -- that CBS ignored the basic journalistic practices and its own policies to rush the segment onto the air -- it adds little of value to our understanding of whether political bias was at work at any level of the process.
Even though the official proof of liberal bias is inconclusive, it is still a reasonable theory that liberal bias could have played a part.
STRUCTURAL BIASES AT CBS NEWS
When I interviewed CBS White House Correspondent Bill Plante, I asked him about a comment he made about the elimination of CBS' research department in an interview with Martha Joynt Kumar. Plante responded:
When we gather information for a story there are usually -- almost always, certainly on the White House beat -- two people working on it, the producer and the reporter. Both of them reach out to experts or politicians whom we may wish to interview and both of us do the research. It's true that we don't have a large research department here, which we once did. But it's also true that it's easier than ever to access all kinds of material with a few keystrokes. We have full-time access, via the Internet, to Nexus. And we have the Internet itself. The search functions, as everybody by now knows, are nothing short of astonishing. You can bring up just about anything in a matter of seconds. And that is what we do -- We do our own research.
So Plante rationalizes away the elimination of a research department because of the improved search functions of the Internet. The problem of course is that there is not a sufficient amount of quality news analysis or investigative reporting sitting out on the Internet waiting to be discovered and repeated the world by mainstream journalists.
The structural biases of the media shouldn't be eliminated from this incident of alleged liberal bias.
WAS IT BIAS?
The attitudes and beliefs of most humans serve as the first filter of their perception of reality. So there are legitimate concerns about the ideological diversity of mainstream journalists.
Even though I have criticized the Media Research Center's hubris of their claims to have scientifically proven liberal bias, I do think that there are instances where an overriding political bias can and probably has influenced news coverage.
I don't think that the pre-election 60 Minutes Bush National Guard story is conclusive evidence of liberal bias, but I also can't eliminate the possibility that it might have played a part in these journalistic oversights.
