|
| Christian news worldwide |
 Home |
 Archives |
 Subscriptions |
 Adverts |
 Find a church |
 About us |
 Contact us |
 Site Map |
 PrintableVersion The politics of faith, essays on the morality of key current affairsMedia bias? - Peter Glover gives his view on the issueI have long since given up expecting honest, old-fashioned, balanced news reporting from the BBC. Nor are the rest of the British broadcast media and much of the serious print media much better - at least when it comes to reporting on political and social issues. What is thought of as 'balanced' and 'mainstream' media reporting in the UK has, for some time, been nothing of the sort. As a long-time observer and monitor of news reporting on both sides of the Atlantic, I can say that the situation in the USA is not much better. The only difference is that media observers in the USA are at least alive to their situation. Is our media WYSIWYG?That both countries have evolved a liberal media bias which is consistently skewing the majority of current affairs reports, and thus the court of public opinion, ought to be a matter of great concern. But for something to concern us, we first have to be alert to the problem. The awareness of liberal bias media in America has led directly to the creation of a conservative news channel, Fox News. Today Fox just happens to be the most-watched cable channel TV news. This new channel was the corollary to a general awakening of consumers who were becoming increasingly aware of the inherent anti-conservatism which (as numerous Gallup and other polls revealed) was a long way from reflecting and expressing their own views. It is simple enough to detect precisely the same divergence of moral views expressed by and in the media from those more widely held by a conservative-minded populace, though perhaps less markedly so in the UK than in the States. It seems that the romantic notion of a 'brave wartime' BBC, free from dogma and ever intent on presenting truth, not propaganda, still persists among the British public - against all the evidence. Indeed, the whole 'playing field' in the UK is clouded by the idea that we are neither a British culture nor a predominantly Christian nation (at least nominally), but rather a multi-cultural, multi-faith society. In its attempts to divest itself of its national identity, this is a 'horse' which not only 'won't run', but would (and rightly so) be flogged to death at the starting gate in most other nations. If you want an insight into what I am talking about here, read The Spectator for a few weeks. It rejoices in its raison d'etre as an organ prepared to publish articles from any shade of politics and worldview, just so long as they are well-argued. As a consequence, its pages typically juxtapose the leftist, anti-American pro-liberal agendas alongside conservative writers like William Shawcross and Charles Moore. I have no problem with this. We all know where everyone is coming from and why. I have every problem, however, with a marketplace bearing a multiplicity of labels but essentially selling the same basic postmodern goods, where absolute truth, moral superiority and the higher communal goods are all conspicuous by their absence. So where is the evidence?Even a snapshot assessment of some of the coverage of the key issues of the day reveals something of the extent of liberal media bias. Why, for instance, when the general conservatively-minded population is so consistently pro-death penalty, is the mainstream media almost exclusively dismissive and disdainful of public opinion? Why is it that when the majority of Brits so widely oppose EU federal integration, the media consistently gives the Europhile case airtime1, while Euro-sceptics are depicted as a ramshackle anti-intellectual bunch of anti-Europeans (rather than what they actually are, i.e. anti-European Unionists)? Why does the mainstream media continue to assert that the homosexual community is more substantial in number than it actually is, representing its case as not only a human rights issue, but one where the rest of society should positively affirm its cause as 'moral'?2 Iraq war?And why has the mainstream media been so pervasively anti-American and anti-Iraq war in presenting its case to the British people - laced with an ever-present hostility to George W. Bush? At the same time, why has the media reported almost nothing of the growing 'oil-for-food' scandal which, so it seems, will prove to be the chief reason why the Franco-Russian-influenced UN refused to take any action against Saddam's regime, although it had flouted all of the UN's 17 post-1991 War resolutions. Yet when the USA-led alliance, after 12 years of suffering Saddam's nose-thumbing, world-defying activities, enforced the UN's resolutions, the liberal media took the side, as is now being shown, of a Franco-Russian-UN alliance. Why, for instance, has the massive re-building programme for schools, hospitals and infrastructure in Iraq been overlooked and unreported by the British media? Why has the news been ignored (suppressed?) that more Iraqi citizens now have electricity and that Iraq is pumping more oil and producing more revenue for itself, than under previous regimes? Do not misunderstand what I am saying here. I do not ask for the media to change its anti-war stance, merely that they tell something of the fuller truth. I have heard countless stories of Americans and Iraqis arriving back in the USA, only to be stunned by the one-sided nature of the Western liberal media's coverage. By any standards, ours appears to be a media with an agenda bent on preserving an utterly false impression of an Iraq in chaos, when it is not. As someone who has spent many years working in and monitoring the mainstream media in both the UK and the USA, perhaps I have the advantage over the average imbiber of mainstream news channels in the UK. At least I know where to go to find more balanced and fairer news which dilutes and balances the rhetoric of the liberal-dominated British media. Excellent books reviewing bias in the media include two by CBS journalist Bernard Goldberg: Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distorts the News (Perennial) and Arrogance: Rescuing America from the Media Elite (Warner). Though both concentrate on the US, many of the issues raised are entirely relevant to the British situation. New researchIn 2003 research was published into the state of the mass media by the Pew Research Centre in the USA. It yielded some fascinating results. In his US News and World Report on the findings, John Leo notes: 'What it revealed was that most journalists have political and ideological leanings more liberal than those of the general public'.3 The Pew report found that just 7% of journalists and news executives called themselves 'conservative', compared with 33% of the general American public. As Leo points out: 'The self-identified liberals (34%) are five times as common as conservatives in the news business'. Not surprisingly, when the research was produced it received very little coverage in the media, including the liberal flagship New York Times. Quoting liberal Eric Alterman, author of What Liberal Media? asking: 'Why is it such a big deal to have a newsroom that's only a third liberal?' Leo responds that the 'big deal' is that media workers are becoming more liberal at a fairly rapid pace - up from 22% nine years ago to 34% now, according to Pew, Leo adds: 'It would be a bigger deal if the hiring of liberals reached the point (as it has in the academic world) where conservatives don't bother to apply for jobs.' When asked whether homosexuality should be approved of by society, 88% of journalists agreed, compared with only 51% of Americans in polls generally. By way of further confirmation, some 82% of journalists polled were able to list a news agency that was 'especially conservative'. Most (rightly) named the Fox News Channel. But as Leo put it: 'An amazing 62% could not name any news organisation that struck them as "especially liberal".' Leo's article also fixes on a conundrum which has long perplexed me. It is this: how is it that increasingly liberal newsrooms keep hiring more and more people who do not share the broader conservatism of the general population? In pursuing this question further, Leo hits on a key insight: 'One explanation is that national journalism is now an elite profession, staffed by people who went to elite colleges and who share the conventional views of their class.' The academic community, as Leo indicates, has long been the heartland of liberalism - and it has now managed to influence a generation of budding young journalists to boot. If the news is propaganda . . . For my own part, I do not share the views of some Americans who would prefer to see their own media adopt a more 'neutral' British style. Some have lately spoken of wanting to remove the openly hostile conservative vs. liberal, left vs. right, Democrat vs. Republican status quo from the media battlefield. But while the US-style of presenting and sometimes commenting on the news is something of a shock for the British viewer initially, it does have the double boon of honesty and transparency. In the USA, quite often, gone is the shallow pretence of 'impartiality'. In Britain, however, one is led to believe that the 'mainstream' is representative of no specific political or philosophical perspective. Regular assessment, on the other hand, reveals plainly that what one is hearing is slanted relentlessly 'left of centre'. For all its faults and frailties - and the same thing applies to the freedom of speech that Americans presently enjoy in their media, but which has long since disappeared in the British broadcast media - I much prefer the American system. At least we can be in little doubt as to the 'slant' of a particular broadcaster, journalist or channel. Fox News has an excellent example of how this can work well. One of Fox's best programmes is presented by Sean Hannity (a vocal conservative) and Alan Colmes (a vocal liberal). Together they interview conservatives and liberals alike and both throw in comments along the way. Quite often the sparks do fly. But - and this is the important thing - all is properly debated out in the open, leaving the viewer/listener to make up their own mind. Whether we prefer this approach or not, it has the benefit of regularly getting straight to the heart of the matter - and doing so without the paralysing fear of controversy.4 In my view, the result is that the observer's understanding is often greatly enhanced - and often in a way not intended by the vocal presenter/interviewee, right or left. The fact is that every one of us approaches each situation, including the latest news report, with a particular worldview. Whether we are consumers, re-porters, editors or presenters of news, it would be terribly helpful if we both recognised that, more often than not, there is an angle to how news is presented, and we just want everyone participating in the process to be honest about it. But the critical issue for me, however, is that the liberal mindset, more than the conservative one, is either reluctant to do so, or is in denial that what it professes as 'mainstream' views, are in fact, not mainstream' views at all, but rather its own liberal views. The trouble is that liberal news reporting, in the guise of being 'mainstream', is today dominating our supposedly 'balanced' media. This article is an edited excerpt from Peter Glover's new book The Politics of Faith, Essays on the Morality of Key Current Affairs, published by Xulon Press (ISBN 1 594677 96 4), and is used with permission. It is available at £8.50 (plus £1.25 shipping) from Word21, PO Box 5058, Great Bromley, Colchester CO7 7JY, or by the telephone order line 01206 231138. Footnotes © Evangelicals Now - December 2004 |
|
