The myth of the liberal media establishment
From that great bastion of liberal thought, South Carolina, comes this editorial in The State newspaper:
We journalists have our share of faults.
As a group, we tend to be arrogant and nomadic, which too often results in our being quite detached from our communities.
We are independent, fiercely competitive and suspicious of secrecy, and we tend to distrust and even disdain authority — characteristics that suit us well for digging out corruption but can make us act like petty children where none exists. (It also poses some interesting morale and management challenges inside newsrooms, but that’s another story, and one I don’t intend to write.)
And yes, as a group we do tend to be more socially and politically liberal than our communities. And yes, this does show up in our news coverage.
As nomadic outsiders, journalists build community among themselves. This leads to the group-think that takes over within any group of people with similar education, similar social status and similar worldviews.
This creates huge blind spots that influence and limit our thinking. The blind spot that causes the greatest disconnect these days, of course, relates to religious and social issues, which have become the new litmus test of ideology in our country. Case in point: The concept of a “born-again Christian� was foreign to the faith traditions in which most journalists grew up (if they grew up in any), and so official journalism is distrustful of anyone who calls himself one.
When news coverage comes across as tone-deaf to much of middle America, it’s largely due to these types of limitations. To get an idea of what I’m talking about, think of President Bush’s initial bumbling response to Hurricane Katrina, which grew out of his unfamiliarity with poverty rather than any animosity toward black people.
You’d never guess this by listening to journalism’s ideologically driven critics on the right, of course. To hear them talk, journalists all have a simple agenda — to skewer Republicans and promote Democrats and liberal causes.
That has been the common wisdom at least since Spiro Agnew denounced us as “nattering nabobs of negativism� and, not too much later, the profession took out his Republican boss. And so it has become the lens through which many Republicans view the media, taking offense when we subject Republicans to scrutiny but not seeming to notice when we treat Democrats the same way.
Anyone who understands the journalistic mindset (see “disdain for authority,� above) realizes that journalists don’t care what the political views are of their targets. But most people don’t understand the journalistic mindset.
For those of you tired of the media discussing Judith Miller, yes, it’s another article/column/editorial about her. Fair warning before you click through and read it in its entirety.
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