Posted: 09/05/07

The Rant Corner
Bernie's call against bias doesn't go far enough

Stew Shearer l columnist
sshearer@smcvt.edu

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders announced recently that he is teaming up with “Outfoxed” director Robert Greenwald to launch an online campaign to inform the public of the poor journalism practices of Fox News. I say "bravo" to that, but why just Fox News? I can understand wanting to hold Fox News accountable for the way it shamelessly parades whatever the conservative trend of the hour is, but it isn’t like the other major news stations and programs are innocent themselves. No, they haven’t been trying to sell a war with Iran, as Sanders might claim Fox News is. Traditional media outlets are much more subtle in their methods as opposed to Fox’s shameless flag-waving, but for the most part the major news organizations, be they print, online or broadcast have all demonstrated biased reporting a number of times.
           
There are some obvious examples, for instance the infamous “Rathergate” in which people inside CBS News allowed unauthentic documents to be aired during the 2004 election campaigns which were critical of President Bush’s military record. Then there are less well-known cases of bias, such as the case of a law school shooting reported in 2002. At first reading of the CNN.com article about it, you can’t really find anything wrong. It states that a school-shooter killed three people and then was overpowered by three students before being arrested. What is strange about this is that nowhere in the article does it mention that students who overpowered the shooter were all armed with guns of their own. In his book “Arrogance” Bernard Goldberg elaborates:

“One might think this was an important element that should have been reported in the story. An honest mistake? You decide…. a NexisLexis search on the story came up with this: Only four of 208 news reports that Goldberg found mentioned the rescuers had guns.”

Goldberg, who has written two books on liberal bias in the media, goes on to suggest that the absence of that fact in the majority of the reports is due to the fact that most reporters are of the anti-gun persuasion. Tracy Bridges who actually participated in bringing down the shooter and was interviewed by a number of reporters about the incident, concurs in the book, “I believe they didn’t want to put out an image that a gun was actually used in defense to help someone out... I’ve never read a story where they’ve put a favorable light on someone using a handgun. I only read the negatives.”
           
Such bias extends beyond gun control; take for instance the media reaction to the debates surrounding partial birth abortion during the 1990s. Pro-choice activists were opposed to  regulations against it and when the media covered the issue, the primary format was to parrot the sentiments provided by groups such as the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights League, which contended that the procedure, though perhaps undesirable, was not one performed frequently, and in the vast majority of cases to save the life of the mother. They said and the media reported that no more than a few hundred such procedures were performed each year in the United States. Then Ruth Padawer, a journalist from Northern New Jersey, reported that based on her investigations, the reality was that in New Jersey alone more than 1,500 partial birth abortions were being performed each year and that almost all of them were for non-medical reasons. The media largely ignored this fact. One would think that such an obviously important story would be more widely reported once it broke, but it was largely ignored by most major media outlets. And if that isn’t enough, Goldberg writes:

“On Jan. 22, 2001, right after George W. Bush became president, Rather went on the air and said, ‘This was President Bush’s first day at the office and he did something to quickly please the right flank of his party: He reinstituted an anti-abortion policy that had been in place during his father’s term and the Reagan presidency but was lifted during the Clinton years.’”

On Jan. 22, 1993, when Bill Clinton had just taken office, Rather said this about the new president and abortion: “Today, with the stroke of a pen, President Clinton delivered on his campaign promise to cancel several anti-abortion regulations of the Reagan-Bush years.”’
 
For a long time, Dan Rather was one of the most influential men in news and definitely the most influential man at CBS News. Both Bush, Sr. and Clinton were acting to keep promises they had made during their campaigns, but the contrast in tone that Mr. Rather took between them is unmistakable.

That being said, and with many more examples of bias being available (I’m going to hope the two I’ve given are enough) it doesn’t change the fact that Bernie Sanders is right about Fox News. They are a biased news station. I remember watching them in high school (I read the paper now) and during the turbulent periods before the Iraq War and during the 2004 election, their support for George W. Bush was obvious and unwavering.

That Sanders would question their journalistic integrity and call for change is not something I dispute. What I take issue with is that he calls for only Fox News to change. Any station interested in providing its audience with good and serious journalism should be striving to be as unbiased as possible in its reporting. And while Fox News might be more blatant in their biases than other media sources that people rely on, there are still plenty of examples out there of journalists twisting facts, ignoring important stories and too often letting their personal beliefs intrude on the objectivity that is supposed to define journalism.