In Search of the Liberal Media

[Q]

In Search of the Liberal Media 

By Robert Parry
Reprinted from the July/August 1998 issue of Extra!

In my two decades as a Washington reporter, I’ve often wondered where the legendary “liberal media” resided.

Clearly, there were a few modest-sized journals of the left – The Nation, for instance – which had one or two underpaid correspondents in Washington. There were a few moderate liberal talking heads on the Washington pundit shows – like Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift – often sitting as a minority amid pundits of the right.

But where was the powerhouse “liberal media,” the one that supposedly controlled the national debate and needed Rush Limbaugh as “balance”?

The traditional thinking was that the “liberal media” lurked somewhere in the editorial offices of the Washington Post and other major publications. The liberal agenda was pushed, too, by the subtle inflections of TV anchormen and the clever placement of stories by TV producers, the theory went.

My problem with the theory, however, was that in my years at the Associated Press, Newsweek and PBS’s Frontline, I sat in many of those offices, I met a number of senior editors and producers, and I have never known a single one to consciously promote liberalism. Indeed, whatever their private opinions, they seemed far more inclined to bend over backward to appease conservatives.

I came to realize that there was a practical reason for this behavior. Mainstream journalists lived with a constant career dread of being labeled “liberal.” To be so branded opened a journalist to relentless attack by well-funded right-wing media “watchdog” groups and other conservative operatives. It guaranteed that a reporter’s career would be at least damaged, maybe ended.

So, contrary to the theory of a liberal media agenda, I found the opposite. Since the principal career danger came from offending the right – and there was almost no danger from upsetting the left – Washington journalists positioned themselves and shaped their work from a rational perspective of self-preservation, sometimes consciously, sometimes instinctively. --- http://www.consortiumnews.com/2002/123102b.html

[kentuck]

1. I mean, wouldn't a "liberal media" devote an entire week ....?

..to Reagan's funeral? Or are they just doing that to try to show people they are not really "liberal" ? :)