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Liberal Bias in the Media:
Are the stories you're reading or watching getting twisted by news organizations with a political agenda? The problem, according to journalist William Mcowan, is rampant political correctness which -- he claims -- often produce slanted stories. Is political correctness really producing an ethical challenge for journalists?
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Marlow [host]: Judy Muller, you've been involved in network television news for some time, both at CBS and now at ABC. Do you find a liberal bias among your colleagues?
Muller: Why is it always do I find "liberal" bias? Sometimes I find libertarian bias. I often find geographic bias. People who live in New York too long sometimes lose touch with small towns in America. I find that more often than anything else. I think Bernie Goldberg has found a germ of something that is sometimes true and expanded it into this global vision which is not true, and it sells books. It sells a lot of books.
Zavala [host]: But you're saying that the newsrooms are full of bias, whether liberal or otherwise?
Muller: I think there's bias wherever you have human beings and I think what we have, at least here in the L.A. bureau of ABC News, is a very healthy debate that goes on. We challenge each other all the time. you know, "Where are you coming from on that?", "Does that sound a little bit...", and I think that's a very healthy process. I can't speak for the New York head office. I'm not there every day.
It does worry me sometimes, as I said, that there's more of a parochial bias that happens when you have a national news organization, when people are all centered in one major city and they're not necessarily in touch with the very people they're reporting to.
Marlow: Van, when you were president of CBS News, you dealt rather closely with Dan Rather and he was one of the principal targets of that book as evidence of liberal bias. You find that to be true?
Sauter: Well, I don't think -- with all due respect, I don't think there's any doubt that the American news media is liberal and left of center. Whether you're looking at The L.A. times, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlanta Constitution, the mindset is the same. It is liberal, it's all in favor of gun legislation, it's in favor of abortion on demand. It has all the political positions codified and there's very little deviation. You know, I think the journalists deny it, but they're the only people truly denying it today. It's there.
Muller: Well, I will still come back -- yes, I agree that there's quite a bit of bias against guns and the rest of it. I come from the west and a western family, so I really feel that. You know, that's sometimes something I talk about with my editors and say, wait a minute, you know?
Van may not remember this, but when I was a CBS radio reporter in New York, I had a commentary called "Firstline Report" every morning. I came in and took a day of air subject and wrote my own commentary. One morning, I did it on a human rights watch report which was definitely a liberal-leaning report about abuses around the world, including the United States government's human rights abuses.
Suddenly I felt this presence -- this was after it aired -- in front of my typewriter and I looked up and it was Van Gordon Sauter, who was an impressive, imposing presence and was my boss -- he said, "I heard your commentary and I thought it was kind of a cheap shot." Now I was a little nervous at the time and I argued back and said, "Well, I didn't think it was a cheap shot" and we had a debate right there, which I thought was amazing. I don't know if that would still happen today where the president of the news division would come out and talk to a reporter about something he disagreed with, but I thought that was a very healthy exchange and I'd like to see that happen a lot more than it does.
Boyarsky: I think everybody has biases because of their parents, their religion, their upbringing and whatever, and then the people who are skillful in the business are aware of their biases and aware of their beliefs and they compensate for them.
Marlow: The alibi most of us use is, "Well, we may have personal biases, but we're always fair."
Sauter: But look at it. Look who the journalists voted for. They voted for Al Gore, they voted for Bill Clinton, they voted for Jimmy Carter. there is a mindset, a cast of people. We all talk about seeking diversity in the news business and indeed we have reached out, generally unsuccessfully, to people of color, but there's very little reaching out. you go into these newsrooms and finding people who are libertarians or conservatives, god love you, Judy, I don't find them.
Muller: Well, they've all gone to Fox. (laughter)
Zavala: That's right. (laughter) actually, Bernard Goldberg's book in fact deals with bias and focuses on the television news business, but another media critic said that newspapers are just as guilty.
Wald: I would tell you that, if you came over to see my news department, I'm not only proud of the ethnic diversity of the news department, but I think there's a wide range of political viewpoint. Every day we have a meeting on the morning news, we have a meeting on the evening news, and we talk about all kinds of stories.
People come from all different perspectives. Yes, I agree with Judy that there are personal biases that we all have from our upbringing and all of that, but I would respectfully disagree with Van that our newsroom is what I would call a liberal newsroom. I think we represent the cross-section. I really do.
Boyarsky: McGowan engages in the stereotype too that, if you hire African-reporters, they're all going to think the same, and if you hire Latino reporters, I mean, they're all going to think the same because they think they have this Latino message that they get every morning to put in the paper. But, you know, there's this tremendous diversity of views about politics, about family, about everything.
Zavala: But how do you explain the fact that, in general, you look at The Los Angeles Times, I admit it's there, there seems to be like proposition 187, you know, the whole immigrant issue is often reported with just a general sympathy toward immigrants. Same thing with abortion and gay rights. There is this sort of underlying ideology. How do you get around it? Why can't we move it more toward the center and be more objective?
Boyarsky: Well, I thought the coverage of gay rights and the whole gay issue was neither sympathetic or unsympathetic. I thought it was --
Zavala: -- you don't think that there's sympathy toward domestic partner rights? You don't think --
Boyarsky: -- no, I mean, I thought that it's an issue that should be reported and, if you're going to report it, then you're going to talk to people who are in favor of it and who are against it and you're going to have reporters write it who hopefully have the ability to write a good story that's compelling that will get people to read. One of the reasons that people get angry at The Los Angeles Times is because the reporters are very good writers. that's why they're hired. They tell compelling, compelling stories. So somebody who would rather see some boring neutral piece doesn't like it. I think that's --
Muller: but we don't always do our job in preparing people. For instance, the first Rodney King -- the Simi Valley trial in which all the officers were acquitted. I would agree with Lou Cannon who said we didn't do our job preparing people for why that jury voted as it did and why they believed the police when they said this happened before the cameras rolled and we didn't see the whole thing and put it in perspective. I think you write --
Zavala: -- how could you prepare them, though, for a verdict that was --
Muller: -- because we weren't really looking at that possibility. I think journalists, as a rule, went into that thinking, well, there's the videotape. They didn't look any further, they didn't look at what was in court, they didn't really report it. I think if we had done a better job, the rioting might have still happened, but it might not have been such a shock to the system of Los Angeles.
Marlow: I want to get back to the basic issue here, which is ethics. Is bias unethical?
Sauter: I think a great deal of bias is defined by what the audience expects and I think the audience expects fairness, balance, impartiality. You violate that, you've violated an ethical concord with the public. Let me just say one quick thing. I think local news across the country is devoid of bias, and why? because it's so highly competitive and you can't get away with it. That's very different from the network news where fundamentally their audiences are decided by lead-ins and other factors other than content or a local newspaper like The L.A. Times or the San Francisco Chronicle or the Sacramento Bee where there's no competition at all, none.
Muller: I don't think bias and impartiality are even the question anymore. It's what will get the ratings, what do people want to watch so that you have two and a half minutes, even on the network, of an animal story and thirty seconds on the church of the nativity firefight.
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