Kurtz: Bias Is About Bored Reporters

Howard Kurtz in Media Notes:

There surely may be some instances of liberal bias.

It's just possible.

Kurtz:

Day after day, from the endless opinion polls to the features on Nancy Pelosi contemplating life as House speaker, news organizations have framed the midterm elections as a season in which the Republicans are probably, most likely, almost certainly heading for big-time defeat.

And, in truth, many journalists are probably rooting for a Democratic House.

But not for the reason you might think.

After six years of almost uninterrupted GOP control of Washington, divided government would produce what reporters like best: conflict....

One-party rule is, let's face it, rather predictable, especially with a Republican Congress that has basically gotten out of the oversight business during the Bush presidency.

Howard Kurtz. Bright guy. Detects a lack of conflict in recent years. Dismisses implication that reporters want Democrats for political reasons.

Impressive.

From the amazing Hugh Hewitt interview with Mark Halperin, political director of ABC News:

HH: But the old media is overwhelmingly liberal, correct, Mark Halperin?

MH: Correct, as we say in the book.

HH: And so everyone that you work with, or 95% of people you work with, are old liberals.

MH: I don’t know if it’s 95%, and unfortunately, they’re not all old. There are a lot of young liberals here, too. But it certainly, there are enough in the old media, not just in ABC, but in old media generally, that it tilts the coverage quite frequently, in many issues, in a liberal direction, which is completely improper. And it goes from the big and major like CBS’ outrageous story about President Bush’s draft record right before the 2004 election, to the insidious and small use of language describing Nancy Pelosi’s liberal policies and ideas different than they would Newt Gingrich’s conservative ones.

Of course. It has to, in a world where you're surrounded by like-thinking people. Former CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg may have been the first prominent, accomplished mainstream journalist to start talking about this, in 2002, and he was rewarded with ostracism and eventually unemployment. ABC's Terry Moran (broadcast media is biased against the military) and former Postie Thomas Edsall (biases in mainstream media are overwhelmingly to the left) have chimed in more recently. The latter is noted in a Sept. 25 column by... Howard Kurtz. Hasn't sunk in.

Kurtz today::

In retrospect, the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994 was a godsend for journalism. The rise of Newt Gingrich, the government shutdowns, the Whitewater investigations, the Monica investigations, the overwhelmingly party-line vote to impeach Bill Clinton, all fueled thousands of stories about scandal and showdowns that boosted ratings and book sales.

You all remember the glee with which mainstream reporters welcomed the Republican takeover of Congress because it was going to provid riveting conflict-driven stories? Me too.

Peter Jennings after the Republicans took control of the House in 1994:

Anchor Peter Jennings set the tone for ABC's coverage of the new Congress in a November 14 radio commentary, blaming the election on "a nation full of uncontrolled two-year-old rage ....The voters had a temper tantrum last week....Parenting and governing don't have to be dirty words."

Read the rest of that old Media Research Center rundown and see if you can detect any joy about entertaining conflicts. I don't; maybe you have scientific instruments that can drill down to the subatomic level. I do see Peter Jennings, may he rest in peace, lecturing America that voters who supported the Contract for America did so partly out of racism. I see a number of ABC reporters informing us of the hypocrisy and ignorance of citizens who supported the federal spending reductions promised by the GOP in that election.

Now that's conflict.