Many years back — sometime in the 1990s — syndicated columnist George Will wrote about a survey taken in newsrooms at major newspapers and TV networks. The survey found that more than 90 percent of the staffers of said newsrooms identified themselves as Democrats, single digits as Republicans.
“That is a monolith,” Will wrote at the time, some 25 years ago.
In addition to being defined as a large block of stone standing as a monument, a “monolith” is also defined as “a large and impersonal political, corporate, or social structure regarded as intractably indivisible and uniform.”
I often think of that Will column whenever I am reading — or get drawn into a discussion — about whether what we would consider the national media has a liberal bias. For my part, I believe that most if not all journalists genuinely maintain to themselves that they cover and report news fairly and without their personal political leanings showing through.
I also understand that many journalists, particularly in more urban settings, operate in a ideological bubble that seldom — if ever — is penetrated, and certainly not popped. Little wonder that the majority of news coverage and commentary at the metro papers and most national news outlets bends toward the more liberal view, consciously or not.
“We should acknowledge that maybe the biggest problem is that most of us think too much alike and come from the same backgrounds,” an editor of the opinion pages at The (San Jose) Mercury News said after findings of a similar newsroom survey in 2004 reaffirmed the more than 9-1 dominance of Democrats in the news media. “Find the pro-lifers in a newsroom. That’s harder than finding Waldo.”
Now, does all this make the American news media, as President Donald Trump has charged, the enemy of the people? Emphatically no.
The Fourth Estate serves a critical role in informing the people of our nation, states and communities about events and happenings, while holding our leaders accountable to their decisions and actions. In these tumultuous and divisive times, the media’s role to report the news is as important as ever, as the better informed we are the better decisions we can make about directions we want to take — from Main Street and the public square, to the statehouse, to the White House and Capitol Hill.
With his general cry about “fake news” and calling the media “the enemy of the people,” the president mocks the First Amendment and harms the profession that is dedicated to truth and serving the public. The charge particularly hurts local newspapers like The Bradford Era, which despite its primary focus on local news, can get caught up in the discourse about media with some of its readers.
The American media is not infallible — mistakes are made, and judgment and decision-making in these often emotional times can be clouded. Tensions have ever existed between the press and political administrations, again, from city hall to Washington, D.C., but the balance that is created between trust and accountability has been a force for good since even before this nation was founded.
“Fake news?” No. Call it scrutinizing news that doesn’t necessarily fawn over the Trump administration, not least because of the president’s own inability to stay out of his own way and allow much of the positives — growth-inducing tax cuts, strong Supreme Court candidates and proactive dealing with the likes of North Korea and Iran — to gain more attention in the news cycles.
But what we call the national press deserves criticism as well. Like moths to flame, it loses focus over trivial, often almost adolescent tweets from the president. Having failed to measure his movement and popularity in 2016, much of the press in some ways is still being played by Trump, who delights in seizing the spotlight — the reason, whether positive or negative for his administration, doesn’t seem to matter — and the national media frantically obliges.
Fox News, born as reaction to the left’s influence in national news, adds to the din. Perhaps it should be Fox (Talking About) News, just as the likes of CNN and MSNBC don’t necessarily report the news, they present commentary on it, offering the safe echo chambers where viewers go less to be informed than to have their views affirmed.
My very first journalism professor, a veteran newspaperman who taught me more about the craft than anyone, drummed into me that the reporter should never be part of the story. Right now, much of the media is too often a part of the story about Trump — because he pulls it in with his self-serving comments, but also because, too often, the national media has made itself part of the story.
For our part, the reporters and editors who work such long hours in Olean and Bradford don’t want to be part of the story; we want to report it, wherever the truth and facts lead.
(Jim Eckstrom is executive editor of Bradford Publishing Co. His email is jeckstrom@oleantimesherald.com.)
