Depending on who you talk to, media bias exists in varying degrees. This recent Yale report tends to suggest that the assertions that the television and print news media are biased rather strongly to the left. This said, nobody seems to be talking about why the media would be left rather than right biased.
Well, if you think about the fundamental philosophical tenets of the Left, there exists more than a small amount of paternalism (excepting, of course, certain social issues involving genitalia and saying certain types of rude things in public). Along with this (and opposed to the fiscal conservatism that is associated with certain elements of the Right), there is naturally a desire for government intervention to right the wrongs of the world.
This point of view – that governments are, in some cases, actually good – is informed, in part by the notion that the masses are a poor, benighted people who can’t help themselves. Now, not all people who agree with this assume its because people (when working in corporations or government) are of the opinion that the smart people go off and either become evil and work for corporations (to crush the little guy) or government (to protect the little guy), but it’s not hard to see how one could assume that folks of that opinion would be almost unanimous in their support for government meddling in things for ‘the greater common good.’
With this perspective, one might also imagine that the reason that some folks should go off into government to protect the foolish little guy is that, well, not to put too fine a point on it, they know better than the little guy. Think about it, if your neighbor is developmentally disabled, then is it not your moral obligation to help take care of him, insofar as it is reasonable, to prevent him from hurting himself or others?
Along these lines, we can see clearly that the protection of the proles depends in part on informing them of the terrible things being done to them or being done in their name. Given the super-complex way the world works, then you simply can’t expect Joe Couchpotato-simplisimo to go forth boldly and seek the truth when he’s being anesthetized by commercialism and distracted by a never ended torrent of bread and circuses that are fully intended to blind them into something a Marxist might recognize as ‘false consciousness.’
If you’re some bright young thing, particularly one who saw the near-revolutionary efforts of Woodward and Bernstein as archetypical examples of exposing the mendaciousness of big business and their proxies in the Republican Party to the witless and feckless masses, how could you not be attracted to the pursuit of journalism? Conversely, if you were more or less of the opinion that people can figure things out by their own damn selves, why chose a low-paying stressful career regurgitating information that the public will sort through with horse sense anyway?
So, it isn’t surprising that the media has become populated by folks who are looking out for the best interests of the ignorant and ill-informed public. Moreover, as someone who peddles in current affairs and the truth day in day out (and not to mention, someone who isn’t deluded by the ‘false consciousness’ created by big corporations and others bent on keeping the people down and making the rich richer) you would have a pretty accurate view of things, wouldn’t you?
So, when the public doesn’t seem to really grasp the deeper significance of events, or isn’t well informed enough to focus on the things that are really important, doesn’t it become your moral obligation to focus their attention? Granted, things may be getting better in Iraq, but isn’t that really significant news to the Iraqis, rather than the Americans? Abu Ghraib, on the other hand, is the tip of the iceberg, showing how truly morally and spiritually corrupt Bush and Cheney (and by extension, their Iraq Adventure) really are? Sure, the incidents themselves don’t hold a candle to Saddam’s atrocities, but everyone knows Saddam was bad, while a large portion of the country seems to be willfully blind to the dangerous and nefarious character of the Bush Regime?
Isn’t one of the moral obligations of journalism exposing people to the truth? And since most people need things like government to look after them, and media to inform them, as a journalist, you really have to step up to the plate to look out for people. If journalists don’t do it, the people will simply buy the propaganda hook-line-and-sinker, and end up following demagogues who really are out to exploit them. When it really gets down to cases, if these evil folk weren’t out to exploit the masses, then we’d have social justice, and a liberal, humanist, secular utopia with wealth and plenty for all. But the fact that there are children starving in the streets, but the military spends hundreds of billions of dollars on foes that don’t really exist, that’s prima facie evidence that American citizens are being bilked and stolen from. And for that matter, anyone who espouses spending on things like that and not splurging on social services, well it’s similarly evident that these are the party of people who are really out to line their own pockets by stealing from these poor people who have neither the ability or will to succeed on their own, let alone the intelligence to really understand what’s being done to them.
So, as a journalist, you are the knight in shining armor who is commissioned to protect the poor and downtrodden. Partnering with your peers, the Robin Hood Trial Lawers, and the druids and dryads of Greenpeace and PETA who protect nature from man’s worst excesses, so Mother Earth can truly care for all of her children, you fight against the physical manifestations of man’s worst nature.
So, not only are journalists terribly left-leaning, they also live in a fantasy land.