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From: orb@whuxl.UUCP (SEVENER)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Selective reporting - (nf)
Message-ID: <61@whuxl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 24-Jul-84 08:40:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: whuxl.61
Posted: Tue Jul 24 08:40:29 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Jul-84 00:14:25 EDT
References: <216@loral.UUCP>, <10100060@ea.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Labs, Whippany, N.J.
Lines: 41

While it may be true that reporters tend to be moderately liberal,
it is also true that what actually gets published is conservative.
Who ultimately decides what will get published in a given newspaper
or magazine? The publisher--and publishers, being wealthy, also tend
to be conservative.  In fact 70% of the newspapers in this country
consistently endorse Republicans year after year-is this proof of
a "liberal" bias?  An excellent book on the media is David Halberstam's
"The Powers That Be".  He points out that even when the publisher of
the Los Angeles Times sought to make it more moderate (before he became
publisher the LA Times didn't even publish anything said or done by 
Democrats--that's how biased it was!)--he was severely constrained by
his own wealthy friends and family who were very conservative--some of
them had even joined the John Birch Society.  So whether he necessarily
liked it or not, the LA Times endorsed Nixon in 1968 and 1972.
The newspapers with the largest national circulation in this country
are 1)the Wall Street Journal 2)NY Daily News 3)USA Today.
Are these "liberal" papers? The Wall Street Journal and USA Today
definitely are not.  Newspapers don't make their money on subscribers-
they make their money on advertising.  It is the fight for advertising
dollars that puts great pressure on newspapers to be conservative.
If Otis Chandler of the LA Times had not endorsed Nixon then he faced
a probable stockholders revolt and also the probable loss of large
amounts of advertising dollars.
   But there is a further important bias inherent in the media--that is
the power of high officials to create and control the news.  Reporters
get stories by their access to high sources--thus they come to accept
the preconceptions and be shaped by those sources in order to get 
their stories.  If a reporter alienates high officials she may find herself
being the last one to get major stories- enough of that and her career
will go down the tubes.
   Thus, as Halberstam points out in "The Powers That Be", all the
reports in the field from Vietnam that the government was losing the War,
that the government was disliked, and Americans disliked were overwhelmed
by reports from Washington high sources (e.g. President Johnson himself)
that THEY had information and our side was winning.  For a long time
this was believed by editors and publishers because, after all, who
has better information than the President?  Of course it wasn't true,
anymore than Reagan's repeated accusations of Soviet cheating on nuclear
arms agreements is true.  But who could know better than the President?

  Tim Sevener