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August 03, 2011 03:52 PM UTC

Gardner and Radio-Show Host Agree: Media Biased...Against Them!

  • 23 Comments
  • by: Jason Salzman

(“Do you need a study to be intellectually honest?” Uh, yes. It’s a lot better than “watch TV” as backup. – promoted by Colorado Pols)

In an old column for the Rocky, I asked KOA radio-host Mike Rosen about his oft-repeated opinion that The Denver Post has a “liberal bias on its news page.”

Can Rosen cite a study to prove this?

“I’d love to see one,” he said at the time. “I’m never going to have a study because I don’t have the time.” But he had no doubt about the leftward tilt of The Post, he told me, because he’s “documented dozens and dozens of incidents over 25 years.”

That’s the kind of thing conservatives, who go on about “liberal media bias,” tell you when you ask for proof.

The media is biased because they say so.

Lefties make the same undocumented claims about “conservative bias” in the media, I know, but not quite so often or loudly, it seems.

But, to be fair, a lot of lefties and righties don’t seem to understand that sweeping allegations of media “bias” can only be proven with in-depth studies that show a pattern of lapses over time. Not to mention the fact that bias implies a conscious effort to skew you, the reader. So it’s a tall task to prove bias, unless you just assert it because you think highly of yourself.

Good media criticism, which contributes to meaningful public debate and doesn’t mindlessly tear down professional journalism, focuses on specific stories or instances of coverage that we can debate and get our arms around. It points out inaccuracies, omissions, sloppy sourcing, unfairness, and the like, found in actual coverage in an actual news outlet, not alleged stories out there in the “media.”

Statements like the media is biased against “people who believe in smaller government” don’t fall in the category of good media criticism, and are pretty dumb, destructive, useless, and otherwise not befitting of a member of the media or a public figure.

Enter Grassroots Radio Colorado host Jason Worley and Rep. Cory Gardner.

They had the following cozy exchange about the media Thursday on KLZ AM 560, which airs Worley’s (and Ed Clark’s) Tea Party radio show from 5 p.m. t0 7 p.m. weekdays.

Gardner: The press likes to blame the Tea Party for a lot of things, because there’s a bias in the media against people who believe in smaller government.

Worley: You mean people like us.

Gardner: People like us.

I called Gardner’s office to ask what he meant by this but did not get a response yet. Does he really think the media are biased against him?

But Worley quickly answered my request for proof of the bias he and Gardner were upset about:

Worley: I think it’s pretty obvious.  Cutting government can mean a lot of things, but why does the media always run to Social Security and Medicare.  Why not stop all foreign aid, especially to our enemies.  Why not tell the U.N. that instead of America funding 23% of its budget we are going to fund 2%.  The media never seems to mention that the Dept of Energy was created to get the US away from importing oil.  Why do they still exist? There is a ton of waste in Cabinet level depts, but that never is brought up. I will back off on the media bias when they take an honest look at what we are spending and lay off the scare tactics.

Salzman: There are huge generalizations about the news media. Can you cite a report or study to support your view that the media “always run to Social Security and Medicare?

Worley: Turn on ABC, CBS, NBC during the evening news and study.  Do you need a study to be intellectually honest?

If you’re going to throw around the word “bias,” you do. To criticize the media, you should use facts, evidence, proof, and examples of the kind of coverage you’re talking about.

These things allow people communicate in a meaningful way.

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23 thoughts on “Gardner and Radio-Show Host Agree: Media Biased…Against Them!”

  1. Then define bias, and you might throw in a definition for  “smaller government.

    1) I divide media into two categories:

    -absolute 1st Amendent; controlled only by libel laws and markets i.e, print; subscription radio and cable TV and the new media…Internet in all its forms

    Media using  the limited resources of public airwaves – am/fm radio and broadcast TV

    2) Bias for me is when the host of an am/fm radio show identifies himself as one party or another and then uses the power of the microphone to promote that political perspective to the exclusion of all other perspectives.

    I also define bias when a broadcast network identifies itself as “conservative” or “liberal – progressive” and then programs accordingly.

    1. a “preference or inclination that inhibits impartial judgment.”

      That’s so hard to prove that a guy like Rosen relies on anecdotes.

      Rosen has his facts right a lot of the time, believe it or not, so I’ll assume his examples of errors or journalistic lapses at The Post are correct.

      But guess what? Journalists make mistakes, so the presence of errors in favor of the left doesn’t prove bias.

      A leftie could find an equal or greater number of anecdotes “proving” The Post has a conservative bias.

      That’s why sweeping allegations of bias from both sides are so useless and unproductive.

      I’m not saying The Post is free of bias. Maybe it’s there. The shifting norms of our political culture create biases, that may come and go or not. An academeic could document this with a content analysis of one kind or another.

      1. When Rosen, etc. use the term “media” they are alluding to what they call the “left” ……they do not include FOX TV or the 1920 talk radio stations…

        Talk show hosts self-identify as one party or the other… which I think by definition means they are not impartial….

        Rosen uses the anecdotes of bias in the newspapers and the broadcast TV  to justify the overwhelming dominance of right wing media on public airwaves. He also is so damm slick…he identifies ‘objectivity” as liberal bias because he claims it is impossible to be “objective” and if you claim it, then you are by definition “liberal.”

        Let me suggest what you might want to do is study up on propaganda techniques and then show how they are used on all media….that is much easier to document that “bias.”

        I keep thinking, Jason, that you are trying to live in another era…the era of Cronkheit and Murrow….You describe a world that I don’t recognize..

          1. But most mainstream news media outlets, which still have a major impact, aspire to journalistic standards, to some degree. I think they’re hoping that their credibility and legitimacy will help them survive, but this may be a pipe dream. The Post, for example, has standards. If you can’t recognize them, as compared to what you find in most blogs or talk radio, then you should pay more attention.

  2. Far too busy copying and pasting his past awesome editorials from RMN and reprinting them two years later at the Denver Post. And passing them off as fresh material until he gets caught red handed.

    As to Worley, of course you don’t need a study, Jason. Don’t be silly. This is the same crew that ignores scientific study after scientific study from around the world that has proven global warming is destroying the planet. Studies have to be read and these folks aren’t big readers. They go with their gut, baby.  

  3. What?

    ANd then you get written off as an academic, elite or hack.

    facts, evidence, proof are not what media personalities are motivated, convinced nor paid by and for. Ratings. Emotion. Passion.  

    Dog bites man – no.  Puppy bites naked woman, with pictures – yes.

    I’m not painting all media. But Rosen and Wprley? Yep.

  4. A political science professor I had was fond of saying politics often comes down to “whose ox was being gored”.

    I think the accusation of a “liberal bias” in the media took hold during the Vietnam War, when the three major networks were said to have an “eastern establishment liberal bias”.  America’s first televised war and uncensored reporting undermined the old dictum that the truth was the first casualty of war.

    This came to a head when Walter Cronkite, considered  the most respected and objective newsman of his day, turned against the war because in good conscience he could no longer stay silent about our failed war policy.

    But to the hawks and administration supporters, this of course was proof positive of the “liberal bias” in the media.

  5. He’s “documented dozens and dozens of incidents over 25 years” but stop asking him for data, dammit. He’s “documented” it! The documentation is in his head, just without any specifics, like dates, quotes, or names.

  6. Yes, conservative Mike Rosen gets three hours a day on KOA, but why only that? That’s only about 4% of the day, and for all we know the rest of those hours could be spent trashing Rosen and conservatives in general. KOA is well-known as a haven for leftists.

    Besides, why does Rosen need to be on a privately owned radio station? Why isn’t he on NPR? My tax dollars pay for NPR, and I should be able to hear what I want to hear when I want to hear what I want to hear when.

    It’s insane that you libs are complaining about ONE radio show on ONE station hosted by ONE guy with occasionally ONE guest who’s often not even the most conservative person in history.

  7. A study on media bias:

    http://newsroom.ucla.edu/porta…

    An endorsement of the study:

    http://www.freakonomics.com/20…

    A poll on journalist political affiliation:

    http://www.journalism.org/node…

    I’m not really one to complain about the press.  I expect that most vote D.  And it’s hard not to be affected or influenced by a 60hr/week workplace.  But the good (majority of MSM) reporters seem to be fair.

    The only places where I expect them to walk the straight & narrow is on the generic news telecasts (morning shows, nightly news, investigative, etc) of the old three networks.

  8. If you look at an article by Curtis Hubbard who works for the paper that can’t be named and say writes an article about the reapportionment commission and uses it to promote the straw man that Democrats were going to Gerrymander the process but now thanks to a stalwart Independent the reapportionment that allows Republicans to hold the house for the next ten years is a wonderful example of bi-partisanship and should be accepted without any complaints.  He totally ignores Wellington Webbs concerns and Republican counting of inmates who can’t vote in jails to achieve census minority quotas and he explicitly gives Republicans a pass on drawing a permanent majority map.

    Is this kind of slanted journalism a bias or cunning propaganda to get the average citizen to group think that any recommendations from the commission are automatically fair and should not be contested?

    When is it bias and when is it preconceived and managed propaganda?

      1. you would be able to see that the boogey man was unrestrained partisan Democratic Gerrymandering.  There was never any mention of any unsavory tactics by Republicans to screw being a partner in a Democracy and become the single totalitarian party in permanent power.  Not a word.  So was it deliberate or just media bias on the part of the corporate whores who pose as journalists?

      2. Voter fraud is a big Republican concern but using underhanded tactics to destroy fair and competitive elections is OK as long as they aren’t too egregious and the press looks the other way.  And Republicans are supposed to be superior because of their ethics and values?

  9. Not to mention the fact that bias implies a conscious effort to skew you, the reader.

    A perfectly “balanced” he said/she said piece–very common in the media–has a bias favoring those willing to lie and make outlandish arguments, and a bias against those who are making reasonable arguments in return. That may not be “a conscious effort to skew you,” but it is still skewed–and thus biased.

    2. That flawed style of journalism could favor any “side” of a debate.

      Bias manifests itself from the “preference” of the journalist.

      1. And your suggested comprehensive study would be the way to establish facts. But “journalistic lapses,” that continue despite facts that are available to the journalists, is, in practical effect, bias.

  10. “Don’t read that newspaper. It’s all lies.”

    “Don’t watch that news channel. They all hate you.”

    “Don’t listen to that music. It’s Satanic.”

    “Don’t listen to your friends. They don’t know that it takes force to show love.”

    It’s all the same phrase: “Don’t trust them. Trust me and only me.”

    I will never trust ANYONE who tries to tell me where I can’t get my information. If you’re telling me the truth, you shouldn’t have to tell me who to listen to.

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