Unbiased No More: Real Journalism In America Is Dead
Note to Readers: When I discuss Media and Reporters in this post, I am referring primarily to the national media outlets. There are many unbiased and qualified reporters in local outlets across the nation. My colleague and friend Kim at the Tahlequah Daily Press ensures stories and articles in her newspaper are fair and unbiased, often to the extent that local elected officials and community leaders are disgruntled at the reports because she is fair to all sides. Kudos to Kim, one of the best reporters in the U.S.-RDG
When I went to journalism school, it was the mid-1980s. The Cold War was still on with the USSR, but overall it was a time of peace. Ronald Reagan was in office and even though many individuals in the media didn’t like him, most of America did. For the most part the national media and evening news programs reported facts. Sadly, it is no longer that way.
At the OU College of Journalism, we were taught in basic news reporting to only write the facts. For news reporting that was Rule #1. Present the 5 W’s and the H. Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. We were to have no opinion in our news stories. Opinions belonged on the Editorial page and not on the front page. It didn’t matter what we thought, just report the facts and let the reader, listener or viewer decide for themselves. Granted, the more advanced PR classes taught how to slant releases to benefit your client and question your opponent, but news was news. Unbiased. Period.
A perfect example I saw of this was for the OU Daily in September of 1990. Oklahoma had brought back the death penalty and Charles Troy Coleman was the first to be executed by lethal injection. Like any good journalist, the reporter for the Daily put his name in the drawing to witness the execution with the other local, state and national reporters from more well-known networks. Our reporter’s name was one of the few drawn. His story on page 1 of the Daily the next morning told the story of what happened in the execution room, along with the backstory of his conviction 12 years earlier. It was factual. No one knew how this university journalism student really felt about the death penalty or how he felt watching this execution take place with national media at his side. A few days later, his editorial came out about his experience. I was surprised to learn that he personally did not agree with the death penalty, and that it was a harrowing experience for him to watch this. You would have never known it from his news report. He had become, as a student, a real journalist, reporting the facts from the front line. Unbiased facts. No opinion presented.
In the following years, however, liberal reporting has become the norm. For many years now, liberals in the media have attempted to influence public policy based on their own agendas and beliefs. By slanting news reports and coverage to support their ideology, they have managed to sway public opinion. For a true journalist, this is an unpardonable sin.
In 1996, 22 years ago, the Freedom Forum, an independent foundation that covers media related issues, found that journalists in the mainstream media are predominantly liberal. In the 1992 U.S. Presidential election, 89 percent of journalists admitted to voting for Bill Clinton, while only seven percent voted for George H.W. Bush.
No one can argue the point that the political leanings of the mainstream media are not in the same percentage rates as mainstream Americans. The late ABC news anchor Peter Jennings admitted there was a liberal bias in the media.
“Historically in the media, it has been more of a liberal persuassion for many years. It has taken us a long time – too long in my view – to have vigorous conservative voices hears as widely in the media as they are now,” Jennings said. (“Dissecting Liberal Media Bias,” Human Events, 4 October 2004, p. 24.)
In the book Weapons of Mass Distortion, Brent Bozell, founder of the Media Research Center, chronicles media bias with regard to taxation, environmental issues, gun control, religion and abortion.
Because of this bias, the trust of mainstream Americans in the media has sharply declined. Back in July, 2003, a Pew Center report showed that 53 percent of Americans believed the news organizations were politically biased. In August of that year, a Gallup survey showed that 46 percent of Americans, when asked how much trust they had in the news media, had either “not very much” or “none at all.”
In its annual 2017 confidence poll, Gallup found that Americans’ trust in the mass media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly” reached its lowest level in polling history, with only 32 percent saying they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media.
With the era of Trump, the confidence continues to sink. Many say it is along partisan lines, and to an extent that is true. However, one cannot say that is the only reason. The numbers do not reflect that stance.
Several media outlets have indicated in the past year they are working harder to regain trust in the public. I have the solution if anyone is interested and wants to listen. The solution is simple – go back to leaving opinions on the editorial page and report unbiased factual news.
Until mainstream media outlets get back to true and factual unbiased reporting, the terms “fake news” and “biased media” will continue to be a dominating description of our media outlets. Trump simply has been vocal enough to say what many Americans have thought for many years.
To my colleagues in the media – you can’t get on camera and blame Trump. You have to look in the mirror and blame those looking back. If you don’t like being called “fake news” then you have the power to change it. Report facts and you can no longer be called “fake.” Until you do, real journalism will continue to be considered dead in America and the era of Walter Cronkite-type reporting will remain something to only be studied in journalism history class. RDG
