Bush and Media Bias

September 14, 2004

A faithful reader scolds me for running with CBS’s bogus story about

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President Bush’s National Guard days without checking it out. He thinks I want John Kerry to win the election.

To take the last point first, I want Bush to lose; which doesn’t mean I want Kerry to win. Ideally, both Kerry and Bush would lose to me, as millions of good Americans wrote in my name. Yes, I’m running too, but I’m pacing myself so as to avoid peaking too early. I’m planning an October surprise to carry me across the finish line.

As for the CBS story, I didn’t exactly run with it. Writing on deadline, I merely repeated what was being reported in the major media, for what it was worth. And I said it hardly mattered whether it was true or not.

Nor does it matter much whether Kitty Kelley’s new book is telling the truth about Bush’s having done cocaine at Camp David. But the story is suspicious: Hasn’t Miss Kelley heard about the tape recorder? Her hottest “revelations” always seem to have no firmer evidence than her own notes. She could save herself a lot of trouble if she could produce tapes of her informants’ actual words.

The Republicans are probably right to complain that the media are biased against them. The Washington press corps is heavily Democratic, and sometimes it shows. In fact Bush may be reelected because of that bias.

Last winter the media went wild for John Kerry a little too early. Their ecstatically favorable coverage undoubtedly helped him win the Democratic nomination. But he has turned out to be a weak candidate, deeply disappointing his party. In retrospect, it should have been obvious that Kerry is a very ordinary politician. If the media hadn’t been so eager to anoint a winner, they might have realized this.

In the Watergate era, a myth arose that the press played an “adversary” role against the government, also called the “establishment.” I never believed it. To me it has always seemed obvious that the media are biased not so much in favor of the Democrats as of government itself. The tacit premise of most journalism is that government is good, and we need more of it.

[Breaker quote: The deepest bias is unconscious.]

[Breaker quote: The deepest bias is unconscious.]

Like most really deep prejudices, this one is unconscious. It’s shared by so much of the public that it isn’t thought of as a bias at all. When a hurricane strikes, everyone agrees that this is bad; and nearly everyone agrees that the government must do something to help the victims.

The media report mostly bad news, usually with the more or less implicit assumption that government is the solution to every problem. And bad news needn’t even be news, in the sense of specific events; it can merely consist of reports on continuing conditions of hardship — of racial groups, poor people, old people, what have you. There is never a shortage of people who have it tough; in some respects, some of the time, most of us do. And the prescribed response, whether or not it’s spelled out, is always more government.

By now this is such a strong and settled habit of mind that few people stop to reflect that government is, after all, organized coercion. To many people it seems an inexhaustible fountain of charity, an instrument of benevolence whose good potential hasn’t yet been reached. The news media often select as their subjects problems the government hasn’t tackled, but, in their view, ought to.

The habit of using government for every purpose, in turn, generates more news: the crises of overloaded government itself, including bulging debt and budget deficits. But perish the thought that government ought to be reduced, programs shut down, laws repealed, taxes lowered. The very nature and destiny of government is to grow, and grow it must.

Bush himself shares this view. He has repudiated the older conservatism that saw government as a problem and a danger. No wonder, since he shows no acquaintance with conservative thought and literature.

If Bush is “conservative,” the word has simply lost its meaning. He takes a few conservative positions for political advantage; but these are far outweighed by his huge additions to the welfare state and by his visionary foreign policy.

Bush actually shares most of the tacit assumptions of liberalism. If liberals can’t embrace him as one of their own, they’re being awfully fussy.

Joseph Sobran

Copyright © 2004 by the Griffin Internet Syndicate,
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