*** ORBUSMAX GUEST OP/ED ***

COUNTERPOINT: Celebrating Media Bias - By Dan Brown

Feb. 23, 2004

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Editor's note: The following is counterpoint response to an Orbusmax Guest Op/Ed by Justin Darr, "Biased As A Dog's Hind Leg", published 2/20/04.
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AHHH… The aroma is in the air; that slightly over-ripe smell of an upcoming general election. And as sure as mushrooms are springing up on my compost, I hear those old rants springing up again: The mainstream media is biased! They have a left-wing agenda, claim the right-wing spokesfeathers. Never mind that the left-wing spokesfeathers make the equal and opposite assertion of right-wing bias.

Say it my way or I'll accuse you of pandering to the other side! Give me the facts, not your opinions! That is, give me the "facts" I want to hear, the way I want to hear them….

After all, the media are dabbling in politics, the great American bloodless bloodsport. It's all about power, by gawd, and we're playing for keeps.

In my line of work, I'm constantly dealing with facts, real facts. Facts that are quantifiable, qualifiable, verifiable, and repeatable. My professional mindset makes me very sensitive to the difference between a fact, a belief, a position, a philosophy, or an assertion. And it teaches me that facts are empty, barren things, things devoid of meaning. Life is about belief; the world is what we think it is. Politics isn't about facts; it's about leadership. And leadership begins with positions, assertions, and beliefs.

So to the spokesfeathers of both wings, I offer this position: The various media are by nature and historical precedent the first handmaidens of the political system. Media is biased by its nature and by the nature of its subject matter. How any man perceives that bias is merely a product of the paradigms from which a given media outlet is viewed. The bias isn't in "them;" it's in you.

And the bias is a good thing.

It is constructive to review the historical context that created this enormous, and enormously various thing we lump together and call the "media." Although written records are as old as man, perhaps a good starting point would be the pre-Revolutionary war British colonies that would someday be the United States. Despite the fact the western version of the printing press was 300 years old in 1750, printing presses were still as uncommon then as personal computers were when Al Gore "invented" the internet: There were only twelve newspapers in the colonies in 1750, and government censorship was a common denominator. At the time, most people could neither read nor write. In other words, "the media" belonged to the elite. It was a powerful tool of the powerful, the influential. And it was used to advance positions, positions full of bias.

Consider a phrase; a phrase we utterly accept and even venerate today: Consider the words "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…" Really, now. If that isn't a position, I'm a monkey. And at the time, among people who accepted the Divine Right of Kings, people who practiced slavery, it was a radical position. A biased position. A position that called for radical, paradigm shifting change. Imagine what Mad King George thought as he read those words, or perhaps had them read to him. Perhaps that partly explains his madness…

Now consider how much we have changed from those people, and how much they were changed from their roots. Change facilitated by the power of the pen - the power of the press.

And those Elites who penned the position understood the power of the pen and the power of the press. From Thomas Paine's Common Sense to the Federalist, the founders of this Nation watched the pen and the press shape a new Nation based on a new view of mankind. A view of man that accepted a man's right to come to his own conclusions, to reap what he sewed, to shape his own destiny. Thusly, "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press…" This was a power too great to be left in the hands of the government. And the new capitalism of the new Nation grew hand in hand with the new capitalism of ideas, the new currency of the printed word. One could have never flourished without the other.

Nor did the "bias" ever stop. As the technology of the media improved and the audience broadened, the "bias" continued. Recall the yellow journalism of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. Recall their pivotal role in the Spanish-American war. Hear their echoes in today's free press. So the press is biased. And your point is? Newsmen aren't cloistered monks consecrated to utter objectivity; they never have been. There is no obligation to publish "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." "Freedom of the press" means, within very broad limits, the freedom to publish - or not publish - everything from basic information to that which is largely speculative, provocative, and even inflammatory. If it were otherwise, no major media outlet of today, no paper, no TV network, no conglomerate would meet the standard. Not NBC, not CBS, not CNN, not The Washington Post- and certainly not Fox News, Clear Channel Communications or The Washington Times. It is fundamentally impossible to observe without context, and context is part of the observer. No two people ever see anything the same way. Biases are like bellybuttons: Everybody's got one, and no two are alike.

And finally, there is the bottom line to consider: Media outlets are first and foremost businesses that exist to make a profit. Those "free" TV stations are anything but; they exist to promote that which their advertisers want to sell. Ditto the newspapers; if it weren't for advertising revenue, a newspaper would cost a lot more than the twenty-five cents many large daily papers still sell for. If it can be said that a business in this great land of capitalism has a "foremost obligation," it is to itself and its stockholders, an obligation to make a profit. And for-profit businesses cater to their markets. So if there is a "bias" in the press, perhaps it's reflective of a similar orientation in the target markets.

Thirty years ago, I watched "the media" - then in totality certainly far more biased than now - play a pivotal role in destroying a deeply flawed yet still supremely capable man who had devoted his entire life to public service. Richard Nixon was driven from office as the result of a situation he did not create; his "crime" was that he tried to cover-up something that should have never happened and in any case had little real effect on the larger matters of the State. Our last two Presidents, William Jefferson Clinton and George Walker Bush have both certainly committed far greater breaches of law and precedent, yet the consequences have in both cases been far different and less significant.

Thirty years ago, Oh spokesfeathers, we had a decided bias in just one direction. Today, Rupert Murdoch has built an empire by championing the positions of the other side, and Rush Limbaugh has become one of the most influential men in America. How? By the almighty dead hand of Adam Smith: The power of the marketplace. Markets, copied from nature, will not tolerate vacuums. The public perceived a lack, and they voted with their feet, with their dollars.

And today, we have the Internet. Today, any man can access a Nation-spanning, even world-spanning forum for his ideas. Today, any man can report the news as he sees it, and can draw from a vast array of sources of news and opinions.

Today, a man like Drudge can wield vast influence from a computer.

Oh, my dear spokesfeathers, oh how very much has changed in so little time.

So I'll leave with a special admonishment for those of the right wing that have mostly arrogated the position of "the faithful:" Where is your faith in yourselves, and in your positions? Where is your faith in your fellow man's judgement? Where is your faith in this greatest of all Nations, this unique land created out of a good idea?

If a jaded old Atheist can have faith, why not you?

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Dan Brown is a Materials Management Chemist, a graduate of the Evergreen State College, and of the University of Adversity.