MisGuided about the Media

Aaron Baer
ab355005@ohio.edu







Douglas McClain’s Columbia Journalism Review commentary “In the Tank” displays his utter misunderstanding of conservatives and our complaints concerning the liberal bias of the media. His arguments are as shortsighted as they are common. Now someone may protest this stance by saying that “he gives us hard statistics, you can’t argue with the numbers”. Well you greatly underestimated me my friends….

Besides the fact that for every study he points to that show there was little or no media bias throughout the campaign, I can point to another that shows there was, there is a flaw you can find in his story that shows the error of the studies that he uses. McClain bunches the Limbaughs, Hannity’s and O’Reilly’s of the world in with the Couric’s, Olberman’s and mountain of New York Times reporters.

However, there is a fundamental difference between these two groups, one that I talked about in my last blog post. The difference is the conservatives who McClain uses as a counter-balance are self-proclaimed as such and their shows are not about delivering the news from a neutral or objective or even fair ground (whatever term you choose, they’re all the same thing). Their shows cater to a specific audience about specific topics. Although they may speak to us via the radio, television or newspaper, they are not journalists and a part of the media, they are pundits.

Conservative’s complaints over media bias has nothing to do with those on mass media that openly claim to come from one view point or another, they have to do with those that say they are delivering us hard news, but can’t resist showing their opinions via a misleading headlines or colorful vocabulary throughout. Watch the infamous Katie Couric interviews with Sarah Palin, then watch any coverage she gave of the Obama Campaign and try to tell me she’s not in love with the man. Scratch that, don’t even bother watching them, just go read the questions she asked the two candidates. One she hounds about foreign policy, the other she asks if it’s hard to be them.

In his infinite wisdom, McClain tries to write this off by saying that there is a “New News Game” and we shouldn’t expect to see only hard news on the front page. He says this is because the Internet has changed everything and people don’t want to see that anymore, they want more out of their journalists. Although there are plenty of reasons mainstream media are suffering today, I would say McClain’s lack of knowledge of what the public wants/needs is a part of the problem. People don’t trust journalists anymore because they’ve abused their power.