COMM 386: Media bias? You bet! But ...

In a post on the McCain campaign's latest attack on The New York Times, Newsweek political blogger Andrew Romano says the national media are biased, but not in the ways we usually think of political bias. In my opinion, he's right on the money.

In a column that ran Monday under the headline "How the Media's Real 'Bias' Works in McCain's Favor," Romano says:

For the record, I think there's a lot of bias in the mainstream media. It's a huge problem, in fact. But the issue isn't ideology. No reporter I've ever met sits around scheming about how to get his or her favored candidate elected. Do they have private political beliefs? I'm sure. Do these preferences occasionally skew their work? No doubt. But as a rule, reporters spend too much time with politicians to feel anything but skepticism. The really damaging bias is narrative in nature--bias for tension, bias for conflict, bias for drama.

Romano's context is a conference call (audio embedded in the column) in which McCain strategist Steve Schmidt said the Times is ""not by any standard a journalistic organization" but instead is "completely, totally, 150 percent in the tank for the Democratic candidate."

Romano's discussion of this is too nuanced to be easily paraphrased, but he says all the ink that Schmidt got for this blast at the Times -- which was a lot -- itself disproves his contention the media are ideologically biased. He suggests that with Wall Street in chaos and McCain losing ground in the polls over economic issues, Schmidt wanted to "distract the press from reporting on McCain's economic struggles by dangling a shiny object in front of their faces--in this case, a melodramatic attack on the media itself (incidentally, the media's favorite subject to cover)."

According to Romano's analysis, the gambit played to the media's well-documented "bias for tension, bias for conflict, bias for drama." And, said Romano, it works every time.

"Which is why when Schmidt and Co. release a misleading ad about Obama that's not actually airing on TV, the cable newsniks air it for them," he said. "Or why we jump to cover Schmidt's histrionic attack on the Times instead of focusing on McCain's economic speech in Scranton. Schmidt knows how the MSM works, and he's doing a brilliant job--far better than Team Obama--of capitalizing on its weaknesses. I'd tell him to stop whining if it weren't such an effective part of his strategy."