Media mackerels of '96

Each December a few journalistic members of the rebel alliance, including myself, choose winners of the "Year's Worst Reporting" awards handed out by the Media Research Center. This year, once again, the cauldron of liberal bias runneth over, and I'll just mention here a few of the main currents.

First, instead of waiting to report facts, leading journalists frequently prejudged them. Newsweek's Eleanor Clift on Feb. 10 said, "If Ken Starr is a credible prosecutor he will bring this to a conclusion and the Clintons will be exonerated." Even after Mr. Starr gained convictions, NBC's Jim Miklaszewski referred to "high-profile political witch hunts," and CBS's Dan Rather spoke of President Clinton "tied down as Gulliver was by the Lilliputians, by all this scandal investigation, ethics investigations that are bound to be unsuccessful."

Second, instead of trying to describe fairly what conservatives were trying to do, journalists frequently treated them the way medieval anti-Semites treated Jews. Time's Margaret Carlson said Republicans thought they had a mandate for "poisoning the water, tainting the meat, removing all these regulations." CNN's Bill Schneider was impressed to find in Jack Kemp "a rare combination -- a nice conservative. These days conservatives are supposed to be mean. They're supposed to be haters."

Third, while most mediacrats avoided too-obvious bigotry, occasionally their view of the world became clear. Bonnie Erbe of NBC Radio/Mutual Broadcasting on Aug. 16 said the Republican convention was appearing to be "pro-woman, pro-minorities," but "this is in sharp contrast to the delegates on the floor, 60 percent of whom are self-identified as conservative Christians." In media fantasies conservative Christians apparently are anti-minority and anti-woman, in part because they oppose abortion, even though black babies are far more likely than white babies to be killed before birth, and even though abortion is more popular among men than among women.

Selection of heroes and villains also indicated typical Washington media mindsets. Hillary Clinton was a feminist heroine, and those who criticized her showed "pathological fear of Hillary and any other uppity woman," according to CBS. Al Gore was portrayed as an intellectual giant: Newsweek's Bill Turque described on Sept. 2 what Mr. Gore "really loves: thinking about complexity theory, open systems, Goethe, and the absence of scientific metaphors in modern society."

The villains were conservative Republicans, responsible according to Time for the torching of some black churches, and talk radio hosts, who this year were once again linked by NBC's Bryant Gumbel and others to the Oklahoma City bombing. Christians who decried life in the fast lane were insufficiently tolerant, as was Bob Dole, whenever he showed mean-spiritedness by mentioning White House corruption.

Washington reporters' greatest wrath, however, was reserved for one of their own who bravely emerged as a whistle-blower: Bernard Goldberg of CBS stated in February that charges of liberal bias were "blatantly true.... [W]e don't sit around in dark corners and plan strategies on how we're going to slant the news. We don't have to. It comes naturally to most reporters." CBS News correspondent Bob Schieffer responded, "People are just stunned. It's such a wacky charge.... I don't know what Bernie was driving at. It just sounds bizarre."

The most bizarre defense of press even-handedness came from Time's Margaret Carlson, who on July 3--responding to a Freedom Forum poll showing 89 percent of Washington reporters voted for Bill Clinton in 1992--said that her colleagues were not biased because some could bring themselves to vote for Republicans like Christie Whitman or William Weld (both of whom are pro-abortion).

But there is good news: Recently, NBC's Bryant Gumbel has shown an interest in prayer. He asked a guest on Sept. 23, "In light of the new welfare reform bill, do you think the children need more prayers than ever before?" And on Nov. 18 he asked Jimmy Carter, "You write that you prayed more during your four years in office than basically at any time in your life and yet... you are consistently viewed as one of the more ineffective presidents of modern times.... What do you think, if anything, that says about the power of prayer?"

Mr. Gumbel apparently equates prayer with getting what you ask for. We at WORLD pray that our magazine will glorify God throughout 1997, and that God will work through us, beyond us, and against us, when necessary, to help our readers and ourselves find joy in serving him, now and forever. Happy new year!