Quit holding your breath

Since I've been traveling so much on airplanes recently, I've repeatedly heard instructions on how to use the oxygen masks that drop automatically from the ceiling in case of a decrease in cabin pressure. To get the flow of oxygen started, the attendant says, "Give the plastic tubing a firm tug."

Firm tugs are essential. The mask will not work unless oxygen is running through the tube. So it is in American society: Accurate information is the oxygen of the body politic. In every election cycle Christians and conservatives pour millions of dollars into candidates' campaigns and then complain as liberal media undermine those candidacies. Why don't we first make sure that the flow of oxygen is clear and strong?

On Independence Day this year, as we reflect on both the American Revolution and the reasons why the political revolution of the 1980s and 1990s is now bogged down, media differences should stand out. The most influential journalists 11 score years ago were on George Washington's side; today, they side with Washington's liberal bureaucracy and distribute misinformation about conservatives.

Is anyone still skeptical about charges of media bias? Look at last month's Roper survey that showed Washington bureau chiefs and congressional correspondents voting for Bill Clinton over George Bush in 1992 by a 13-to-1 ratio, and Democrats outnumbering Republicans 12 to 1 among those capital mainstays willing to state party affiliations. That's an amazing figure, given that twice as many Americans identify themselves as conservative than liberal.

Does anyone still believe the line from reporters of the left whenever they are confronted with such statistics-that personal attitudes do not matter, because professional reporters lay aside their own views? As The Washington Post's token moderate, James Glassman, notes, "That the press itself (along with the whole hand-wringing professional apparatus of our trade) chooses to gloss over it, is conclusive evidence of how pernicious the bias is." Dozens of books-I've written a few myself-show that journalists' attitudes affect not only coverage of events, but the even more crucial matter of what to cover.

What do Christians and conservatives do about the problem? Complain, mostly. Ignore it, some. Some of us gain solace by believing that a media end-around (talk radio, Internet) and some jawboning (point out press errors) will save the day. Some cite the 1994 congressional upheaval as evidence that emphasizing elections over media can work, but that looks more and more like a fluke. And some are lullabied by publications that pretend to be neutral on their news pages.

(One example of the pretense: Newspapers regularly order reporters not to march in parades for abortion and other sacraments of the left. But Malcolm Gladwell of The Washington Post gave the public relations rationale for this gag rule: With "a staff as totally unrepresentative of the national debate over abortion as ours is," Mr. Gladwell said, it's necessary to have "a rule about not marching in a pro-abortion protest because the whole staff could conceivably be there.")

It's beginning to look as if many Christians and conservatives will keep overlooking the lack of oxygen flow-unless establishment media folks help us out by becoming so overt in their bias that it becomes impossible to ignore. One of the pleasures of living in Austin, Texas, is that our denizens of the left are more straightforward than their Washington counterparts. And last month the American-Statesman, Austin's monopoly daily, showed its colors by offering, without any real news hook, a massive tribute to Lyndon Johnson's endangered domestic policy legacy: For three days more of the initial pages of the newspaper were devoted to Great Society propaganda than to all other news.

Good, I say. Other newspapers should also follow a truth-in-advertising policy, with reporters encouraged to march wherever they wish; if the whole staff heads to a rally for abortion, so be it. Maybe that would lead the rest of us to concentrate on developing more and better publications and programs. Maybe more people would realize that relying on liberal publications while concentrating on electing conservative candidates or promoting conservative ideas will not work.

Cabin pressure is decreasing yearly, but the powers of the press play on. On Independence Day, 2006, or 2016, will most Americans still be dependent on secular liberal publications for the flow of oxygen we need to survive?