Here is my monthly column int he Albuquerque Tribune. It ran yesterday, August 25, 2005.
Liberal bias? Ha!
No, it’s jut scapegoating. And here’s the bitter laugh: Media haven’t dug deep enough.
By ArthurAlpert
It’s human and as least as ancient as the Old Testament: Nobody enjoys taking responsibility. So when bad stuff happens we blame somebody else. Individuals do it. So do nations, religious and ethnic communities - scapegoating, that is.
It cannot fail. Even if the goat talks back, the ensuing argument concerns the target’s guilt or innocence. And while that debate rages, the accuser is forgotten - also, what he’s hiding.
Scapegoating, now a professional sport, is behind the popular notion that "liberal media bias" distorts the news. I will now refute that, knowing full well that the scapegoaters have distracted me from probing the depths of their agenda.
Let’s use Mideast policy as a prism. As our Iraqi adventure approaches fiasco, the polls reveal most Americans are losing patience with the "war on terrorism." Fine, but how come the liberals who dominate the mainstream media (we’re told) didn’t keep us out of Iraq?
Look back at September 11, 2001, when al Qaeda terrorists, 15 of them Saudi and four Egyptian, using Saudi money, murdered almost 3,000 of us.
We pursued al Qaeda to Afghanistan, knocked off its Taliban protectors and moved on to attack Saudi Arabia, right? No, Iraq. In retrospect, it’s clear the White House exploited 9/11 to execute an old geopolitical scheme - oust Saddam Hussein and revolutionize the Arab World. They said Iraq and al Qaeda were in cahoots. That Iraq owned weapons of mass destruction. And brilliantly, they told us two topics – Iraq and al Qaeda – were just one. That is why they coined "the war on terror."
Why "in retrospect?" Why didn’t "liberal" news mediums dig, question, doubt? ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS News ducked. For tough skepticism, you had to watch the BBC’s coverage on KNME-TV/5. (Bless you, Channel 5.)
Ah, but Fox News didn’t hide. It blocked and tackled for the White House team. (If only Fox was a conservative network, honest and independent.) And talk radio played cheerleader.
The print press? Well, the "liberal" New York Times swallowed the White House bait on WMD. Later, the Times said mea culpa.
Nor was the Times alone. To this day, newspapers routinely write, "war on terror" without quotation marks. How trusting.
No, if liberal bias means a deliberate leaning to the left, it didn’t happen. Instead, most of the daily press performed traditionally – bowing and scraping before power.
So how did this liberal media bias foolishness arise? Remember Spiro Agnew? He led the modern Crusade against the effete and negative media. His aim - I was reminded in doing some Web research – was to quiet opposition to an earlier war of choice, Vietnam.
Editor Rem Rieder of the American Journalism Review wrote that the Nixon-Agnew White House sought "to portray the news media as a liberal cabal. That way the administration could dismiss critical press coverage as ideological rather than straight down-the-middle reporting."
There you have it - Agnew’s "liberal bias" story was a political tool. Still is.
(Incidentally, while Spiro chastised "radiclibs," the Feds heard he took payoffs and nailed him on tax evasion. Talk about having something to hide!)
That "liberal bias" slur is cynical. Simple-minded, too. It’s lots easier than analyzing the complex ways news gets shaped. What bias, for example, explains why Paris Hilton gets more ink than Karl Rove?
Maybe I’ll answer that next time. I’ve already spent my 600 words playing defense.
Advantage, professional scapegoaters.
Alpert is a semi-retired journalist in Albuquerque. Email him at: ArthurAlpert@swcp.com. His column runs the fourth Thursday of the month.
Andres Martinez of the Los Angeles Times (in a column carried in today's Albuquerque Journal) writes that President Bush is taking heat for high prices at the gasoline pump ""even if he can't do much about it." The remainder of the column contains nothing to weaken that - how shall I say this? - poorly-informed comment.
Of course, the President can do a lot about gasoline prices, particularly when he leads the party that controls the Congress.
Heck, this President twisted enough arms to get GOP conservatives to add a hugely expensive prescription drug benefit to Medicare even with the federla budget deeply in deficit, so he could campaign for senior votes. Raising fuel economy standards for Detroit would be a snap in comparison.
I am less concerned today with the energy issue than the ignorance of the columnist. Martinez represents something quite contemporary, the rise of the know-little Op Ed writer.
Years ago, newspapers were elitist, dominated by upper-class voices like Lippman, the Alsops and Arthur Krock. In democratizing, often a good thing, the papers have lowered standards. Now we have folkks who simply do not know much.
Not to mention, the politicians who have no allegiance to intellectual honesty. But that's another posting.
The Albuquerque Tribune, which works hard to make sense of events, offered a bonus last Thursday – a neat contradiction, possibly coincidental.
Gene Grant, a regular columnist, extolled the just concluded National Poetry Slam finals in Albuquerque but wondered where the local TV stations were.
Elsewhere on the same page, a young producer at Channel 13 news, Jason Gil Bear, wrote a tribute to Peter Jennings. The writer revealed he is serious and idealistic. Oh, and also that he thinks he is in the news business.
The contradiction seems obvious to me.
Jim Hoagland of the Washington Post is a neo-conservative columnist. Like Thomas Friedman of the New York Times and Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek (both of whom write much more attractively), he is a liberal who backed the Administration’s decision to invade Iraq.
I have noted before that whatever the virtues of the geopolitical reasoning behind that policy, its execution is deeply undemocratic. We went to war by deceiving the public.
Imagine if the White House had told us in the wake of 9/11 that while we can neither tie Iraq to that mass murder nor say for certain that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, we need to depose him.
Specifically, the President would have said that if we invaded and defeated Iraq, then rebuilt it democratically, we might contribute not only to an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement, but also fundamentally change the Arab and Persian Middle East. That was the Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Perle/Feith/Chaney rationale. (On a parallel Karl Rove track, they probably saw this policy as a linchpin for W’s Presidency and as attractive to his political base.)
Of course, if Bush had explained his Wilsonian approach, the opposition would have included elements of the base, aghast at "nation-building." as well as the Republicans who respected Daddy Bush’s mainstream foreign policy, not to mention Democrats.
I go over this old ground because Hoagland’s column in this morning’s Wall Street Journal is both what we have come to expect from him – turgidly thoughtful and wonderfully removed from reality.
He makes the point that Iraq has changed the US military’s thinking. Within that context, he refers to the Pentagon’s "intent of targeted troop withdrawals and redeployments…" as if it has nothing to do with domestic politics.
The proposed withdrawals would come shortly before next year’s midterm elections.
If you believe that’s a coincidence, I have a bridge for sale….
In an Albuquerque Journal story today from Marketwatch on the early termination fees that cell phone companies require, we learn that the companies want the Federal Communication Commission to retain regulatory power rather than let states get into the act.
My comment: It is easier to deal with one regulator than 50. And the telecommunications industry already dominates the FCC.
Also on today’s business page, Winthrop Quigley reports that a presidential panel headed by former IRS boss Charles O. Rossotti will offer several ideas for reforming the tax code, including wiping out the alternative minimum tax. Also, some form of a flat tax and "ideas for a consumption tax."
My comment: Erasing the AMT to eliminate its unintended consequence - penalizing middle-income taxpayers - also will erase its intended consequence, to make sure that the richest pay something.
Also, every idea in Quigley’s story involves reducing the progressivity of federal taxes. something the story ignores. And it describes Rossotti as a senior adviser to the Carlyle Group "a Washington, D.C., private equity investment firm," without pointing out that the first President Bush has solid ties to Carlyle.
Finally, the Journal reports on the same page that four New Mexico companies will split a bit less than half a million dollars in state job training funds.
My comment: This is the free enterprise system at work; my tax money and yours subsidizing private businesses.
So why am I telling you all this?
To make the point that, without context, these stories come out slanted. And that - with noteworthy exceptions like the Wall Street Journal and New York Times - this is the way the business pages of local newspapers are, biased in favor of business.
And everybody shrugs.
According to an "analysis" piece from Associated Press, the Administration may abandon the slogan of "the war on terror" in favor of broader terms.
Seems some folks at the Pentagon have noticed Osama bin Laden is still at large. Also, terrorist acts continue. So, says AP, some want to retire "war" in favor of broader terms. And some have figured out that terrorism is a tactic, meaning you have to attack the ideology that inspires its use.
Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld tried out "global struggle against violent extremism" the other day
This would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
The Administration coined the "war on terrorism" slogan to obscure the differences between al Qaeda and Iraq. It served well. To this day, millions of Americans believe Saddam Hussein was instrumental in 9/11. And millions of Americans have, I suspect, forgotten who did 9/11 - Saudis mostly, and a few Egyptians. And who financed 9/11 - mostly Saudis.
No wonder they haven’t been asking, "Why didn’t you attack Saudi Arabia?"
Now, with the Administration losing its so-called war on terrorism, it wants to change the subject. Can’t you hear the spin doctors brainstorming?
"What we need at this juncture is something less morphous."
Back to the AP analysis – it’s a service to focus on the Administration’s public relations strategy.