e al it S ett m n nn m w o Be Su No Bill s r et we ck re Ti an B

Principled Ideas from the Centennial Institute Volume 4, Number 5 May 2012

Publisher, William L. Armstrong Editor, John Andrews

MEDIA BIAS: WHAT WE CAN DO

By Cal Thomas
Dont bother complaining about liberal bias in the media, advised Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Philip Terzian in a recent column. The stuff is so pervasive and so impervious to challenge that one might just as usefully complain about the weather, he wrote resignedly. I understand Terzians point, but the analogy is flawed, because at least the weather changes. Media bias doesnt.

Bruni, an outspoken homosexual, was commenting on a recent news item about the actress Cynthia Nixon, most famous for her role in HBOs Sex in the City. Nixon had been in a relationship with a man for 25 years and had two children by him. She is now in a relationship with a woman and having a baby with her. She said it was her choice in each relationship, which angered some in the gay-rights community who dont believe anyone chooses to be gay. But Bruni contended it doesnt matter. Nixon, he said, has her own truth and whatever makes her happy at the moment is fine with him.

If the more famous Nixonthat would be Richard to get away with that Relativism Nixonhad been allowedmedia, he would have kind of reasoning by the served his full second term, instead of being reigns forced to resign in disgrace.

Larry King used to put together panels of journalists when there were complaints that a particular story had been slanted more than usual to the liberal-secular perspective. Larry asked them if they saw any liberal bias. Naturally all of them said no. This is like asking Hugh Hefner for insights about abstinence and expecting to get accurate and useful information. Truth Abandoned One of the greatest broadcast journalists ever, David Brinkley, observed that something is biased only if you disagree with it. Neatly put, except that it disregards the notion of objective truth. In our day were beset by competing groups with competing ideologies who demand that you and I accept their truths even when they are contradictory and when measured against a standard of objective truth, fall short. But few in the media seek truth anyway, because the concept is foreign to most of my colleagues. It does creep in subjectively, however. While rejecting an absolute truth rooted in a God who is there, as Francis Schaeffer famously put it, most of my media colleagues accept their own truth as true, even when it is proven to be incorrect or unworkable, or when it contradicts someone elses truth. Thats because truth in our post-modern, post-Christian, post-Toasties world is about feelings and intentions, not results. This subjective approach to truth was on display last January in a Frank Bruni column in the New York Times.

supreme.

Feelings, Nothing More

My friend and fellow USA Today columnist, Bob Beckel, now says the Great Society was a mistake because it addicted too many people to a government check and robbed them of a work ethic. But he says the intentions of its supporters, including himself, were good. When people argued back then that welfare hurts those who take it and undermines the family by paying women to have babies out of wedlock, the media painted them as heartless racists who cared only about the rich, not the poor. Now that even secular sociologists have proved the point, does the secular left adjust their ideology? Do the media correct the record? They do not. They simply move on to new errors. And we are the ones supposedly indulging in blind faith. Theres a song about this from the 1970s. It was called Feelings, nothing more than feelings. Feelings and
Cal Thomas is Americas most widely syndicated columnist, as well as a Fox News contributor, a commentator on 300 radio stations, and the author of ten books. This was his keynote address at a News21 conference at Colorado Christian University on March 2, 2012. The News21 project is conducted by Centennial Institute on a Smith Foundation grant. Centennial Institute sponsors research, events, and publications to enhance public understanding of the most important issues facing our state and nation. By proclaiming Truth, we aim to foster faith, family, and freedom, teach citizenship, and renew the spirit of 1776.

media. Having denied its own biases and refused to consider the legitimate complaints of conservatives and Christians that their views were being ignored or stereotyped, the media establishment found itself circumvented as soon as technology presented the opportunity. Talk radio, Fox News, and numerous conservative and Christian websites blossomed. Still the mainstream media remain in denial and have done nothing to equalize the ideological spectrum which tiltsindeed listsfar to the left. Dumb as a Dropout The media ignore no other demographic group. They regularly cover women (liberal women, not conservative women), blacks (again, liberals, not conservatives), Hispanics (ditto) and gays, often taking the liberal line on issues of concern to these groups. But when it comes to conservatives and especially Christians, they are as ignorant as a high school dropout. On the rare occasions when the media do pay attention to conservatives, and/or believers, it is usually in connection with their perceived political influence. Rarely do they show believers doing good works.

intentions trump facts and results for the media and large segments of the population. They certainly trump truth. They even trump the Donald.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed that truth is nothing more than the majority vote of that nation which is able to best all the rest. How Peer approval cynical. outweighs

I recently had this conversation with the columnist Brian Lowry, who writes for the Such crude majoritarianism was certainly We talked even profits. show business publication, Variety.occasional not the view of our Founders. They might about Hollywoods ignorance and have debated what truth is, but they believed it existed hostility to anything Christian or politically conservative. objectively and could be found eventually, if pursued. When the occasional film, like The Passion of the Christ or Denial Persists In contrast, the modern media are more interested in the presidential horse race than in pursuing truthor even in helping to decide what works and what doesnt, based on past experience and history. After all, we didnt just emerge from caves, having to invent the wheel and discover fire. We have a history. But the closest the media get to history these days is the instant replay. It should also concern us that people now mostly tune in to those programs that reinforce what they already believe. This is bad, whether you are a liberal or a conservative; a believer, or a pagan whose national holiday is April 1. There is no intellectual growth in listening to what you already believe to be true. But this sorting of audiences occurred because of what we used to call the mainstream

Chariots of Fire brings in money (and in the latter case, an Oscar for best picture), Hollywood doesnt get the message that there is money to be made from this demographic group. The reason, as Michael Medved has written, is that Hollywood filmdom prefers the adulation of their peers to kudoseven ticket salesfrom people they regard as ignorant, right-wing fanatics, and Republicans. What Is Fairness? Another perceptive observation from David Brinkley was this: It is impossible to be objective, so we should always try to be fair. I agree with him about objectivity. It would mean that shortly after we are born we are put in a bubble and never taught anything. And that would be complete ignorance of everything, not objectivity.

CENTENNIAL REVIEW is published monthly by the Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University. The authors views are not necessarily those of CCU. Designer, Danielle Hull. Illustrator, Benjamin Hummel. Photos by Paul deBerjeois. Subscriptions free upon request. Write to: Centennial Institute, 8787 W. Alameda Ave., Lakewood, CO 80226. Call 800.44.FAITH. Or visit us online at www.CentennialCCU.org. Please join the Centennial Institute today. As a Centennial donor, you can help us restore Americas moral core and prepare tomorrows leaders. Your gift is tax-deductible. Please use the envelope provided. Thank you for your support. - John Andrews, Director
Scan this code with your smartphone to read this and previous issues online. Centennial Review, May 2012 2

But what would fairness mean? Politically, its a word that has crept into the vocabulary in order that liberals might grab more of our money through higher taxes on the successful. Journalistically, fairness is none too clear today eitherthough things were far worse in the time of Jefferson and Adams.

Voices of CCU

MEDIA MEDIOCRE SO FAR IN CAMPAIGN 2012

By Jay Ambrose
If popular government is to be something more than a sham and mockery, said Joseph Pulitzer, we need an able, disinterested, public-spirited press. Is there hope? Of course. But whats missing in too many news outlets this campaign seasonamid the constant analysis of who has fumbled, who might win, and what strategies are being employedis much of whats worth knowing. When assessing the presidential candidates, the vital questions boil down to character, competence, and stands on issues. These are obscured, however, by reporters determination that the salacious shall be knownand more on the bad side of character than that, if the press finds you less than cuddly. Seldom does the media investigate demonstrated competence to the extent many might want. But where the public really gets cheated is in being presented with little more than sound bites about stands on issues. Many in the news craft believe that delivering detailed reports on speeches and otherwise exploring candidates policy positions without comment reduces them to plain-Jane stenographers. They would rather be bold explorers of ulterior motives. The worst of the campaign coverage may be bias holding hands with melodrama, as when the press went wild shouting that millionaire boss-man Mitt Romney had said he liked being able to fire people. Never mind that the explicit context was that people should be able to change their health insurance companies. Lets pray for journalistic improvement, and meanwhile, may the blessed exceptions bloom.
Jay Ambrose, a national columnist and former editor of the Rocky Mountain News, teaches media Centennial Institute literacy at Colorado Christian University and is a Colorado Christian University Centennial Institute Fellow.

Golden age of media? Forget it.

Newspapers in those days made todays New York Times and Washington Post look tame by comparison. As Eric Burns writes in his marvelous book, Infamous Scribblers: the Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of journalism and it is no small irony that the former condition led directly to the latter, that the golden age of Americas founding was also the gutter age of American reporting, that the most notorious presses in our nations history churned out its copy on the foothills of Olympus. The Declaration of Independence was literature, but the New England Courant talked trash. The Constitution of the United States was philosophy; the Boston Gazette slung mud...Some journalism of the colonial era was cordial; some was thoughtful; some courageous; some soporific and some obsequious. But a lot of it that was consumed by the masses was crud.

Burns spells out how character was assassinated via newsprint; rumors retailed; libels published and believed. In short, All the slime that fits, we print might have been the slogan of much of colonial journalism. So any nostalgia for a lost golden age of American media is misplaced. Bypassing the Gatekeepers In our day, there is at least the advantage that the Internet and other technologies have made it possible to bypass the gatekeepers. No longer does something called the mainstream media decide what we can know and what they will keep us from knowing. Less than mainstream, that old media has become an eddy, devoid of the all-powerful flow that once carried a country along to a destination set by and an agenda held by the media. Its still powerful, like a wounded bear, and is able to influence decreasing numbers who believe it. But it is no longer as dominant as it was as recently as the 1980s. In this 2012 presidential election cycle we are again seeing the mainstream media behave according to type. Brent Bozell and the Media Research Center keep us apprised of the outrageous editorializing masquerading as reporting that they do, so I shall not dwell on that here. But rather than accepting such journalistic abuses, we should be grateful for and use the social media we now have at our disposal to get the truth out to wavering or

even liberal family members and friends. There is a basic distrust of government on all sides. We need to exploit that opportunity for maximum benefit. Constitutional Alarm The dust-up over the administrations attempt to ram Obamacare and its provisions for contraceptives and abortifacients down the throats of Catholic and evangelical institutions, and other organizations that dont believe in such things, is a case in point. Colorado Christian University was one of the first plaintiffs to file suit against the Secretary of Health and Human
Centennial Review, May 2012 3

Centennial Review
May 2012

Centennial Institute
Colorado Christian University 8787 W. Alameda Ave. Lakewood, CO 80226
Return Service Requested

Media Bias: What We Can Do

By Cal Thomas With journalism so often driven by emotions and ideology, not truth and history, Americas news media arent doing their part for self-government. Yet in the founding era things were worse, and today we can bypass the press via technology. Amid rising skepticism of big institutions, now is the time.

Services, challenging this. Some religious leaders say they will not comply with the HHS mandate, even if it means jail. Not even the left-wing media can stop the movement that may well develop from this ham-fisted attempt to violate not only conscience, but the Constitution. As constitutional watchdogs, of course, the media have neither bark nor bite. They found nothing wrong with the presidents comments to Matt Lauer on Super Bowl Sunday that Congress is preventing him from enacting the rest of his agenda. Yes, that is occurring, and its called separation of powers. So Obama gets to trash the Founders and the media give him a pass. Obamas New Recruits Something else that bothers me is the revolving door between government and the media. The Washington Examiner recently reported that 19 journalists and media executives, including five from the Washington Post and three each from ABC and CNN, have gone into the administration or center-left groups supporting the president. The number of those inside the administration hit 14 when the Posts Stephen Barr joined the Labor Department in February. Many of these new recruits are in communications or speechwriting offices, in direct touch with people in the media who used to be their colleagues. Presumably they

are there not only because they were Obama supporters while journalists, but also because they can help influence coverage of the president leading up to the election. Why else would they have been hired? Years ago when John Chancellor of NBC was named the head of Voice of America by Lyndon Johnson, he observed that every journalist should have the right to do something else once in his or her lifetime. After that they should choose what they want to do. I think thats right. Journalists as Cheerleaders? But think about it. Journalism is supposed to hold government accountable to the Constitution, among other things. If journalists are seen as cheerleaders for a party or a president or one set of policies, it diminishes the credibility of the profession and all of us who are in it. What will the future of journalism will look like? I have no idea.Technologically it will be as different a few decades from now as it is today from when I started in the 1960s. But the standards of truth, credibility, and trust must be renewed and preserved if authentic journalism is to survive. And it had better survive. As the only profession mentioned in the Constitution, the free press is essential for our American way of life.

Third Annual Rally in the Rockies

William J. Bennett
Fmr. Sec. of Education

Founder, Urban CURE

Star Parker

Salem Radio Host

Hugh Hewitt

Fox News For. Affairs

K.T. McFarland

Western Conservative Summit 2012

Calling All Citizens
June 29 - July 1 Hyatt Regency Denver Host a Table $2,500 Individuals $250 Under Age 30 $50

Gov. Jan Brewer

Republican, AZ

Fox News Politics

Dick Morris

Peter Schweizer
Hoover Inst. Fellow

James Robison
Author, Indivisible

Register Today at WesternConservativeSummit.com

Centennial Review, April 2012 4