Journalists Denying Liberal Bias, Part One
In spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, many journalists still refuse to acknowledge that most of the establishment media tilts to the left. Examples:
“I worked at CNN for almost 26 years. I worked in Mutual Radio for 20 years. I’ve been in the business 57 years. I have never seen a bias off the air or on. I’ve never seen anyone say, let’s go get this person today, let’s really ram it into him. I’ve never seen it. If a Democrat or Republican commits some horrendous story, we will — the story will run, the networks will cover it....[But] Fox News is a slanted network.”
— Longtime CNN host Larry King on NewsmaxTV’s The Steve Malzberg Show, February 12, 2014.
“We’ve never had an ideology. An ideology is a single thought across all programs. We’ve never had that.”
— MSNBC President Phil Griffin in a January 30 interview with The Daily Beast’s Lloyd Grove.
“My husband has said even he doesn’t know my politics. In the nonromantic-compliment category, that’s a good one.”
— ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer in an interview for the February 2014 edition of Ladies’ Home Journal.
“I can see how the intensity of coverage on certain issues may, to some people, seem to reflect a liberal point of view. But I actually don’t think it does.”
— New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson talking about her newspaper’s political slant in an interview with the New Republic’s Michael Kinsley, August 20, 2013.
“It’s silly that there’s a liberal bias in media. Obviously, there are liberal voices and there are conservative voices. But overwhelmingly, media in the United States — television, newspapers, and that sort of thing — the bias shifts towards the right. It’s a center-right media in this country.”
— Former NBC News reporter and New York Times columnist Bob Herbert on MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry, April 27, 2013.
“My work has been so cleansed, as I see it, and as I’ve tried, of political opinions over 27 years.... No one gives a rat’s patootie about my opinion, so it’s nice that I don’t have to share it.”
— NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams on Alec Baldwin’s Here’s the Thing New York City radio show, March 4, 2013.
“I think that the mythology of the big, bad non-conservative media has gotten into some [Republican congressional] offices...and then these guys — they actually believe the spin that’s out there, ‘Oh, my God, that’s what the mainstream media does, they do anything to disrupt the conservative agenda.’...The mythology of this, ‘the media’s out to get conservatives,’ is believed among more and more actual staffers.”
— NBC political director Chuck Todd on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, February 19, 2013, talking about why so few conservative members of Congress are willing to go on liberal talk shows.
“I know that it’s widely believed that CBS, NBC, ABC chock full of liberals. Not true. What it’s chock full of is people who wanted to give honest news, straightforward news, and voted both ways in many elections....Frequently what happened, people who were described as conservatives want to say, ‘I worked at CBS News, and you know, almost everybody there was liberal.’ What they really mean is not everybody there agreed with them all the time. This is a sham. It’s a camouflage...”
— Ex-CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, May 30, 2012.
“Most of us, do not — you don’t know whether we’re Republicans or Democrats or exhibitionists.”
— Co-host Barbara Walters on ABC’s The View, April 9, 2012.
Host Stephen Dubner: “There is a kind of, I think, common analog, I hope I’m not overstating it by saying that it’s common, that Fox News is to the right what the New York Times is to the left. I’m guessing you would see that as a false equivalency on a lot of levels. Tell me if I’m right.”
Editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal: “I think it’s the word I want to use here, but even on public radio-”
Dubner: “Please, we bleep so much on this show.”
Rosenthal: “Well it begins with ‘bull’ and ends in ‘it’ and you can figure out what comes in between. I think it’s absolute pernicious nonsense....Fox News presents the news in a way that is deliberately skewed to promote political causes, and the New York Times simply does not.”
— Exchange during the New York Times “Freakonomics” radio podcast, February 16, 2012.
“I think the thing that is underappreciated about MSNBC is that we don’t really do anything as a company, that we all sorta get to do our own thing. There may be liberals on TV at MSNBC, but the network is not operating with a political objective.”
— MSNBC 9pm ET host Rachel Maddow in a December 21, 2011 interview posted at Slate.com.
“You know, I think that the people who see the Times as like a liberal rag are wrong and that they sometimes don’t understand the separation between our opinion side, which produces our editorials and our op-eds, and the news report....You know, the news reporters go into their stories with an open mind. And something I stress to our reporters at the Times is even when you think you know the story, go in ready to be surprised or illuminated by what somebody tells you.”
— New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show, October 19, 2011.
Host Piers Morgan: “What I’ve always liked about your style is it’s — I wouldn’t say confrontational, but you’ve never shied away from being opinionated. And people have always got this quaint idea about CNN, that it doesn’t have opinions. What it doesn’t have is partisanship, which is a very different thing from having an opinion....”
ABC’s Christiane Amanpour: “I am not an American. I don’t vote. I don’t have an ideological bias. I actually have a lot of both — I believe in a lot of liberal policies and a lot of conservative policies.”
— Exchange on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, June 22, 2011.
“It is true that journalists tend to be more ‘liberal’ than the average American. But hyper-awareness of that fact has caused some of our most respected mainstream media outlets to bend over backwards to compensate — offering far more conservative voices than liberal ones....”
— NPR’s On the Media host Brooke Gladstone in an interview with CNN.com’s “In the Arena” blog posted May 31, 2011.
NPR’s Nina Totenberg: “There is a reason that we are the only news organization, other than Fox, with a growing audience. It is because of our product, which is straight-shooting, factual, and spends an enormous amount of money gathering news from all over the country and the world. Judge us by our product. The people in the newsroom were probably more mortified than Charles or anybody in the Tea Party, or any, any anybody else. I mean, we were just horrified, and not by the political incorrectness of what he [fired NPR executive Ron Schiller] said, but by the fact that he even thought this way.”
Moderator Gordon Peterson: “Well, this plays right into the belief that you’re a bunch of lefties.”
Totenberg: “I know it does, but it’s not true.”
— Talking about a hidden camera expose of NPR on Inside Washington, March 11, 2011.
“Hardball is absolutely non-partisan.”
— MSNBC’s Chris Matthews in an interview with local Washington, D.C. host Carol Joynt, as quoted by Politico’s Patrick Gavin in a December 9, 2010 article.
“As Mrs. Roosevelt famously said during World War II, this is no ordinary time.... The division, the hatred, the venom over a policy of something close to universal health care for citizens — I would sooner jab my hand into a food processor than take a side (in my line of work I never engage in opinions anyway) — but this has proven one of those catch-all issues.”
— NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams to presenter Matt Frei during the BBC’s Americana podcast, March 28, 2010.
“Through clever use of the Fox News Channel and its cadre of raucous commentators, [Roger] Ailes has overturned standards of fairness and objectivity that have guided American print and broadcast journalists since World War II. Yet, many members of my profession seem to stand by in silence as Ailes tears up the rulebook that served this country well as we covered the major stories of the past three generations, from the civil rights revolution to Watergate to the Wall Street scandals....For the first time since the yellow journalism of a century ago, the United States has a major news organization devoted to the promotion of one political party.”
— Former New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines in a March 14, 2010 op-ed for the Washington Post.
"I ask people just to look at my body of work. And nobody knows my biases. Do they think I'm against? Do they think I'm for? They don't know my biases. They don't know where I come from in this. I just try very hard to report the facts and to tell the stories as best as I can. I am not part of the current crop of opinion journalists or commentary journalists or feelings journalists. I strongly believe that I have to remain in the realm of fact."
— CNN's Christiane Amanpour to CBS's Lesley Stahl in a June 23, 2009 'Women on the Web' interview.
"Even though independent reports have shown the media was more critical of Barack Obama than John McCain during the presidential contest, there is still a fantasy that the press is gaga over now-President Obama."
— MSNBC's David Shuster on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, March 23, 2009.
CNN's John Roberts: "But if you disagreed with some of his [John McCain's] policies, why were you out there on the campaign trail supporting him?"
Joe 'the Plumber' Wurzelbacher: "Do you agree with every candidate and your candidate's policies?"
Roberts: "Hey, I'm not out there stumping for anybody, I'm a journalist."
— Exchange on CNN's American Morning, December 23, 2008.
"Media bias largely unseen in U.S. presidential race"
— Headline over November 6, 2008 Reuters dispatch claiming no liberal tilt in favor of Barack Obama.
"Yes, in the closing weeks of this election, John McCain and Sarah Palin are getting hosed in the press, and at Politico....We'd take an educated guess — nothing so scientific as a Pew study — that Obama will win the votes of probably 80 percent or more of journalists covering the 2008 election....[But] of the factors driving coverage of this election...ideological favoritism ranks virtually nil."
— The Politico co-founders John Harris and Jim VandeHei in their October 28, 2008 column, "Why McCain is getting hosed in the press."
"Before Gov. Sarah Palin came flying in from the wilds of Alaska for the Republican convention in St. Paul, there was a lot of sniggering in media rooms and satellite trucks about her beauty queen looks and rustic hobbies....In the press galleries at the convention, journalists wrinkled their noses in disgust when Piper, Ms. Palin's youngest daughter, was filmed kitty-licking her baby brother's hair into place."
— New York Times media writer David Carr, September 7, 2008.
"Hell no! I'm dying to find another liberal [to] open their mouths. Where are they!"
— Former UPI White House correspondent Helen Thomas, when asked if she thinks most White House reporters are liberal, as reported by The Washington Examiner's Jeff Dufour and Patrick Gavin, July 21, 2008.
"While I would not dispute the longstanding assertions that there are more political liberals in newsrooms than conservatives, our political staff, as best I can tell, represents all kinds of backgrounds and beliefs, and because we all work so closely and in such a fishbowl, we all tend to keep one another on the straight and narrow."
— New York Times political editor Richard Stevenson during an online chat with readers, June 23, 2008.
"It was no secret to the reporters around me that I have Democratic-leaning views. But they said I was always fair."
— Former ABC and CBS reporter Linda Douglass after she became a spokeswoman for Barack Obama, as quoted by the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz in a June 16, 2008 profile.
"We are agnostic as to where a story may lead; we do not go into a story with an agenda or a pre-conceived notion. We do not manipulate or hide facts to advance an agenda. We strive to preserve our independence from political and economic interests, including our own advertisers. We do not work in the service of a party, or an industry, or even a country. When there are competing views of a situation, we aim to reflect them as clearly and fairly as we can."
— New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller in his Hugo Young Memorial Lecture in London, printed in Britain's The Guardian newspaper on November 29, 2007.
Previous: Exhibit 2-28: Seeing Liberal Bias in the News (2013)
Next: Journalists Denying Liberal Bias, Part Two
