Hugh Hewitt interviews Mark Halperin, political director of ABC News. As lengthy as they are, I've exerpted only small portions - the exchange lasted 3 hours. It's a must read for those of you still clinging to the notion that there isn't an overwhelming left-leaning bias in the news industry - the "default setting", as some of us call it. This is from one of their own.
Halperin was on the show to discuss his new book on US political strategists, The Way To Win, and throughout the interview, holds fast to the assertion that revealing his own political viewpoint to the audience is inappropriate for someone in his profession. (He also believes that journalists should refrain from voting). Hewitt disagrees;
HH: All right. Now let’s…then let’s put the plumb lines down on issues. Are you pro-choice?MH: Hugh, it’s the same thing on issues as it is on candidates. I don’t think it’s appropriate, if you’re going to cover these things, to talk about views. I will say this, Hugh. I will say that many people I work with in ABC, and other old media organizations, are liberal on a range of issues. And I think the ability of that, the reality of how that affects media coverage, is outrageous, and that conservatives in this country for forty years have felt that, and that it’s something that must change. But what my views are, are not important, and just like I said on not voting, I think having views and expressing them is a dangerous thing. I have opinions and thoughts, but I think talking about them is only bad for America.
***
HH: Mark, if you’re all left-handed, you’re not going to be able to hit from the right side of the plate, all right? If you’re all left-handed, you’re not going to be able to cover pro-life politics the right way. If you’re all atheists, you’re not going to be able to understand…
MH: That’s why we need to have the newsroom not filled with people who are all atheists, or anti-2nd Amendment.
HH: But if we can’t figure that out, how in the world…
MH: We have to work on it, Hugh. We can’t give up. We have to work on it.
HH: But how do we know you’re working on it when you won’t answer the questions?
MH: Because I’m telling you that my views, to the extent I have them, and I’m very good at pressing them out of my brain, do not impact my attempt to be fair to everyone I cover.
HH: But Mark, was Mary Mapes fair?
MH: No.
HH: Okay. There are more Mary Mapes. Even if we believe for a second…
MH: Hugh, Hugh, Hugh. Stop going back…
HH: …and there’s no reason to believe you…
MH: Stop going back to the stuff we agree on, because we can talk less about the book if you do that. I agree with you that the Mary Mapes’ of the world are ruining it for the rest of us, and they are the dominant majority. We’ve got to fix it.
***
MH: You’re asking me should people be skeptical? I think anyone who’s conservative should be skeptical of anything the old media does. But if they look at what we say in the book about the old media, if they look at the quality of ideas, I think that they’d have no reason to be skeptical, that the book is not a straightforward and honest account of not just the right, but of the left, and of the media.
HH: But the old media is overwhelmingly liberal, correct, Mark Halperin?
MH: Correct, as we say in the book.
HH: And so everyone that you work with, or 95% of people you work with, are old liberals.
MH: I don’t know if it’s 95%, and unfortunately, they’re not all old. There are a lot of young liberals here, too. But it certainly, there are enough in the old media, not just in ABC, but in old media generally, that it tilts the coverage quite frequently, in many issues, in a liberal direction, which is completely improper. And it goes from the big and major like CBS’ outrageous story about President Bush’s draft record right before the 2004 election, to the insidious and small use of language describing Nancy Pelosi’s liberal policies and ideas different than they would Newt Gingrich’s conservative ones.
HH: And that’s what I’m getting at. Inside of ABC News political division, how many people work with you, Mark Halperin, in that division?
MH: You know, it’s hard to quantify it, because you’ve got people involved in a political year like this one, or during a presidential race, you’ve got hundreds of people who are touching our political coverage. There aren’t very many people, just a handful of us, are full-time political reporters.
HH: But with editorial control, a producer, an editor…
MH: It’s literally hundreds…
HH: Okay.
MH: Because again, you’ve got people on Good Morning America, people on World News Tonight, or World News, we call it now. So literally hundreds.
HH: Of those hundreds, what percentage do you think fairly, honestly, are liberal, and would vote Democratic if they voted?
MH: The same as in almost every old media organization I know, which is well over 70%.
HH: Isn’t it…Thomas Edsall, in an interview that I know you read, because you wrote me about it, he said 95…
MH: I think 95’s well overstated…
HH: He said 15-25:1 in the Washington Post, liberal to conservative. Do you think that’s fair?
MH: Absolutely. And again, I mean, look. John and I work for old media organizations. We write things in the book that most people in old media won’t admit. But we’re proud of our organizations, but I don’t want to say it’s singular to ABC. It’s in all these…it’s an endemic problem. And again, it’s the reason why for forty years, conservatives have rightly felt that we did not give them a fair shake.
***
HH: And these liberals…you know, Terry Moran on this program said…Terry Moran on this program from ABC, your colleague…
MH: Right.
HH: …said that the media hates the military, has a deep suspicion of it. Do you agree with that?
MH: I totally agree. It’s one of the huge biases, along with gays, guns, abortion, and many other things.
***
HH: Three books, The Looming Tower, America Alone, and Imperial Grunts by Lawrence Wright, Mark Steyn and Robert Kaplan. Have you read any of them.
MH: Not a one.
HH: Does media read widely?
MH: No. We say in the book that reporters are more likely to write books or steal them from book parties than to read them. And I’m not an exception to that. I’m constantly in the midst of covering a presidential campaign, and for the last year, finishing my book and promoting it. So I tend to not read serious books as much as I should, and that I’m not an exception amongst reporters.
HH: How about…you just answered that. How about in television? Are they even less well read than the print media?
MH: Oh, yeah.
HH: And so…
MH: Though not everybody. Not uniformly. I have plenty of colleagues who read serious books all the time, and sometimes write them. But compared to the responsibility that we have to be informed and help inform, we should read more.
HH: And so, it’s basically a very ill-informed group of very influential people who are driving modern media coverage of politics.
MH: Not to a person, but certainly that’s more true than it should be.
HH: A lot more true than it should be.
Set aside some time to read the whole thing.
It should also be printed out and left on the desk of every editor and reporter in the country, but somehow, I don't think that's likely to happen - these aren't egos naturally suited for speaking truth to self.
Update - a timely item this morning;
An analysis by the Center for Media and Public Affairs of midterm election stories aired on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts Sept. 5-Oct. 22 found that 2006's coverage has been almost five times as heavy as in the 2002 midterm elections: 167 stories, compared with 35 four years ago.The study found that three out of four evaluations of Democratic candidates' chances of winning — such as sound bites — were positive, compared with one out of eight for Republicans. Coverage has been dominated by two major themes: the effects of the Foley scandal, and the impact the Bush presidency is having on the party's congressional candidates.
The Foley scandal produced 59 stories alone, compared with 33 on Iraq and 31 on terrorism/national security issues. “What's hurting Republican candidates is the media's focus on two non-candidates: Mark Foley and George W. Bush,” says center director Robert Lichter.
This interview showing the overwhelming left-wing bias of the MSM leads into this story (hat tip to Daimnation) - of the 25 leading (by circulation) newspapers in the U.S., 22 are declining in circulation.
The paper leading in circulation gains: The New York Post up 5.1%
http://www.nypost.com/seven/10302006/news/regionalnews/circulation.htm
Oops - I hadn't seen Kate's post on this topic yesterday.
"It should also be printed out and left on the desk of every editor and reporter in the country, but somehow, I don't think that's likely to happen" - I am starting to suspect these people aren't even functionally literate, let alone willing to bother themselves to read anything worthwhile.
Beware of authors who write books but don't read them. I can't stress that enough. And they are everywhere.
Except, of course, that this proves what we've said all along: Halperin has a right-wing bias and ABC news has a right-wing bias. If Halperin agrees with almost everything Hewitt says about political coverage -- and he does agree -- then by definition he has a right-wing bias; if he had a liberal bias he would disagree with Hugh Hewitt. Journalists who join with right-wingers in recycling tired old smears about Democrats and the "liberal media" are not liberal, and that's why the MSM has a conservative bias, not a liberal one: no matter how the journalists vote, their beliefs about journalism and politics are basically right-wing.
See here for more about the right-wing bias of Halperin and the MSM.
And for more on why Halperin and the Note have a right-wing bias in their reporting, read this article.
Bottom line is that Halperin's sucking up to Hewitt proves that the media is anti-liberal, not that it's liberal.
Earlier this month police here in the UK raided a house containing rocket launchers, chemicals and what is alleged to be the biggest stash of illegaly possesed explosives ever found. Didn't get covered by the mainstream media apparently the fact that the suspect is a member of the BNP (right wing) party doesn't cut it. Must have been their overwhelming left wing bias.
http://www.mathaba.net/news/?x=544131
http://libcom.org/news/bnp-election-candidate-arrested-in-biggest-explosives-haul-ever-11102006
http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/10/126445.php
Last night on Michael Coren's show when Michael was once again pronounced the vast overarching left-wing bias of the CBC, NDP kook Marilyn Churley replied that once in a blue moon she disagrees with the CBC's line, ergo, the CBC is not a biased left-wing network.
Amazing.
Why doesn't Canada have a Hugh Hewitt?
Discuss.
Exactly, Kathy. Can you imagine this conversation taking place about the CBC?
Didn't think so. Canada is thoroughly brainwashed.
Ezra Levant has a good editorial in the Nov. 6 editon of WS. "Coalition of the Schilling" He compares the reaction of the media in it's treatment of Liberal leadership candidates to it's treatment of conservative candidates. Kennedy's lack of French as compared to Manning. Bob Rae's skinny dipping as opposed to Stockwell Day's wet suit. Stephan Dion's lack of understandable Engish. Scott Brison's meddling in the Income Trust affair and the lack of credible media coverage. Iggy's pro US stance. The final paragraph: "It's more embarrassing proof that there are three major parties in Canada: the Conservatives, the Liberals and the Media, and the latter two are allies."
CNN has had a program "broken government" on for a few days. Its one long democrate infomercial.
I have to hide my eyes and quickly look away.
paint it Black .
Kathy:
How about Kate?
She starts out as guest host on the Gormley show in Saskatoon, then expands into her own show, on her own network, then is syndicated nation-wide.
I'll volunteer to build the studio, I'm sure the transmitter and equipment required would pour in from techie-type bloggers everywhere, and there's enough of us military-types to provide no-nonsense security against CRTC "licensing" interference.
;)
Notwithstanding the tongue-in-cheek, on second thought it may have to come to that.
I can hear it now:
"Radio Free Canada! Coming to you from an undisclosed location in Delisle! And now, the news..."
Notice how for Mark Halperin the issue of left-bias in the media is variously not really a problem, an endemic problem, yes yes, not really an issue, an important issue, etc etc ?
Makes me wonder if he's not a secret member of the LPC.
I enjoyed his answer when Hewitt tried to pin him down, asking if any big-name journalists who've won a Pulitzer or come close are conservatives. After a brief squeeze-the-water-filled-balloon exchange, Halperin finally says "There are some. There aren't a lot, but there are some."
"Who?"
"I'd rather not name them, because they're privately conservative, and I'm trying to get away from a world in which...I'll say it again, but I don't want anyone who tuned in late to misunderstand. There are a few conservatives, but they're just as entitled to their privacy as I am..."
Lieberal, (and ndp) politicians in this country don't need Halperin's 'Way to Win'- all ours have to do, is LIE, (it isn't against the law)- and make promises they have no intention of keeping. Works every time!
"We will legalize weed!" - That bags the brain-dead stoner vote.
"We will give landed status to illegals" -ditto for the wetback vote.
"We will make it easier for you to bring in your extended family members"- sure they will, (right after they process the backlog of over 600,000 applicants).
etc.