June 2, 2007
Paranoia, Bias, and Outspokenness Posted by Alexander Burns at 05:10 PM EST Of the less history-based discussion topics on this blog, media bias has to rank among the most popular. I think I’ve made it clear on previous occasions that I tend to think the whole subject is wildly overblown, and that any media bias that exists is mostly toward the sensational. As much as I might hope, however, the issue isn’t going away any time soon, and part of the reason for that is people like Laura Ingraham. As Talking Points Memo already noted this morning, there was a rather bizarre confrontation yesterday on CNN’s American Morning. Ingraham was discussing the Senate’s current immigration reform proposal with CNN host John Roberts. Ingraham, who dislikes the White House–backed plan, suggested that President Bush might be alienating right-wingers with this plan with the expectation that “he’s going to be saved by the liberal elites at CNN.” When Roberts balked at his guest’s comment, Ingraham got snippy: “By the way, John, how did you introduce me for this segment before the break? ‘The outspoken Laura Ingraham.’ Do you guys introduce liberal commentators that way? I’m going to check.” This is, needless to say, strange behavior from someone who is, by all accounts, exceedingly and literally outspoken. It’s symptomatic of an attitude that’s epidemic among some conservatives, who believe that sneaky, left-wing media barons are somewhere plotting to destroy them, in between rounds of croquet with Ted Kennedy and karaoke with Barbara Streisand. Perhaps more useful than what Ingraham’s outburst indicates about conservatives and the media, however, is the reflection that it inspires about the word in question. Taking Laura Ingraham’s question all too seriously, I wondered: Okay, who do our news sources describe as “outspoken”? A brief search of CNN’s website yields a curious list. In the last month, CNN has used the word to refer to a wide array of characters, including Chuck Hagel, Gore Vidal, Nicolas Sarkozy, Alexander Litvinenko, and Marie Osmond. Not exactly a who’s who of the conservative movement. Fox’s website seems at first to present a somewhat more coherent list of “outspoken” people: Theresa Heinz Kerry, Cindy Sheehan, John Murtha, Jimmy Carter, et al. At the same time, though, this network still uses the label loosely, also tagging conservatives Sam Brownback and Tom Tancredo and non-politicians Lance Armstrong and José Mourinho. There’s not much of a pattern that emerges from either of these networks, so perhaps the best-supported conclusion one can draw is that television commentators use the label with little method or deliberation. For organizations that aspire to some degree of neutrality, outspokenness is not a value-laden quality. For other media outlets, though, like the liberal Nation magazine and the conservative Weekly Standard, outspokenness seems to be a positively commendable quality. In The Nation, the word is almost entirely reserved for references to admired figures to the left of center: Sen. Jim Webb, Lieberman foe Ned Lamont, Rep. Jim McGovern, comedian Lewis Black, Harvard president Drew Faust, and more. Last February in The Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol published an editorial imploring Republicans to show “a little more courage and outspokenness” in defending the Iraq war. Far from value-neutral description, outspokenness is treated as an admired attribute among those who have agendas to promote.
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