Manipulating the American Press

The mainstream American press is certainly not an adjunct to the Republican party, but its inclination to handle Republicans with kid gloves has contributed to the GOP’s progress toward becoming the majority party. For three decades, conservatives have complained about an alleged liberal bias in the media, and these complaints have induced some degree of self-censorship. Public Broadcasting, which has long been denounced by conservatives for its liberal bias, has moved to the right 1993 to 2003. FAIR studies found its reporting has a slight Republican edge in 1993 and was conservative in 2003.

The Bush administration hastened public broadcasting’s march to the right by installing Kenneth Tomlinson ceo the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Tomlinson had many complaints about the liberal bias of public broadcasting and quickly hired conservative consultant to monitor the political content of Bill Moyer’s "Now", which soon went off the air. He also spent millions to bring The Wall Street Journal Report to PBS. The show featured the far right commentaries of the editorial board. Tomlinson also established an office of ombudsman, headed by Mary Catherine Andrews, who had worked in the Bush White House. She was assisted by two other Republicans, William Schultz and Ken Bode.It is unclear what the function of the office might be, but some fear it will continue the task of monitoring broadcasts to detect alleged liberal bias.

By 2003, the self-censorship had even extended to entertainment programs. Part of what was occurring was an effort to adjust to market bias, or not provide information that would upset large numbers of readers or viewers. Most often this is done by under reporting stories that would unsettle viewers. When CBS invested $16,000,000 in a miniseries on Ronald Reagan, angry conservatives complained that it contained criticisms of the 40th president and CBS obligingly cancelled the series. Media analyst Robert Bianco observed that this "should put to rest the idea that the media are liberal." A conservative Naples, Florida columnist noted the cancellation was not censorship because the government was not involved. "It was not a free speech issue," he added. "If CBS felt pressure, it was free market pressure." Later, CBS refused to aid commercials that criticized George W. Bush on its Super Bowl broadcast, but it accepted Republican advertisements. When the Ronald Reagan died in June, 2004, the press and electronic media spent a week praising him as a great president, glossing ovr his failures, and giving him much more than the benefit of the doubt in debatable matters. Perhaps the press was trying to show that it did not have a liberal bias and/or it anticipated the storm that would have occurred had it covered Reagan’s career honestly. Even conservative Kathleen Parker wondered why reporters could not have found "some middle ground between speaking ill of the dead and intellectual honesty."