Media bias and the culture wars.

• Author: Bresler, Robert J.
• Position: State Of The Nation

IT IS HARD TO SEPARATE our understanding of the media from the larger culture. Just as the cultural landscape has been altered over the past several decades, so has the media--its quality and its politics. This cannot be otherwise. Is the media biased against conservatives and against the left (as opposed to mainstream liberals)? No doubt, but I would not overestimate its impact on public opinion or the direction of the country's politics.

From the 1930s to the 1960s, when liberalism was the dominant ideology and the Democratic Party ruled government, liberals did not have the influence on the media they have today. In those years, Time magazine was run by Henry Luce, a feisty conservative, although no reactionary. Newsweek was so bland and careful that its politics were hardly discernable. U.S. News & World Report, under the iron rule of conservative editor-publisher David Lawrence, was characterized by its easy-to-read economic reporting--complete with many charts and graphs that basically served the businessman who could not take the time to wade through The Wall Street Journal. The New Fork Times was the good gray lady, understated, bland, slightly right of center, and regarded as the paper of record for its accuracy and coverage. The Los Angeles Times was run by the Chandler Family and was chummy with the California Republican establishment. The New York Herald Tribune was just as chummy with the New York Republican establishment. The editors of the Washington Post, slightly more liberal than the other newspapers, were very close with the Kennedys. The Chicago Tribune, meanwhile, was the voice of irascible midwestern conservatism, excoriating the New Deal and the Roosevelts.

Routinely, most of the local newspaper editorial boards endorsed the Republican candidate for president, although voters paid little attention. The television news networks with their 15-minute encapsulated news programs--seemed to lack any point of view. Edward R. Murrow's famous attack on Joe McCarthy in 1954 was a dramatic exception and harbinger of things to come. The major columnists--James Reston, Walter Lippmann, Arthur Krock, the Alsop Brothers, Marquis Childs, and Doris Fleeson--hovered around the center. The newspapers in the Scripps-Howard and Hearst chains certainly were conservative. Most reporters did not come out of elite colleges and liberal journalism schools. Communications hardly was a recognized major at most universities. Reporters, largely...