The media elite.

• Author: Alter, Jonathan

The Media Elite.

Whenever a conservative critic of the media gets worked up, he's sure to mention the "Lichter-Rothman study.' That study shows that reporters are liberal and unreligious. Rothman and the Lichters are obviously conservative, and the research for The Media Elite* was funded by conservatives like Richard Mellon Scaife, which makes their scientific-sounding scholarship a bit suspect. But the basic thrust of that argument is hard to argue with. Many other studies also reveal that reporters for major publications are to the left of the population as a whole.

* The Media Elite. Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman, Linda S. Lichter. Adler & Adler, $19.95.

This book is an effort to take that conclusion a step further and show how reporters' liberal leanings affect their coverage. It fails badly.

The authors feel obliged to make reference to hundreds of clips and practically every hackneyed bit of press criticism ever uttered. This not only taxes the reader, it betrays their argument. That's because any full-scale review of the collected wisdom on this subject suggests that there are factors far more important than political bias that affect a journalist's work. They include deadline pressures, lazy-mindedness, an obsession with the horse-race, the peccadillos of editors, and other conventions of the journalism business. Faced with such complications, the authors are forced to admit that bias is not the issue--a major admission that deserves to be widely quoted in response to right-wing press critics. Unfortunately, the authors aren't prepared to part with their own biases on this point so easily. Despite all the elaborate qualifications, this is the same old--wink wink--attack on the liberal press. Only this time they focus on vague notions like "cast of mind' and "partial views of social reality.' It's all unconscious, you see.

There is, of course, some truth to this. The authors provide a convincing, though hardly original, analysis of a powerful national news media "elite' that has developed in the past 40 years. They explain how the increasing income and social status of elite journalists has taken this elite further away from the experiences of ordinary Americans. "I don't see any reason why we shouldn't consider ourselves on an equal footing with those we cover,' says Jack Nelson, Washington Bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times. That is a dramatic and under-appreciated change from the traditional relationship between reporter and...