Jon Margolis , former chief political reporter for the Chicago Tribune and the author of "The Last Innocent Year: America in 1964 ," lives in northeastern Vermont, where he writes and teaches.
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A few weeks ago, some journalists and deep-thinkers held one of those Washington panel discussions, this one under the auspices of the Center for American Progress, to ask whether coverage of economic matters “provides the perspective of business far more often than that of workers.”
Those who know that the Center for American Progress is a liberal organization will not be shocked to learn that the answer was largely in the affirmative.
According to a
study of how news organizations cover economic issues by the center’s David Madland, “on average, businesses were sourced at a rate two-and-a-half times greater than that of workers and unions, and when it came to issues of employment, businesses were cited over six times as frequently as workers.”
Wait a minute. What happened to “the liberal media”? Is it a myth, or are these left-of-center observers living in their own little world?
Maybe a bit of both and a bit of neither. Whatever one’s conclusion, the center deserves our thanks for providing the opportunity to examine the often-mischaracterized and therefore misunderstood matter of “the liberal media.” It is a misunderstanding shared by many journalists, who are often too quick either to protest or to agree, without pausing to examine.
Let’s pause to examine because it turns out that “the liberal media” could be more reality than myth without undermining the critique of the folks at that panel who complained that reporters and editors base their economic coverage on conservative, pro-business, assumptions. This country – and this profession – is full of conservative liberals, not to mention liberal conservatives.
Begin this examination with the assumption that everyone is influenced by his or her surroundings. Whether or not we like it, we are all products of our time, place and condition.
The condition of the typical successful journalist is that he or she:
- Lives in a major metropolitan area.
- Is reasonably affluent.
- Is a college graduate with a degree in the liberal arts and/or sciences.
Whatever their profession, people who meet that socio-economic profile tend to be quite liberal on social issues, race relations and the environment, and moderately liberal when it comes to foreign policy. It would be absurd to deny that this applies to the journalists as well as to the doctors, lawyers, engineers, business executives and college professors who are their neighbors.
It is likely, for instance, that most reporters and editors, like most of their neighbors, were more irritated than pleased at the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring that the Constitution conveys an individual right to own a gun. It is just as likely that most were pleased in 2003 when the court overturned the Texas law against what the court called the “intimacies of physical relationships” between homosexuals.
So if the watershed issues for dividing liberals from conservatives are gay rights and gun control, then by gum the “liberal media” is no myth. There are exceptions, and a good reporter can overcome his or her own predilections to write the story straight. But the journalist’s own sympathies probably lie with the folks pushing same-sex marriage and gun control. Sometimes these sympathies are evident, not so much in how stories are written but in what reporters and editors choose to write about in the first place.
But the folks at the Center for American Progress weren’t talking about guns and gays. They were talking about money, and here the situation is quite a bit murkier. Again, the journalist is rather like his or her neighbors in their suburban subdivision or city neighborhood. A nice subdivision or neighborhood where at least some people belong to health clubs, shop for organic groceries, buy good wine, plan trips to Europe. Not necessarily a rich neighborhood, but one where, even with gasoline at four bucks a gallon, most people have enough discretionary income to enjoy life.
And the economic attitudes to match. It isn’t that these upper-middle-income professionals are unsympathetic to the poor, hostile to labor unions or big fans of President Bush’s tax cuts. But they probably aren’t very upset about those tax cuts, either, having benefited from them. Rare is the person who opposes what makes him or her richer.
Besides, like their neighbors, successful journalists have absorbed the terms of the economic conversation set by the dominant neo-classical mainstream economists, a few of whom no doubt live nearby and are occasionally run into at the wine shop or health club. This conversation proceeds on the assumption that markets are good, that governmental meddling with them is bad, that faster economic growth is desirable regardless of its cost and that as long as economic growth continues, little else matters.
Perhaps absorption of that assumption explains the June 18 Washington Post story wondering why Americans are “gloomier than the economy.” After all, the article noted, “the economy is holding up better than it did during the last two recessions in 1990 and 200.” As a result, wrote reporter Neil Irwin, economists are “trying to figure out why Americans’ perceptions are so much more negative than the data analysts use to measure how things are going.”
Maybe those economists should look at other data, some of which would inform them that a majority of American households are earning no more – perhaps a bit less – than they were a decade ago and are less secure about their health care, their retirement plans and the value of their houses. From the perspective of the middle of the income spectrum, economic gloom makes perfect sense. But the middle of the income spectrum is not where Washington Post editors and reporters reside.
A few days later another Post reporter,
Perry Bacon , explained the difference between the economic policies of the two presidential candidates, “with (John) McCain offering a pro-growth, anti-regulation vision and (Barack) Obama proposing a variety of measures to help Americans deal with immediate pocketbook issues.”
But it is a debatable proposition – not a proven truth – that less regulation leads to faster growth or that “measures to help … deal with pocketbook issues” do not. By assuming that one is “pro-growth” and the other isn’t, the Post did seem to be providing “the perspective of business” rather than that of workers (and many economists) just as the Center for American Progress contended.
National Public Radio, another outpost of “the liberal media,” was on that same wavelength on
July 10 when it informed its listeners that McCain’s economic policies would “boost growth” while Obama opted for “fairness,” as though there was no doubt that the two goals were mutually exclusive. In fact, the economy often has grown faster when tax rates were higher and incomes became more equally distributed.
Nowhere is the pro-business mindset of elite journalism more obvious than on the question of trade. Almost every news story about international commerce speaks of “free trade,” which does not really exist. If it did, trade agreements would be brief: You can send your stuff over here, and we can send our stuff over there. Period. Paragraph. The end. Instead, they are hundreds of pages long, full of rules imposing the conditions under which trade may proceed. Furthermore, trade is made “free” only for some goods and services, not for all.
But one rarely reads or hears this in “the liberal media” where there is an effective consensus that “free trade” is wise policy and protectionism is unwise if not wicked.
Full disclosure: With some reservations, I agree. But let’s be honest. One reason we in the news dodge are for more trade is that we benefit from it. And we benefit from protectionism, too.
No doubt there is a Mexican, Chinese or Pakistani journalist who is fluent in English and who would do any of our jobs at half our pay. Would they do it as well? Who knows? But I’ll bet they’d do it well enough, certainly in the eyes of the boss, who’d love to save the money.
But it isn’t so easy. It’s sort of against the law. For confirmation, I checked with Leigh Cole, an attorney with Dinse, Knapp, McAndrew in Burlington, Vt., who helps colleges and businesses navigate the process of hiring foreigners.
“There is a pathway, but the pathway isn’t always easy,” she said. In most cases, the prospective employer has to fill out an H1B form, which includes a fee. Furthermore, she said, there’s a cap, “a numerical limit on the number of visas,” which does not apply to educational institutions but does apply to news organizations.
In other words, there’s a legal limit on how many of those cheaper foreign reporters or editors a news organization may hire. And even hiring one or two requires spending money and taking the time to go through a process. Markets do work, and making a good or service harder is like making it more expensive: Consumption goes down.
So we win both ways. Thanks to “free trade,” we get cheap clothing and electronic gadgets because the companies that produce them have hired cheap foreign labor. Meanwhile the law shields our relatively high salaries – and those of our doctor, lawyer, accountant and engineer neighbors – by limiting how much cheap foreign labor can compete with us. That’s protectionism.
None of this constitutes a case against the wisdom of more rather than less international commerce. It does remind us that under any ideological label, none of us is immune from the tendency to believe that what is good for us is good for the world.
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