MSM bias: "Everybody knows ..."
http://freealabamastan.blogspot.com/2006/12/msm-bias-everybody-knows.htmlMichelle Malkin, Flopping Aces and many others have spent days chronicling how the Associated Press has been bamboozled into reporting an apparently fictitious (or, at least, greatly exaggerated) atrocity in Iraq. Yet AP continues to defend both its dubious story and its equally dubious sources.
Why? Why are we watching AP repeat the same basic mistake that CBS committed with Dan Rather's fake-but-accurate National Guard debacle?
Two words: "Everybody knows." Anyone who has studied anthropology, sociology or mass psychology understands how false beliefs can become conventional wisdom within groups if (a) high-status individuals within the group advocate the belief, and (b) there is no one inside the group to dispute the false belief.
That, in short, is the herd-mentality explanation of why liberal bias pervades the MSM. It's also the explanation of the Heaven's Gate cult (whose members acted on the belief that they must commit suicide in order to be taken aboard a cosmic mothership traveling behind the Hale-Bopp comet). Where group membership is dependent upon shared belief, where skepticism of key beliefs is viewed as disloyalty to the group, and where non-believers are stigmatized, marginalized and excluded, the truth or falsehood of group beliefs is moot. Logic and evidence, so far as they might undermine belief, are unwelcome. This is how it becomes possible for groups to act upon false beliefs.
"Everybody knows" so-and-so to be true, and those who question what "everybody knows" tend to make themselves unpopular.
The most successful and influential people within the media are liberal -- in 1992, for instance, Washington journalists were surveyed and 89% of the respondents said they'd voted for President Clinton. Since Clinton got just 43% of the vote that year, that means that Washington journalists were twice as likely to vote Democrat as the average American.
Of the three broadcast network news anchors (all of whom are "executive producers" of their programs), do you think any have ever voted for Republican presidential candidate? Katie Couric at CBS? Brian Williams at NBC? Charlie Gibson at ABC? They voted for Kerry, they voted for Gore, they voted for Clinton twice -- they voted for Dukakis, for crying out loud, and no one who'd watched their broadcasts over the years would ever doubt it.
If one can become a multimillionaire news anchor, the very pinnacle of success in the news business, despite being transparently a partisan Democrat and a liberal ideologue, then obviously there is no penalty for such beliefs within the media profession. And since no conservative is a network anchor or executive producer, one might assume (and you'd get no argument from Bernard Goldberg) that conservative beliefs are penalized.
One might extend this argument outward to other major media outlets. The New York Times, for instance, would rather see its circulation dwindle and its stock price collapse, rather than abandon the kind of liberal bias that won a Pulitzer for Stalinist stooge Walter Duranty.
Thus, whatever liberals generally believe at any given time can be understood to function as conventional wisdom within the media. "Everybody knows" that Bush is stupid, that Cheney is a fascist warmonger, and that the GOP is under the control of neocons, Halliburton and "Christianists." Most of all, "everybody knows" that the war in Iraq is another Vietnam -- a "quagmire" in need of "an exit strategy."
It's Heaven's Gate, you see? Cult members knew that there was a spaceship behind that comet, because one could not believe otherwise and remain a member. To the extent that they actually studied the facts about the Hale-Bopp comet (and they were fairly obsessed with it), they did so only with the purpose of finding "evidence" to confirm the unquestionable belief. And this backward way of thinking is deeply related to group psychology.
If you've ever been in a workplace setting where there is an emphasis "being a team player" (i.e., cheerleading for whatever b.s. the bosses are pushing), you understand the strong incentives to stifle dissent within such an organization. The dot-com bubble produced several tales of this nature: Everyone with any sense in the office understood that it was impossible for the business to succeed, but the "be a team player" message meant that nobody could openly question the business model.
The same dynamic was at work, for example, at Enron. And, to choose a still more recent example, one could see this groupthink "be a team player" dynamic in action during the 2006 Republican midterm campaign. When Glenn Reynolds dared to offer his "pre-mortem," he was slammed by Rush Limbaugh as a "cut-and-run conservative," although after the election, Limbaugh himself expressed joy at being "liberated" from "carrying water" for Republicans.
Once the impact of FoleyGate became apparent, sensible observers, like Allahpundit, were profoundly skeptical about the GOP's prospects for maintaining the majority. As early as Oct. 4, I noted the defensive circle-the-wagons partisan meme taking hold: Do not question the leaders! Skepticism is heresy!
This denial-based response became the Official Conservative position, and as Election Day drew nigh -- while top conservative opinion-makers were herded into the Oval Office to get their marching orders and talking points -- one began to hear laughably optimistic claims: There's still hope for Rick Santorum! Don't count out Mike DeWine! Lincoln Chafee gained two points in the most recent poll!
If we conservatives could allow ourselves to be bamboozled by this kind of groupthink conventional wisdom -- "Everbody knows that the polls don't reflect the potential impact of the vaunted Republican turnout machine" -- then can't we understand how liberal bias in the media operates on the same principles?
Thus, if the MSM in their post-election gloating phase decide to push to ratify their long-held belief -- Iraq is another Vietnam and U.S. defeat is a matter of time -- then the hunt for "evidence" to support that belief is going to trump all skepticism. The reporter who provides a story that supports a decision to declare a "civil war" in Iraq (this burning Sunnis story pushed NBC News to make that call) can expect his editors to defend his reporting the way Dan Rather defended his fake-but-accurate documents.
http://dreadpundit.blogspot.com/2006/11/bogus-source-cited-in-nbc-civil-war.htmlWhy? Because to allow the possibility of evidence that contradicts the group belief -- or in this instance, to cast doubt on some key piece of evidence that was accepted as support for the belief -- might not only inspire doubt in the belief, but might cause some members to question the entire group enterprise.
If AP's editors have been hoodwinked for months by reporters passing along insurgent propaganda from "Police Captain" Jamil Hussein, what does this tell us about those editors, and what does it tell us about the institutional agenda of the Associated Press? If the AP is not a reliable news organization, but is instead just another MSM outfit devoted to disseminating liberal talking-points ...
Well, "everybody knows" that can't be the case, right? And this is how transparently partisan Democrats in the media like Couric and Rather can claim that there is no bias in their reporting: They operate within organizations that exclude and marginalize conservatives, while promoting and celebrating liberals. Belief is good, disbelief is bad.
In such an organization, the conventional wisdom of liberalism is not bias, it is merely what "everybody knows."
BONUS: If you want to understand how MSM bias impacted the 2006 campaign, start here.
http://freealabamastan.blogspot.com/2006/10/msm-bias-actually-gets-worse.html