PressEthic

After googling the term ‘media bias’, which provided fodder for a previous blog, I stumbled across the Media Resource Center, a self-described conservative watchdog group. Scrolling through the site, I noticed a plug for something called Times Watch:

“dedicated to documenting and exposing the liberal political agenda of the New York Times.”

So I clicked on it. The first story that popped up was titled ‘Hugo Chavez, Latino Male Oprah?’ and appeared to be more of a diatribe than a liberal bias expose. The piece began:

“Many Americans may have been outraged or just perplexed by Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez’s attack on President Bush as "the devil," but the New York Times saw Chavez’s plug for a Noam Chomsky book [Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance] as a light front-page feature on Saturday – he’s apparently a Latino male Oprah.”

The author of the piece, Tim Graham, seemed to misinterpret a reference to Chavez’s “stature” and took issue with the Times article calling Chomsky “a darling of the left.” He continued:

“Chomsky’s theories are never seriously challenged in the article, and no conservative is quoted.”

Graham is correct in that The Times did not delve into Chomsky’s politics within the article. (The article was about the increasing sales of ‘Hegemony or Survival’. A book review had already ran in the Times two years earlier.) Instead, the Times quoted a Chomsky critic, Alan Dershowitz, who assailed Chomsky’s writing prowess and basically called his work unreadable.

The only fairness I observed in the Times Watch piece was to concede that Samantha Power, who wrote a review of the book in 2004, presented a critical view of the book. She was quoted describing ‘Hegemony and Survival’ as:

“a raging and often meandering assault on United States foreign policy.”

These are hardly words of praise. Power’s quote coupled with Dershowitz’s criticism, seemed to balance out the Times story. I was unable to detect the apparent liberal media bias Times readers were subjected to.

I believe that any bias in the media is detrimental for journalists, readers, and society as a whole. (Although I also believe it is unavoidable.) Yet, I think that organizations like Media Research Center (which includes Times Watch) often find themselves crowing over a bias that isn’t there. In fact, by writing these articles and posting them on their sites, they appear to create bias (albeit a conservative one in the case of the Media Research Center). I thought bias was what they proclaimed they were opposed to in the first place.