PressEthic

Jeff Cohen, the founder of FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting), went on Democracy Now! yesterday to talk about his new book about conservative bias in the media. Here is a transcript of the interview.

First, a small introduction of FAIR's latest work:

A new study by the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting criticizes PBS's flagship news program, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. The study found that NewsHour interviewed many more male sources than female and that people of color made up only 15 percent of U.S. sources. FAIR also found that on the issue of Iraq, Newshour interviewed five times as many guests who advocated staying the course over withdrawing troops.

In the interview, Cohen talks about his experiences at CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC, where he was the senior producer of the "Donahue Show." Some highlights:

I lived to tell about it. I was inside as deep as a progressive media critic has ever gotten, and what I found at places like CNN and MSNBC, the number one fear among the working reporters, the producers is of doing anything that could get them or their channel accused of being liberal. And I saw the spectrum that’s constructed. The spectrum of debate is center to right.

And in the last months of Donahue, we were ordered by management at MSNBC: every time we booked one guest who was antiwar, we had to book two that were pro-war. If we booked two guests on the left, we had to book three on the right. One meeting a producer suggested booking Michael Moore and was told, for ideological balance she would need three right-wingers. And, you know, I used to think about proposing Chomsky as a guest but our stage couldn’t accommodate the 38 right-wingers we would have needed for balance.

The interview ended with what seems to be Cohen's main argument:

You can’t represent the left -- this is a rule, CNN, FOX, MSNBC -- you can’t represent the left every night on American TV, if you're actually on the left.

This is an idea that has been brought up in class: mainly that the perception of a liberal bias is merely just a slightly-left-of-center bias. This seems to be the only logical explanation for why both sides, liberals and conservatives, claim media bias from the other side. The main argument instead, as brought up in class, should be what constitutes liberalism and conservatism.

Still, Cohen's point is worth considering. The far-right seems to have ample platform opportunities on American television, but what about the far-left? Are we just led to believe that there is no substantial group of far-left thinkers in this country? And if there is, why are their voices not being heard on mainstream television?