Primary Candidate Bias: National Public Radio and the media establishment

[gottaB]

The NPR Obmudsman, in response to criticisms especially from Kucinich supporters, recently commented on bias in their coverage of the Democratic candidates. He looked at the period between August 1st and September 5th. Stump speeches and interviews were evenly distributed between all nine candidates. (Recall that Clark had not yet declared.)

I don't believe either could have possibly been fair, balanced, or objectively chosen. Why? Primarily because the number of news stories devoted to each candidate was not evenly distributed. Here are the number of stories on NPR during that time period devoted to each candidate:

• Dean 32
  
• Kerry 22
  
• Gephardt 20
  
• Lieberman 14
  
• Edwards 11
  
• Graham 10
  
• Kucinich 10
  
• Moseley Braun 6
  
• Sharpton 6

Obviously they were paying attention to some campaigns more than others. Presumably their archives of sound files reflect a similar bias. With such a biased sample of speeches, is it reasonable to believe that they chose stump speeches for broadcast that fairly and accurately represented each campaign? In my view, their choice of stump speeches from the Braun campaign, to cite an example I'm familiar with, was accurate and informative to a point, but not the best representation of the kinds of speeches she has given. Those were really her words, she was really addressing a crowd, but it was not her finest moment. It demonstrated her being jovial, speaking off the cuff, stuttering occaisionally, and repeating a few well-worn campaign slogans, all of which she readily does; but it did not demonstrate her best thinking about the issues she cares most about. In effect, their choice of speech was biased.

Likewise, on the question of bias in the interviews, I do not believe the interviews could have possibly been unbiased. Again, it comes down to the unevenness of materials available with which to prepare questions. And again, to use an example I'm familiar with, the interview with Braun illustrates the problem. I don't mean to knock Bob Edwards especially, but the kinds of questions he asked were typical of the questions asked by uniformed and ultimately disrepectful media talking heads; i.e., he threw some desultory softballs and for hardballs he skimmed headlines from the past year and gleaned some rumors, smears, and pointless speculations. What he did not do with any skill or panache was grill her on policy matters in a way that clearly delineated her positions and set her apart from the other candidates.

The main thrust of Edwards' questioning was meant to establish that Moseley Braun was not a serious candidate. He questioned her lackluster fundraising. He asserted that she did not have the backing of women's groups, which was roughly true in May, but not quite fair to ask. (For example, at that time I don't believe Gephardt had his major Union endorsements....) Edwards questioned Braun's contention that she had polled better than Sen. John Edwards in a polls--more on that later.

And Edwards brought up scandals. "Are you in the race to dilute the support of Al Sharpton among black voters?" Had he not read past the headlines? Had he not investigated this just a teensy bit himself? He asked about her "visits with the Nigerian dictator." Asked and answered, as far back as 1998. Now, I could understand the interest NPR listeners might have in hearing her defend herself yet again. I mean, given how little exposure she's been given on NPR, that may well be the only thing most of them know about her.

Don't forget the point. The point was to have her defend her candidacy. Not in terms of policies and experience, but in terms of memes ripped from newsroom spinjobs and hit pieces, attacks aimed at her person, and by extension, her race and her gender.

Let me be perfectly clear. I am not suggesting that Edwards set out to do a sexist, racist interrogation of Braun. (And in such mellifluous tones.) No, what I am saying is that a pattern of bias in the newsroom led to a situation in which genuine fairness was not readily achievable by conventional means, and as a result, racist and sexist viewpoints on political legitimacy were re-enforced and perpetuated.

There's a reason why Essence, to name on example, has featured more insightful, more hard-hitting coverage of Braun than NPR has. It's called institutional racism. Think about it.

Polling. The polling question is tremendously revealing, because it was used by the NPR ombudsman to justify their skewed reporting on the candidates: "The problem with these numbers is, in my opinion, that they roughly represent what some of the opinion polls are saying," he wrote. Roughly is right. Before examining the problems with that argument, let's see if it's factually accurate.

We all keep tabs on Polling Report, right? So what was the polling saying last summer? Well, there was a Fox poll that had Sharpton in fifth place and Braun in sixth place. Not dead last. Not 60% of Graham, for instance, but twice the support of Graham. More in Sharpton's case. Zogby's poll from July had Sharpton in fifth and Braun tied for seventh place. An NBC poll from July had Braun in fifth place. A Gallup poll from August had Braun tied for fifth and Sharpton tied for sixth. Etc. etc. We all know some state polls in which Braun and Sharpton, along with Graham and Kucinich and sometimes Edwards, barely register. On the other hand, there are other polls in which Braun or Sharpton or both outpoll Graham, Kucinich, and even Edwards. (More complete resource for state polls.) I don't know which poll Braun had in mind when Bob Edwards challenged her, but her claim was not far-fetched. Of course she wasn't talking about Iowa or New Hampshire or Illinois for that matter, but she could have been describing any one of several opinion polls. Hmmm.

Therefore, it is simply untrue that the bias in repoting reflects public opinion. There is a relationship, to be sure, but it is not one of the media accurately reflecting national sentiments.

I sort of wanted to take this further, look at bias in the press at large looking at results from google news. Another time--or you can check that for yourselves. Suffice it to say that NPR is not unique in its biases. Racism and sexism are endemic to the reporting on the Democratic primary. It is not in the main constituted by legions of dittoheads and reactionaries occupying the nation's newsrooms. It is far more insidious. Given the current media environment, conventional approaches to achieving fairness are woefully inadequate. It is an injustice.

What about other forms of bias? What about classism? Anti-liberal bias? Xenophobia? Homophobia? Other forms of prejudice? Yeah, it's all there too. This is just the tip of iceberg. I raised the issue of race and gender because it is so blatant. The evidence is there. Draw your own conclusions.

[efhmc]

1. Wow! You have definitely done your homework on this. I don't want you

to think I am dismissing this information but I can't find any other national station to listen to, much less one that doesn't seem to be run by wr nuts. What are the choices except to be informed and to take all media with a big dose of reality (At least reality as far as we as individuals know it.)

[gottaB]

2. Yeah, NPR is the best domestic broadcast news in my area

When they're not banging the war drums they're generally tolerable. I wouldn't have them as my sole source of info, but they do stand out.

Think of their mission, providing indepth coverage of important events and perhaps some stories you may have missed. It's laudable, but when they disregard the whole of the media landscape and its biases, and how those reflect or exacerbate sociological differences, then they fail in their mission. They can't under those circumstances achieve true depth from an objective point of view.

Take it with a grain of salt, I guess. That's what I do.

[gottaB]

3. An emendation of sorts

I'm going to have to unravel this backwards so to speak. I said:

The point was to have her defend her candidacy. Not in terms of policies and experience, but in terms of memes ripped from newsroom spinjobs and hit pieces, attacks aimed at her person, and by extension, her race and her gender.

In the last clause, it sounds like I'm saying race and gender are extensions of Braun's personhood. That's not precisely my belief. I should have made it clear that I see certain attacks against Braun as being stereotypical. Personhood, in contrast to stereotypes, is all about labeling oneself, a presentation of identity which requires an exercise of agency, a kind of intentionality that involves a reflexive awareness of one's place in a social milieu.

So how does Braun define herself? Gender identity is the easiest one. Braun proudly asserts that she is a woman, the only woman in the field, and that her candidacy is about removing barriers to women seeking the highest office. That makes her gender a legitimate and highly pertinent area of questioning for journalists. The problem is, for journalists who care about fairness and objectivity, how does one define being a woman?

To his credit Bob Edwards probed this topic with Braun, and got some statements from her on what it means to be a woman running for president. Said Braun, in response to the question of why more women don't run for president:

It's a tough one. In large part, you touched on it, the money is daunting. Libby Dole, as you know, pulled out because of the money and it is a big challenge. But you have to get out and make the case and I believe that women have something to contribute. And frankly, being a woman I think gives me a slightly different take on a lot of the issues and on a lot of the solutions to the problems we face. Women have to be very results-oriented, very practical-minded, and approach things in terms of collaborations instead of competition. I think that I will bring that to this office. Op cit.

Well and good, and arguably appropriate for listeners who know next to nothing about Braun's political career and present campaign. But there's so much more to ask! Given a situation in which air time is precious, as noted by the Ombudsman in his defense of NPR, asking a presidential candidate to devote time to explaining in rather alphebetarian terms the politics of gender identity (and vice versa) is patently unfair. Of course the men are not asked to defend their candidacies in such terms.

But surely, some smart cookie will object, surely the bias here is not of the media's making: It simply reflects the way things are. Really? Double really? Put it this way, what are the repurcusions and implication of media's general failure to enact any sort of meaningful affirmative action. The hiring practices at any one news organization cannot undo the harm here. Until the deeply ingrained prejudices and ineqaulities are frankly addressed, and corrective measures taken, a woman running for president is unlikely to recieve a fair shake.

Gender bias, for all its complexities, is relatively easy to discuss in this context primarily because Braun has presented herself in these terms. Race, on the other hand, is a bit of a sticky wicket. Is Braun a Black woman? An African American Woman? A shade of Brown? How does she define herself with respect to race?

In certain regards Braun has eschewed labeling herself or her candidacy in terms of race. For obvious reasons she does not present herself as *the* Black candidate. Don't think for a minute that she's not cognizant of what it means to be Black in America, or that she has no thoughts on what it means for her to have African ancestors. But that is not the primary message she wants to get across. Carol's primary colors are red, white and blue--and, not to be too cutesy, Braun with a "u."

What's that? Braun with a "u"? I'm saying that's something for her to answer. Bob Edwards, when he asked her about the get Sharpton conspiracy, was not getting at what it means to be Braun. He was repeating a line of questioning that should have been put to rest back in February when it was debunked as ignorant racist chatter. Or better, it should have been regarded as answered when Braun answered it, when she declared what it means to be Carol Moseley Braun, Democratic presidential candidate.

Another example. The New York Times, who I think it's fair to say have been hostile to the Braun campaign, recently ran the story of Braun's announcement. The examples of bias in this piece are legion, but I'll try to narrow the focus to Braun's attempt to establish her own identity.

For starters, they headlined with "Ex-Senator Announces for Presidency." Braun prefers to be refered to as Ambassador, for obvious reasons. Which is more appropriate? Well, it depends upon on what one wishes to talk about, doesn't it? Yes, there's lot's of innuendo and dredging up of old scandals and a general attempt to dismiss her candidacy.

But here's the kicker:

While she made multiple references to being a woman in her speeches, Ms. Braun limited overt references to race. Instead, that message was embedded in her choice of locations. Her first two stops were at historically black colleges: Howard University in Washington and Benedict College, a women's college, in Columbia, S.C.

What message was that? And was it really the message behind her choice of locations? There are other reasons to think of here. For example, Braun was warmly received at both colleges, just as she was warmly recieved at Brown Univerisity earlier this month, or at her alma mater, the University of Chicago. (For more on Braun's announcement, see stories in the Braun campaign newsroom.) So it would seem that Carol is generally well received by academic crowds. That puts Howard into contention, as it would be in Braun's interests to make her announcement to an enthusiastic audience, and being a college, Howard provides that. There's no ignoring the fact that Howard is an historically Black institution, or that some form of race awareness played a part in Braun's reception--but there's so much more to it! The assumptions being made by the Times reporter don't do justice to Braun's attempt to create her own identity.

Am I being too judgemental? No, I don't think so. Because there's no evidence here that the reporter put these questions to Braun, that she, the reporter, evaluated her opinions in an open dialogue, or that she evaluated other possible meanings at all. In fact the reporter went out of her way to report on the meagerness of the attendance--a rather singular observation. Therefore, given that mindset, the notion that Braun had chosen Howard for reasons other than or in addition to race would have caused dissonance and required explanation--too much to expect of a news story no doubt, but that leaves unanswered the question of why she chose to report it as she did, why she felt privileged to attribute meanings to questions of identity without any evident fact checking.

Again, though, when it comes to bias in the media, context is strongly determinative. Newsrooms are not hermetically sealed. They are permeable to infiltration by political operatives, and the indirect influence of press liasons. Every politician is subject to hit pieces and smears. And perhaps the media, driven by the struggle to achieve high ratings, are too attuned to the negative in politics. However, when attacks against politicians involve stereotypes, prejudices and slurs against traditionally underrepresented groups, the media make a grave error in repeating them.

Typically mainstream media over the past few decades have been cautious about repeating the most obvious slurs. With some noteworthy exceptions, they know not to adopt the same tone as Rush Limbaugh. What they haven't shown, however, is an astute awareness of how sterotypes are insinuated into attacks. Thus they have failed to avoid echoing, in a loftier register, the talking points of hate radio.

These attacks in and of themselves are deplorable. What makes them insidious is the overall reporting environment in which the concerns of Blacks and women (for instance) are downplayed, and people who legitimately represent those concerns are seldom given voice. In such an environment, attacks constitute a disproportionate share of "indepth" coverage. Their claims and prejudices become magnified. By failing to account for this bias, media show themselves to be not mere observers, but active participants and perpetrators of injustice.