Catching up on some light reading, I tripped
over a piece about our presidential museum in the Weekly Standard, Rupert
Murdoch’s answer to political magazines such as The Nation and the New Republic.
Andrew Ferguson, a senior editor at the
magazine, gauged reaction to the museum, focusing on
Springfield’s response to Chicago
Tribune architecture critic Blair
Kamin’s negative take.
Ferguson mentioned the coverage in the State Journal-Register and quoted from Dusty Rhodes’ Illinois Times column on the
controversy. Quoting Rhodes is no surprise — her stuff is
worth reading and repeating. What was a surprise was that Ferguson characterized
this newspaper as a “reliably left-wing” alternative
weekly.
Good grief — another dreaded L-word: If
we’re not liberals, we’re leftists.
I wonder which story clued Ferguson in to our
ideological proclivities: Our cover feature about alpaca farming?
The profile of an up-and- coming jockey? The sympathetic portrait of two
young Iraq War veterans? Was it our account of the ouster of Illinois
Symphony choral director Marion van der Loo?
And why didn’t Ferguson call the Trib “reliably
conservative”? Or the SJ-R “reliably dull”?
Not that I’m upset or anything: In the
20-odd years I’ve worked in newspapers, I’ve reported
for business weeklies and Southern dailies and served as an editor
at a weekly where the reigning ideology is sex, drugs, and rock
& roll. In that time — which roughly corresponds with the
ascendancy of the conservative movement, led by Ronald Reagan
— journalists have become punching bags for doing what
they’re supposed to do: ask questions, report facts, tell
folks what’s new.
No matter how conservative the newspaper that
employed me, there was always somebody complaining that the paper
was too liberal. Somehow, in America these days, if you’re a
journalist and you’re doing your job well, you’re
intrusive and unpatriotic.
So many news organizations have internalized
this criticism that they do everything and anything to beat overt
or apparent bias out of their subordinates, preferring to employ
empty vessels or ciphers instead of real human beings. At least
one respected media company has directed its writers not to sign a
petition in support of jailed New York
Times reporter Judith Miller.
Journalists biased in favor of journalism — the horror!
Here’s a measure of how silly this has
become: Corporation for Public Broadcasting chairman Kenneth
Tomlinson last year gave his buddy a contract to monitor PBS
programming, including NOW, a decent news-magazine show that doesn’t do
too well in the ratings. The program, until last year, was hosted
by respected journalist Bill Moyers.
Tomlinson’s pal watched Moyers’
show, and categorized the guests and topics as liberal or
conservative. What I don’t get — and Moyers has made
this point repeatedly — is why CPB chairman Tomlinson had to
award a no-bid contract worth $14,170 to have someone watch
television for him and prepare a report that confirmed his
preconceptions.
Moyers has been a national figure since the
1960s, when he was LBJ’s press secretary. His anger at
Tomlinson has been headline news across the country. As it turns
out, Moyers wasn’t the only target of scrutiny.
Tomlinson’s researcher was scrutinizing other
public-broadcasting programming, too, including the now-defunct Tavis Smiley Show on
National Public Radio. As was the case with NOW, guests and topics were
categorized as liberal or conservative. One of Smiley’s guests
was — drum roll, please — Illinois
Times reporter Dusty Rhodes, who
appeared last year on his program, talking about the case of former
Springfield cop Renatta Frazier.
I was thinking about requesting a copy of the
report — perhaps it’d help me figure out Rhodes’
politics. She seems awfully conservative, this minister’s
daughter with her two kids, minivan, and mortgage. But maybe
she’s a closet Maoist or something.
Truth is, I really don’t care. Whatever
her political opinions are, Rhodes keeps them to herself. Like most
good journalists I know, she’s all about finding out
what’s really going on, giving folks a complete and accurate
account, and not taking short cuts such as resorting to
name-calling.
Of course, there’s a guy at the Weekly Standard who
probably has her pegged as “reliably left-wing.”
This article appears in Jul 21-27, 2005.
