Getting It All Backwards

By Laura Echevarria and Dave Andrusko

Eric Alterman, author of What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News, apparently lives in an alternate universe from the one the rest of us occupy. According to Alterman. a contributor to the Nation magazine and MSNBC, there is no such thing as a "liberal" media. Or, if there is, it is "tiny and underfunded compared with its conservative counterpart," as he has subsequently written in the Nation.

In our role as pro-lifers, as long as reporters and editors are fair-minded and balanced in their coverage, it doesn't matter to us whether the "media" is predominately "liberal" or "conservative." However, Alterman's book is of interest to us because he uses abortion as one illustration of how "conservatives" are supposedly carrying the day.

Beyond wrongly limiting opposition to abortion to conservatives, Alterman simply mangles the truth, as we shall see below. By way of background, let's deal first with the general thrust of What Liberal Media?

To Alterman, the U.S.-based media outlets are, in the main, conservative. He writes, "The entire context of American politics exists on a spectrum that is itself well to the right of that in most industrialized democracies." He even refers to the general concept of a liberal media as the "So-Called Liberal Media" or "SCLM" for short.

Alterman's basic assertion can be reduced to this: U.S. media is by and large conservative, especially on fiscal issues, and middle-of-the-road/conservative on social issues. He believes that conservatives have done such a phenomenal job of yelling "fire" ("working the refs," as he has put it) that many media outlets have accommodated these complaints by providing a host of conservative columnists and pundits for readers to choose from.

On the opposing side, he claims that there are only a few outlets representing the "liberal" viewpoint in this country. He points to a litany of openly conservative media outlets while claiming that there are only a measly handful of liberal publications (such as the author's own, the Nation). If the media "tilt" in any direction, Alterman tells us, it is Right. (In passing, it is worth noting the obvious: that if someone is sufficiently to the Left, by definition most American media will seem "conservative.")

The focus of What Liberal Media? is with how reporters cover fiscal issues, but Alterman does weigh in on some social issues such as abortion. He declares that the media now treats the pro-life side with fairness.

He is correct to point to Los Angeles Times media critic David Shaw's excellent 1990 series on abortion bias in the media. Where he goes wrong is in wildly exaggerating its impact.

Alterman writes, ". . . critics need to take note of its [the series] profound influence on how the issue was covered after the story appeared. Shaw won a Pulitzer Prize. His findings were accepted and editors, reporters, and producers alike did their best to implement changes in their direction.... It was possible, by the summer of 2002, to wonder if the balance on abortion coverage had not tipped entirely in the opposite direction." (This is indicative of a larger problem in the book: citing evidence that is indisputable but drawing highly contentious, not to say wholly incorrect, conclusions.)

To list just a few flaws, first of all, Shaw did win a Pulitzer but it was for coverage of a preschool child abuse case not his multi-part examination of the media's coverage of abortion.

Second, Alterman offers a lone example to document his argument that the media is, if anything, "tipping in the opposite [pro-life] direction." He cites the Washington Post's editorial support for a single

federal appeals court judge whom pro-abortion Senate Democrats insisted possessed "conservative views on abortion." Talk about reaching!

Alterman is obsessed with Matt Drudge. He writes that Drudge had been given his own television program a few years ago "where he was free to spout uninformed rumors with fellow conservative conspiracy nuts until he was informed by management that he would not be allowed to show a National Enquirer photo of a tiny hand emerging from the womb during a spina bifida operation on the fetus" - - an idea Alterman says "was not only repulsive but misleading."

It was, of course, neither (nor produced by "conservative conspiracy nuts"). This incredibly powerful photo was taken four years ago. In correcting Samuel Armas's spina bifida, doctors had removed his mom's uterus, made a small incision, repaired Samuel's spine, tucked his finger back in, and placed the uterus (and Samuel) back in his mother's abdomen.

But Alterman strongly implies it was a hoax, a product of the National Enquirer. Whether it ever ran in the Enquirer, we have no way of knowing. But the photo was commissioned by USA Today and first appeared there.

If you want to read strenuous intellectual contortions, read What Liberal Media? Alterman is not only capable of turning the truth upside down, he is adept at making the complex even more so.

In a number of places, the logic (or the lack of) employed is impressive, even mind-numbing. Making the argument that the media are pro-life friendly is only the most egregious example.