Eschacon08: Media Bias (refresh for updates)

L-R: Will Bunch, Eric Boehlert, Susie Madrak (moderator), Athenae, Spocko, Douglas K. Smith

Bunch begins the session by discussing fighting back against the media bias in favor of John McCain. People complain that there's not enough progressive voices in the media, but most commenters on my blog (Attytood) are conservatives.

Next is Media Matters' Eric Boehlert. He refers us to McCainFreeRide.com for the excellent book produced by Media Matters, Free Ride. MM doesn't use the word "bias," but there's a new phenomenon ... it goes back to Gore's press in 1999 which was "really unfair and really weird." What's happening online now is potentially dangerous: HRC has gotten dreadful press, not fair, "gotcha," and so on -- there's a portion of the blogosphere that has ignored that and there's a portion that has encouraged that. It's dangerous because the media criticism has to be consistent and relentless, and we can't very well say, "You can't go after our candidates ... except this one." I get nervous about pushback regarding disingenuous coverage - our response needs to be, "You can't treat Democrats this way." When people in the left blogosphere are quoting an anonymous Matt Drudge source, it makes me nervous.

Madrak: the rule of thumb is that if you read or hear something that makes you hate another Democrat, you need to dig down further because there's more to the story. The real enemy is the media, and they see themselves as the only superdelegates.

Athenae: looking at the things that caused me to leave journalism -- identification with the powerful, prurient sensationalism -- it's a short step from "your kid's car seat will kill you" to "terrorists will kill you" ... or "will 9/11 make you go back to church." It all boils down to the easy narrative -- it's not "bias" so much as "laziness and stupidity." Calling it "bias" gives journalists entirely too much credit. So how do we fix this? (1) support the independent press and bloggers, and (2) make better journalists. Obviously not a quick fix ... but it has to be done.

Spocko's remarks are about personal assassination in the media. He asked the only working journalist in the room -- from the Philadelphia Daily News -- to keep his remarks off the record. I will comply with his request as well. Mostly he is recounting the history of his famous battles with KSFO, which eventually resulted in the firing of Melanie Morgan.

Spocko just thanked El Gato Negro (who got a big round of applause) as well as Interrobang and the EFF.

I think we just made Spocko cry again. He got a standing ovation at the conclusion of his remarks.

Doug Smith is next. He's the executive director of the Punch Sulzberger Leadership Program. He says that "every aspect of the [media] business is broken." Starting with advertising, it began by being priced for the number of "eyeballs" that viewed a given ad. As a result, the organizations had direct sales forces ... and classifieds have lost traction, too, thanks to Craigslist and such. Now it's priced as cost per click or cost per action -- but the media are under huge pressure because of loss of advertising revenue, and they've been slow on getting into new media. Not only do we have a broken business model (advertising), but a broken content model as well. The classic edit model is too expensive, and it's underresourced due to the unbelievable explosion of knowledge and information.

You can attack the mainstream media, as Spocko did, and go for the vulnerable part: the advertisers. Then they suffer personal pain (due to the erosion of their celebrity status) and professional pain by affecting the revenue stream. Now, though, the traditional media are becoming far more savvy in new media -- they're looking for more expertise in the area, and they want to attract better journalists. Finally, though, bloggers can compete with the mainstream media. There is a generation gap in media ... the median age for ABC Evening News viewers is 61! With a concerted effort, bloggers could replace CNN, and the younger audiences are up for grabs. All of this speaks to Athenae's point about the media being more lazy than biased on content.

Question: wrt fact-checking -- editorials today seem to be based on things entirely removed from the facts. (Spocko interjects: "William Kristol?") Will there be a new model of editorial writing that has more basis in fact? Smith responds: he knows of papers that have already eliminated editorial sections. Spocko adds, he asked Sam Seder, why isn't someone from Air America in the White House Briefing Room? Wouldn't it be great to fact-check in real time? Boehlert continues: MM exists for the purpose of fact-checking, basically. Sure, they're having to fact-check the same things over and over again, but that goes more to the laziness we've already discussed.

Question from noblejoanie about why media don't call politicians on their lies. Madrak: psychologically, most journalists are low-conflict people. They typically don't like confrontation, and calling someone on a lie is inherently confrontational.

Finished with that session. Next up is DFH Economics, featuring Atrios and Paul Krugman, inter alia.