Once again, the canard of the big bad reactionary corporate media is getting a workout in progressive circles. This time it's in response to an excellent new study of D.C. journalists' political leanings, published by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). FAIR commissioned Virginia sociologist David Croteau (once a staff member at War Resisters League--a bit of disclosure FAIR doesn't offer) to survey a few hundred of the Beltway's finest.

Croteau finds--surprise--that these elite national journalists are decidedly more conservative politically than the American public is on any number of issues, particularly economic ones like free trade, welfare reform, and corporate power. It's a useful study for demolishing the Limbaughite truism that we have "liberal media" because media workers themselves are supposedly liberal. And that's if you get past the constraints that any reporter or editor, no matter their political leanings, finds operating in a profit-making, mass-audience, lowest-common-denominator setting, working for some of the world's biggest corporations to boot.

Unfortunately, proving "conservative media bias" is the right answer to the wrong question. One can as easily assert--as right-wingers do--that mass media is liberal, on the basis of cultural values. Any survey of, say, contemporary TV sitcoms, which have almost all devolved into a grotesque medley of sexual innuendo and laugh track, proves them right. (Just as entertainment TV's infatuation with cop shows can be used to prove the opposite point.)

Even politically, there's plenty of grounds for doubting this most venerated of leftie cliches. The two most egregious local examples of media bias slamming political figures in recent years--repeatedly and to great effect--were Ellen Craswell and Charlie Chong. Craswell was never given the respect of a major party's candidate for governor, let alone that due a person who'd amassed the most impressive grassroots support network in recent state history. Chong's "objective" coverage degenerated from hostile, during his run for city council, to being so biased for his opponent in last year's mayoral race that The Seattle Times should have been reporting their entire operating budget as a donation to the Schell campaign. And the warm nuzzling Seattle media has given liberals like Schell, Norm Rice, Gary Locke, Ron Sims, and even Patty Murray is undeniable.

Not that this proves liberal media bias, any more than the FAIR study proves right-wing bias. What it proves is that corporate news coverage is biased towards power.

From reliance on "official" sources and distrust of community groups and populist movements, to the undue respect given elected officials and large corporations, to sheer comfort with the status quo and desire not to rock the boat, the most important cumulative effect of what mass media does and doesn't cover, and how, is to reinforce the powerful. It's yet another reason why the public hates its politicians, but always seems to re-elect them. It's why our local TV and daily papers are less discernably pro-business (or pro-labor) than they are pro-Boeing, pro-Microsoft, pro-parking garage, pro-stadia, pro-anything being pushed by our local Chamber of Commerce types. General Motors is more powerful than the UAW--so we've heard virtually nothing about why those pesky workers are striking in Flint. That would still be the case if the workers' platform were "conservative," e.g., virulently xenophobic a la Buchanan.

As with much of contemporary politics, the bias toward power is masked, not illuminated, by trying to impose it on an archaic left/right axis. Audiences who identify as one or the other, rather than competing to claim victimhood, might more usefully notice that they're both on the outside, looking in. (And it's cold outside, and there's a nice cozy fireplace inside.) They might also notice that this is ultimately a more worrisome problem than ideological bias, because it can willingly, happily be put to use for any ideology. We depend on media to provide a useful check on power and conduit of information vital to maintaining any kind of a democracy. The type of media bias we face, however, is perfectly at home in a totalitarian state--whether of the left or right.