Watchdog Groups Challenge Claims of Media's Conservative Bent
by Chad Groening and Jody Brown
December 17, 2004
(AgapePress) - A conservative media watchdog group says PBS icon Bill Moyers will retire today by airing an exposé on what he calls the media's "conservative bias."Moyers recently told Associated Press that his final segment the weekly PBS program NOW will show that America has an ideological press that is interested in the election of Republicans, and a mainstream press that is interested in the bottom line. The program's website describes the segment as a "[look] inside the right-wing media machine" and an examination of "how a vast echo chamber that is admittedly partisan and powerfully successful delivers information -- and misinformation -- with more regard for propaganda than fact."
Rich Noyes is director of public research at the Media Research Center, a Virginia-based group with the objective of bringing "political balance and responsibility" to the media. Noyes claims Moyers' claims are preposterous.
"That is the rhetoric of someone who's an activist," Noyes says, "not someone who's trying to actually study the media and try to figure out where the media falls out ideologically."
Noyes says for years Moyers has been trying to convince his audience of a conservative bias in the media -- but no one has been listening. "So I guess now he's calling it an exposé because no one would listen to him the first ten times he yelled about that," he says.
Moyers, he says, has a theory that "somehow everybody in the media -- I guess himself included -- is docile and passive and non-ideological" -- and that because talk radio and outlets like the Fox News Channel have a conservative bent, that amounts to a "huge, vast, right-wing control" of the media."
"It is preposterous," Noyes says. "It goes against anybody with a learned understanding of what is going on in the news media."
The sad part, according to Noyes, is that U.S. taxpayers have been forced to fund the distribution of misinformation along the lines of Moyers' reports. Speaking of NOW, he says "taxpayers are paying for a program that they'll never see and don't want to see."
"They're voting with their clickers [remote controls]. They don't care about this show; they think it's 'hookie' stuff," says the MRC spokesman. "I don't think the program itself is underwritten by taxpayers, but certainly the distribution of it across the vast PBS network is something that taxpayers are footing the bill for."
Noyes says with so few people watching Friday's final program, Moyers will end "with a silly whimper -- not a bang."
Thumbs Down on Christians?
If the media has such a conservative bias, as Moyers claims, it makes one wonder why network television programs are not more favorable to the Christian religion. The Parents Television Council (PTC) just completed a study that finds TV entertainment programs mention God more often than they used to -- but usually cast organized religion in a negative light.
Associated Press reports that the PTC watched every hour of prime-time on the broadcast networks during the 2003-04 season and logged more than 2,300 mentions of God and religion, finding them to be slightly more negative than positive overall. But the group found that any mention of a religious institution or member of the clergy was at least twice as likely to be negative than positive.
Tim Winter, PTC's executive director, told AP that Christians seem to be fair game for prime-time mockery. "We hold to that tenet which is to treat people whose beliefs may be different from ours with respect," Winter explains. But he does not believe the TV networks hold to that same principle.
"I think that the networks feel very, very differently. [They feel] that they can take pot-shots at people and feel that it's okay to do so," he says. "Whereas if there were other certain religions or certain other ethnic or racial minorities, this behavior would not be tolerated at all."
According to the PTC study, one network in particular leads the way in negative depictions of faith. It reports that on NBC's prime-time shows, mentions of religion were nearly ten times more likely to be negative than positive. An NBC spokeswoman says its programs reflect the diversity of its audience, but it does not mean to be anti-religious.
Winter does not buy that explanation. He says it is irresponsible for network programmers to claim they are just broadcasting what is popular. He says he accepts the fact that networks need to reflect popular culture -- "but they also need to understand [they have great influence on] where popular culture is going and where the mood of America is going," he says. "I think they need to accept some responsibility."
Associated Press contributed to this story.
