Posted by
Bert Chapman on Monday, March 03, 2008 9:40:15 AM
As conservatives we love to bash, usually justifiably, the mainstream establishment media for its liberally biased political reporting. The recent Saturday Night live comedy skit satirizing the media's puppy love affair with Barack Obama was an excellent example of this.
Mainstream media reports of political campaigning often suffer from basic journalistic and research incompetence and nonexistent referencing as well. Let me present two recent examples of this. A lot of attention has been focused on the Clinton-Obama elections in Texas and Ohio. Something about their coverage (particularly NBC's) of the Texas race has really gotten under my skin. My first job as a professional librarian was at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas where I worked five years before moving to Indiana. Living in Texas during that time I got intimately acquainted with Texas politics, its history, the scholarly literature on the subject, the media coverage, and its diverse multifaceted nature. A true understanding of Texas politics and political trends requires serious investigation rather than the superficial coverage the media provides.
My biggest complaint of the media's coverage of the Obama-Clinton race in Texas is its Austin-centric nature. Austin is Texas' state capitol and home of the University of Texas so it does play a significant role in Texas political campaigns. However, what the mainstream media does not tell you is that Austin and UT-Austin are liberal democratic enclaves in a decidedly conservative state. A lot of TV coverage of this campaign has interviewed columnists from Austin's newspaper the Austin-American Statesman which is decidedly liberal in its ideological tilt. Consequently, based on mainstream liberal media coverage of the Obama-Clinton race you would think that Texas is going to vote Democratic this fall. Don't bet on it! In fact, areas near Austin such as north suburban Williamson County and the adjacent Hill Country, where Lyndon Baines Johnson, began his ascent to political power are decidedly Republican. Don't expect to hear that from Tim Russert, George Stephanopolous, Cokie Roberts or other mainstream media political commentators.
Truly accurate coverage of Texas politics will include perspectives from large metro areas like Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, Lubbock, and a representative sampling of Texas 254 counties including Texas' many rural regions.
This morning on the Today show, I saw another example of superficial media political reporting by NBC reporter Jamie Gangel. She was telling how it's possible to find who (particularly celebrities) contributed to various presidential campaigns online. During her story, Gangel mentioned how addicting this searching is. Unfortunately, her story had two fatal flaws. She didn't mention which websites you could use to find this information, let alone their URLs, and she didn't tell you these websites will only include contributions of over $200 during the presidential election cycle. Do TV networks actually give their reporters substantive training in political research before they send them out on the beat? Do these reporters actually have any experience looking up reliable political information in their educational careers? Do they even know how to properly cite their resources and tell viewers who might be interested in looking them up on their own? Don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.