The shooting messengers

SOMETHING is different this year. The professional code of journalism, never very reliable, seems to have been abandoned. Many reporters have dropped even the pose of impartiality, and are treating the Democratic platform as if it were the common-sense opinion of Middle America.

Indeed, much of the media coverage of the Republican Convention was hard to distinguish from the Democrats' responses to it. Pat Buchanan and other speakers were characterized with such terms as "hate," "divisiveness," and "right-wing" by journalists who had consistently described the Democrats as "moderate" for supporting unrestricted abortion, gay rights, socialized medicine, and tax increases.

The Media Research Center noted, for example, that throughout both Conventions the media identified only Republicans in ideological terms ("far right," etc.). None of the networks labeled even Jesse Jackson "left-wing" or "hard left"--or accused him of "hate," "divisiveness," or "negative campaigning' when he likened Dan Quayle to King Herod. Similarly, Republican abortion dissidents got heavy (and sympathetic) coverage, but little attention was paid to Pennsylvania's pro-life Governor Bob Casey, who was not allowed to speak at Madison Square Garden. Republicans, but not Democrats, were pointedly asked by interviewers whether their party's uncompromising abortion position would be costly in November. When Buchanan quoted Hillary Clinton's comparison of marriage and the family to slavery, the press undertook the job of rebuttal itself, sparing the Democrats the effort.

As for her husband, the coverage is getting so fulsome that the pro-Clinton New Republic now runs a "Clinton Suck-Up Watch." Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, a chief contender for the prize, blandly explains that Democrats are "culturally more at ease" with journalists than Republicans are. (The problem, it seems, is that Democrats are biased in favor of liberal journalists.)

This media warp is most striking on homosexuality. It has been decided, somewhere or another, that there is no room for an alternative view of the alternative lifestyle. Any dissent from the gay 1obby's propaganda line is bigotry and homophobia. New York Times headline: "Gay Rights and AIDS Emerging as Divisive Issues in Campaign." Washington Post headline: "Voters Decry GOP 'Gay Bashing.'" (Subhead: "Rhetoric Seen as Desperate, Ugly--but Maybe Effective.") If the voters are decrying it, how can it be effective? Time magazine headline: "After Willie Horton--ARE GAYS NEXT?" (Subhead: "Behind the GOP's 'Family Values' rhetoric lurks a plan to brand the Democrats soft on homosexuality.")

It's getting awfully heavy-handed, and it may backfire. Voters don't like to be told whom to vote for, let alone that their views on morality and the right way to live are bigoted. The choices between the two parties are dismal enough, and the debate narrow enough, without the media trying to impose their smelly little orthodoxies on the discussion.

The media reflexively denounce any criticism of their work as "shooting the messenger." That would be more plausible in 1992 if only the messengers themselves weren't so trigger-happy.

COPYRIGHT 1992 National Review, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning