Cliff Kincaid

I was somewhat disappointed by the talk that Cliff Kincaid gave in class today. While I had hoped that he would have a substantial media analysis that would give us more to think about, he generally repeated the overused "liberal media" charge, and made attacks on liberal politicians and media figures.

Some of Kincaid's conclusions were based on sparse evidence. He was only able to cite one inaccuracy in textbooks, and that was concerning his own website, which was not substantial evidence for any trend. He was only able to tie the rise of liberal media to liberal college students being taught "interpretive journalism," and did not adequately explain how interpretive journalism lended itself to political biases.

Kincaid focused too much on the perceived liberal bias without discussing the conservative biases enough. Whenever conservative politicians or media figures were being critiqued, they were often done alongside the liberal media groups, seemingly as an afterthought. This was seen when he mentioned two examples of "liberal" newspapers being unable to estimate their sustainability footprint, then mentioning one example of Fox censoring its describing the French Riots as "Muslim" under pressure. He seemed largely unwilling to consider corporate influences in the news when answering my question. Reporters should not artificially put equal blame or praise on both sides, but they should make a good faith effort to fairly evaluate both of them, which was lacking in this part of the presentation.

Attacking the media as liberally biased and insisting that it is the foremost problem is problematic for several reasons. It creates a chilling effect, causing editors and managers to censor reports that would seem to have a liberal tilt, potentially doing so to such a degree that they become almost conservatively biased. It legitimates more conservative media outlets like FOX, and by deeming the rest of the media liberally biased, makes them seem "fair and balanced" by comparison. It also draws attention from reporters' professional failings and their editors' and owners' decisions, which have a considerably greater influence on the news than liberal or conservative bias. The problems the media face are too complex to be blamed on liberal bias and too pervasive to be identified on such meager evidence, and as such, Kincaid's theory about the media is ill-suited to help journalists understand and address the problems their industry faces.