FAIR, BALANCED? NOT OUR DAILIES

Think Tank Study Finds News, Post Toe the Establishment Line

You can call the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post a lot of
things, but one thing you can't call them is "fair and balanced."
When the Colorado establishment lines up on one side of an issue, the
News and the Post go along. Consider, for example, how the Denver
dailies have covered this year's marijuana initiative (Amendment 44)
and last year's Referendums C and D (increased spending and borrowing).

Several weeks ago, the Independence Institute released a study,
Unabashed Bias, of how the News and the Post had covered the debate
on Referendums C and D. As research director of the Independence
Institute (and, therefore, editor of the study), I normally do not
write about Independence Institute issues in this column. But I'm
making an exception, because the News, unlike the Post and Westword,
has failed to report on the study - even though the study documents
egregious misconduct on the part of the News.

Shortly before the election, for seven days in a row, the News ran a
"fact box" which purported to be an objective description of
Referendum D. To the contrary, the description was copied nearly
verbatim from the Web site of the referendum's proponents. The
unattributed copying amounted to plagiarism, and to a flagrant
deception of News readers, who were given one-sided propaganda
disguised as neutral reporting.

There is no excuse for reprinting one side's campaign literature
without identification.

More generally, Unabashed Bias examined how the Denver papers covered
the C and D debate. The study counted the column inches which each
news story gave to the views of proponents, and to the views of
opponents. If a story gave approximately the same space to both
sides, the story was scored as "neutral." If the story gave
significantly more space to one side, then it was scored as favoring
that particular side.

Considering only the news stories (and not editorials, cartoons,
etc.), the study found that 57 percent of stories reported mainly the
view of proponents, 42 percent of stories were neutral, and 1 percent
of stories reported mainly the views of opponents.

My biweekly counterpart in this space, Jason Salzman, wrote in an
e-mail exchange that the "C and D study was probably right." He
reasons, however, "that journalism is supposed to be fair and
accurate, not fair and balanced . . . So even if the coverage was not
balanced, it was fair, given that the entire establishment -
politicians, university presidents, roadbuilders, hospital leaders,
etc. - were for C and D."

Jason makes a valid point. The pro-C-and-D coalition comprised the
largest, most formidable political machine ever assembled in Colorado
in the last half-century. On the whole, the coverage accurately
reflected elite opinion.

While the establishment, including the Denver papers, was nearly
monolithic, the public was evenly divided. C passed by 52 percent to
48 percent, while D failed 49 percent to 51 percent.

Newspapers these days invest enormous efforts in attempting to mirror
the diversity of their communities. But when covering C and D, the
Denver newspapers did not mirror the community; rather, they mirrored
the establishment. Given the slim margin of the pro-C vote, it seems
likely that the extremely unbalanced coverage of the News and the
Post was a decisive factor in favor of the largest wealth transfer
from taxpayers to tax consumers in the history of Colorado statehood.

In a follow-up e-mail, Jason wrote of "the 'statist' bias of the news
media. Even as watchdog, it still serves as a mouthpiece for the
establishment . . . " I think he is correct, and it is not surprising
that the news media would support a plan to grow state government by
$5 billion in the short term, and much more in the long term.

The statist/establishment bias is likewise visible, albeit to a
lesser degree, in the coverage of Amendment 44, which would make
marijuana possession legal for adults in Colorado, as it was until
1917. Counting news stories in the Denver dailies in the last month,
I found that four stories gave significantly more space to the
opponents, seven were neutral, and one favored the proponents.

When opponents staged media events, the opponents' views predominated
in the coverage, but when proponent events or advocates were covered,
the stories usually gave equal space to both sides.

Suppose a movie reviewer said: "Most viewers enjoyed the good-natured
(if Jewish-themed) music in Fiddler on the Roof." It would be fair to
wonder if the reviewer were anti-Semitic. Now consider how Post
writer Richard Baca began a review of a Veggie Tales CD: "Most
parents appreciate the good-natured (if Christian-themed) sentiment
of the video series . . . "