Tuesday, March 18, 2008

What Exactly is a Liberal?

by Paul Giacobbe

Almost all the Viewers’ Voice complaints and comments come by either email or on the Viewers’ Voice recorded telephone line.  Almost no one writes letters any more.  With some exception, there’s a pattern:  Those that don’t want to engage in any discussion, or risk a dialogue with someone who doesn’t agree with them, use the telephone (almost always from a blocked number) while others who are comfortable in their opinions and comments use email, which provides me with an opportunity to explore with them more fully their comments or complaints.

Recently there was a telephone call from an anonymous viewer who objected to the fact that (he said) none of the NBC10 stories about disgraced New York Governor Eliot Spitzer mentioned that Spitzer is a Democrat. 

“If Spitzer was a Republican you would have mentioned that over and over again,” the viewer said.  “It’s just another example of how the liberal media distorts the news.”

I get that a lot, the suggestion that “the media” is liberal, but I’m not sure exactly what that means. Does it mean all media organizations are liberal, or does it refer only to certain newspapers and television stations and networks?  And what, exactly, does “liberal” mean, in the context of local news reporting?  The way most viewers who use it when they email me, the word is a pejorative, as if it is an affliction rather than a political or social philosophy.

Did the viewer who telephoned believe that there was a group discussion, involving all the station’s editors and producers, or a memo, suggesting not to identify Spitzer as a Democrat?  Or that NBC had sent a directive to its affiliates not to embarrass the Democrat Party by mentioning Spitzer’s political affiliation?

Are there print and television reporters and editors who would likely be labeled as Liberal were their political philosophy known, and does that philosophy sometimes leak into their work?  Probably.  But there are also those who likely would be similarly labeled as Conservatives.

(Not long ago, in fact, there was a viewer complaint, which generated an on-air Viewers’ Voice ombudsman report, that an NBC10 reporter, upset with a news service report critical of President Bush, characterized that story as a product of the liberal media. Viewers complained that the remarks were biased, but no one complained that the reporter exhibited a Conservative bias.)

There are at least a half dozen separately produced NBC10 news shows each day, not all of which I record or monitor, and if none of the reports on Spitzer, in any of those shows, identified him as a Democrat, then an important fact was omitted, and that was wrong.  But I’d like to be able to ask the caller who complained how he makes the jump between that omission and labeling an entire local news staff as “liberal.”

NBC10 provides the space for these comments, but the opinions are mine alone. – Paul Giacobbe