Liberal Bias

Superman: I’ve taken some flack after last week’s interview.

Ignoble Dignitary: Of course. Please tell me that doesn’t surprise you.

S: No, but what did surprise me is how many people seemed to think I crossed a line, when after rereading my comments I think I struck a good balance, frankly. I was pissed off, and it certainly showed, but I don’t think I said anything I’d regret saying to an elected official of either stripe. Republicans have been relying on fear-based politics since at least September 11th; Democrats seem to adhere to the idea of politics as a gentleman’s game that effectively castrates their ability to govern barring supermajorities.

To put it into terms I’m perhaps more expert in: I’ve read a lot of speculation about what motivates a vigilante. And I’ll admit it can all be hard to reconcile. The idea of going it your own way, bucking the system, including the government-operated police force, that’s a very conservative action; especially when you’re protecting the status quo. But when you then take that and do it for a large swath of people, sharing with people the strengths and abilities you possess when they may not have been able to help themselves out of the situation, that’s a very progressive action. Personally, I’ve never had any problem with these two sometimes contradictory, sometimes complementary ideas, because I’m a moderate. But I also know liberal and conservative vigilantes as well, and I don’t think very many of them struggle with what is a background ideological question: they want to make a difference, and everything else is secondary.

But I think it also underscores an important dichotomy in this country, something that in the current polarized climate we lose. The struggle between certain aspects of our political poles is good. Our government and our nation works best when there’s a tug-of-war between big ideas and fiscal responsibility.

One of the big issues I take with the modern Republican party is they’re no longer for fiscal responsibility. They’ve become the party of tax cuts. If we want to pay less in taxes and have a smaller government, that’s a conversation we as a nation can have, but their plan lately has been to cut taxes without cutting expenses and let future generations pick up the tab. That’s why when they complain about a bailout they helped engineer, and a stimulus package they refused to participate in, both of which economists of all political stripes agree have helped soften the current economic crisis, I have trouble taking them seriously.

I have legitimate concerns about the way that the bailout and stimulus were carried out, but if Republicans wanted things done differently, they could have- no, they should have, participated in the process and done what they could to steer either in a direction they wanted.

ID: Like they’re doing with the health reform debate now?

S: No. I don’t mean screaming at the top of their lungs about half-truths and made-up concerns, nor making a half-hearted offer at an alternative bill, I mean actually legislating. Republicans say they’d rather have an incremental bill rather than the one Reid has written. If they were willing to bargain in good faith, they could very well get concessions from the Democratic majority; realistically, the Democrats don’t want to be hung out on a limb for this: it’s already slow to implement, and half of them could very well be out of office by the time Americans feel the effects of the bill. Of course, assuming the Republicans were willing to play ball, the problem with incrementalism is that tomorrow never comes.

ID: That was either deep or you were speaking like a politician.

S: Somewhere in between, I think. But just like cuts to Medicare doctors that are postponed every year by Congress without fail, painful but necessary reforms to the rest of healthcare could just be postponed indefinitely.

Um, on the subject of things I got chewed out over, there were also some women, my wife included, who took issue with me on the revised mammogram and pap smear guidelines. I wasn’t endorsing the findings, and I might even say we should get a second opinion, because I understand, as someone whose mother was diagnosed early with cervical cancer and survived, how important early screening can be; all I was trying to say is we don’t want politicians deciding who gets what treatment based on what criteria. That decision should be left to doctors and scientists who are experts in their fields, and use the best of their professional judgment to set guidelines; I don’t want to make that call any more than I think politicians should.

And I hate to turn this interview into a blog, but I have a quote I’d like to throw in there, from somebody who’s actually read the bill: “This year’s health reform legislation has often been criticized for being health insurance reform rather than health care reform, and for not doing enough to control the cost of health care. Those who offer these criticisms have obviously not read the bills or even tried to understand them.” And that’s my problem with the current Republican party in a nutshell: they criticize without understanding, to the sole purpose of elevating themselves.

And I want to clarify that I mean the Republican party leadership, and those who claim to speak for conservatives in the country. I don’t doubt the good will of a third of the American people, more if you count conservative-leaning independents; but their leadership have lost their way, or as I suspect, have forsaken their way for a road more politically advantageous.

I have no real love for the Democratic Party; the Democrats fail me as often as they make me happy, but at least sometimes they have the courage to stand up and say, often to people who would buy and pay for them, that there is an injustice that they want to right. I think healthcare reform is one of those fights, and I’m not endorsing every action they’ve taken, I’m not endorsing their outcome, but just the fact that they stood up to do something that matters for the American people, at the quite real cost of their power- that takes a kind of bravery. My disgust with some of the opposition’s rhetoric notwithstanding, supporting and applauding that bravery was the point I was trying to make.

ID: You claim to be a moderate, but everyone knows you’re a reporter. That makes you a socialist, by definition.

I assume you’re talking about the supposed liberal bias in the media. Look, I’ll admit I have a slight liberal leaning, and most reporters I know do, too. But we also have journalistic ethics, and believe in trying to tell the story the truest way possible. We take our role in society, that of informing our fellow citizens, very seriously. But for all of the talk of liberal bias, the fact of the matter is, most media owners and management have a conservative bias. The end result isn’t a perfect balance, but rather a mish-mash of competing biases and influences, self-censorship and subjects that never get fully fleshed out. But it’s wholly dishonest to say the media is liberally biased, because it’s much, much more complicated than that.

Besides, the most pervasive bias in the media has nothing to do with politics, and everything to do with that other “P” word: profit. Media outlets usually have parent companies, and those parent companies don’t want their affiliates, or companies they work for, shown in a bad light. And since most of their competitors own media outlets, there’s the added worry of starting a media shooting war. And that says nothing of the dread of offending advertisers and sponsors. Bias in our media by reporters acting in good faith has much more to do with removing potentially offending reportage than adding controversial material.

Care to note any of those journalists not acting in good faith?

I wasn’t looking to, actually; I don’t want this to become a partisan eye-poking match. But the most recent example, and I don’t want to claim Sean Hannity is a journalist, because I think it’s fairly clear that he’s a commentator, but that’s the distinction. True bias usually comes from commentators, not journalists. But Hannity used several month old footage of a rally spliced in with footage of a rally that took place a few weeks ago, and claimed that 40,000 rather than 10,000 people showed up. That’s certainly an extreme example, but partisan reporting is very destructive, because it undermines trust, not just in the media, but in our fellow man. When we start doubting each other, we start devolving into paranoia.

That’s one of the reasons I really like NPR and Public Broadcasting. NPR is one of the more unbiased places to find information in the country. One of their smartest political analysts is Juan Williams, who also comments for Fox News, but you’d hardly know that from his reporting, because he’s a pretty consummate professional. I’m sure everyone at NPR has their own ideas, but NPR really does the best job I’ve seen of keeping its allegiances close to the vest.

Another useful news source is the BBC. They’re certainly a bit more liberally-biased than, say, CNN, but they’re also less US-biased, so you really get to see how the rest of the world looks at us. Not in the “Death to America” fanatical circles, but how steadfast but honest allies view the actions we take. I think it’s an important, indispensable perspective.

So you’re saying we should export all of our reporting jobs oversees, then?

Of course not. I’m saying that independent voices are invaluable. And in the current climate it’s difficult to have truly independent voices in a professional context. That’s why we’re on the internet now, and on an independent blog, because no matter where we went, whether it was Fox News or the Huggington Post, there were going to be editorial and advertising concerns trying to dictate content, and format, maybe even deciding what we could say and where.

We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.