Buzz Trexler

Donna and I have a habit of watching NBC’s “Today Show” with our morning coffee. Believe me, I’m well aware of its conservative talk show reputation as “The Obama Network.”

Is it deserved? Maybe, maybe not; however, recently I couldn’t help but watch Matt Lauer smirk following an interview with conservative columnist Michelle Malkin. (Did he roll his eyes? Check out the clip on YouTube.) Malkin’s got a new book out with the incredible title of “Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies.” Lauer does a good job of peppering her with questions, but Malkin pretty much held her own.

But this brings up the whole question of bias in the media. Anyone with a mustard seed of intellect can tell you Fox is on the Right; CNN has the reputation of being on the Left; and other network news programs can leave you wondering “Who’s on First, What’s on Second, and Where’s Third?”

Truth be told, most viewers/readers have their own inherent biases and filters that they use (either consciously or subconsciously) when consuming news and information. Subsequently, they will assign bias — most often against their own viewpoint — whether it is reality or mere perception.

All of this brings to mind a University of Tennessee roundtable on the media and health care that I was asked to participate in sometime during the early 1990s. To the best of my recollection, other media representatives included a reporter from a major metropolitan daily and a young man from a mid- to large-size Tennessee newspaper. The conversation went something like this:

Health care worker: “We need your help in getting certain messages out to the public.”

Tennessee reporter: “You’re asking us to make the news. It’s our job to report the news, not make it,” the context of which was that to do so would include an element of bias.

At this point, I chime in with something along these lines: “Listen, if you claim that there is absolutely no bias in reporting, then you’re not fooling the readers, you’re only kidding yourself. It is only because we have an element of bias that tells us something is a news story. The challenge is to eliminate that bias and prevent a fair and balanced report.”

I thought I was standing alone when the reporter from the major metropolitan daily stood up — he was the size of a linebacker — and said this: “We know that every policymaker in the nation reads our newspaper every day. And when I walk down the streets of New York and see children with bloated bellies like they’re in some Third World country, it makes me want to do something. And you don’t change policy with one story. You change policy with one story, then another, and then another, until somebody does something.”

There was this sense that Diogenes had just found an honest journalist, for here was a reporter who was unabashedly practicing advocacy journalism. He was letting his bias loose upon the readers in hopes of effecting change and made no apologies for doing so — and that’s the difference. Journalists who obviously come at a subject from a particular point of view, but maintain they are being unbiased in their approach, are not fooling readers or viewers.  They only add to a growing general distrust of journalists.

When it comes to media bias, professionally trained journalists know that we all have biases. And since bias is the enemy to true journalism, the task is to recognize that bias and struggle to present the balanced report.

All we can do is run the good race — and we do.

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