Where was the outrage by all these bastions of journalistic integrity when Walter Cronkite shockingly admitted to being a liberal?
By Evan Coyne Maloney
"Cronkite Admits: Media Liberal
27 August 2003
Stop the presses! Decades after retirement, Walter Cronkite can still break a major story. Saying he believes “most of us reporters are liberal,” Cronkite is admitting what many on the left have denied fervently for years: that there is a bias in the news media, and that it tips to the left noticeably.
Cronkite offers the flimsy excuse that “[t]he perceived liberalism of television reporters [...] is a product of the limited time given for any particular item.” Essentially, his argument is that bias stems from short segments: there isn’t enough time to be balanced. But if reporters can’t be fair in two minutes, why should we assume they’ll be fair with twice as much time? If a two-minute piece leans to the left, won’t a four-minute piece just lean twice as far? Or—at the very least—just as far for twice as long?
The man many consider the elder statesman of television news demonstrated evidence of the pathology of zero-sum pessimism that plagues the left, writing:
We are inclined to side with the powerless rather than the powerful. If that is what makes us liberals so be it, just as long as in reporting the news we adhere to the first ideals of good journalism — that news reports must be fair, accurate and unbiased.
By saying that reporters are “inclined to side with the powerless,” Cronkite admits reporters have a worldview that makes them susceptible to the rhetoric of populist politicians. After all, if a reporter regards himself highly for siding with the powerless, then he’ll probably think similarly about politicians who say that they, too, are on the side of the powerless. Won’t the reporter then have a harder time maintaining objectivity when covering such politicians—or their opponents? (If so, this bias would tend to favor Democratic politicians, because they employ populist language more frequently.)
In Cronkite’s mind, our society is defined primarily in terms of a struggle between the classes: the powerful vs. the powerless, the haves vs. the have-nots. And, by choosing sides against the powerful, Cronkite is saying that they need to be fought, and implying that they are responsible for the plight of the powerless. In his world, if someone makes a dollar, someone else loses a dollar; the few exploit their way to riches while the many are exploited into varying degrees of poverty; people gain power only by seizing it from others.
But what if power is achieved not by wresting control, but by creating something? What if people generate wealth by growing the pie instead of stealing slices from somebody else? Cronkite’s view doesn’t consider that. Nor does it consider the possibility that the powerless had a hand in their fate.
Not all of the powerless got that way due to someone else’s malfeasance: many drug addicts or alcoholics living on the street have nobody to blame but themselves. Are such people truly powerless? Or are they just failing to exercise power over their own lives? Even if their sorry circumstances weren’t entirely self-inflicted, they can’t automatically claim victimhood at some sinister hands; bad luck may not be their fault, but it isn’t anyone else’s, either.
All of this is beside the point, anyway: isn’t the purpose of the news media to report the facts, not to side with anybody?
Cronkite closes with a clever trick:
Incidentally, I looked up the definition of “liberal” in a Random House dictionary. It gave the synonyms for “liberal” as “progressive,” “broad-minded,” “unprejudiced,” “beneficent.” The antonyms it offered: “reactionary” and “intolerant.”
Instead of offering the contemporary political definition (a person with liberal ideas or opinions), Cronkite selects words from a more general one. By doing so, he ignores the fact that definitions depend on context. I am a firm believer in democratic systems and liberal societies, for example, but I don’t often vote Democratic and I am not a liberal. Cronkite’s careful word choices allow him to characterize liberals positively while disparaging non-liberals at the same time, proving that he’s not above using intellectual chicanery to advance his viewpoint. That alone tells me that he probably wasn’t an entirely honest newsman.
For years, this man, once dubbed “the most trusted man in America,” signed off by saying “that’s the way it was,” as though reality itself was defined by the words he spoke. So, perhaps Cronkite was attempting to put the issue of media bias to rest by issuing a final decree of truth.
Sorry, Walt: now that there are infinitely more outlets than when you and two others called the shots, that’s not the way it is...anymore."