Unfair and Unbalanced

While Ted Turner's CNN news enterprise may still have a reputation for being the unbiased, "just the facts" network amid the hyper-partisan madness of MSNBC and Fox News, its ratings situation has never been more dire. John Hinderaker attempts a character study:

CNN represents the passive-aggressive Left. MSNBC is unrestrained id, but CNN can never fully surrender to its liberal impulses. It tries to maintain a fig leaf of neutrality. But CNN can’t get through the day without betraying what it really thinks, often in underhanded ways. Thus, when CNN did a story on Chick-fil-A today, what did it focus on? The merits of the controversy? The fact that more than one Democratic government official has threatened to violate the company’s constitutional rights, because its CEO is opposed to gay marriage? No. In a dog whistle to its liberal audience, CNN focused on the fact that Todd and Sarah Palin, along with thousands of other Americans, tweeted photos of themselves eating at Chick-fil-A.

The comforting thing about Fleet Street is that you know exactly where any given media outlet is coming from politically. It's generally understood that every outlet has its biases and prejudices. The same could be said Fox News and, to a lesser extent, MSNBC. You watch their programmes in the understanding that their coverage is going to approach every issue from a particular angle. Obviously there's the basic expectation that the news organisation will convey accurate information regardless of their inclinations (Fox doesn't always adhere to this rule), and also that certain parts of the truth won't be obscured.

But what concerns me about outlets like CNN or even the scrupulously neutral Al Jazeera is that they claim to be nonpartisan. I'm always inclined to think that such a claim is impossible to fulfil. The comfort that can be derived from Foxish networks and newspapers is that they don't approach their audience under the guise of impartiality. Again: you know exactly where they're coming from.

This is maybe why I thought it was a sign of progress at the Times when Bill Keller said in the pages of the paper that, yes, America's leading daily has a slight liberal bias — whatever that is. Something else tells me that impartial television networks simply aren't possible. And even if they were, that network would never meet the entertainment criterion anyway.