The Wake

“Newsrooms heavy on liberals, even fair-minded ones, will see the world as liberals do. They need more conservative colleagues,” conservative columnist Patrick McIlheran recently said. “If conservatives want more news they can believe, they must involve themselves in the daily reporting, photographing, editing, headlining and producing of news as eagerly as do liberals.”

The truth of the matter is that more journalists identify themselves as “liberals” rather than “conservatives.” Decades of surveys support this fact. The media’s “liberal bias,” however, has become a hot topic in recent months. Minneapolis’ own Star Tribune has been under attack for months for its alleged left-leaning take on the news. The Star Tribune’s editor, Anders Gyllenhaal, recently announced the addition of conservative columnist Katherine Kersten to the paper’s metro section in an effort to appeal to a larger section of the community.

Liberal and conservative labels aside, what people really desire is fair and balanced news. But how is ‘fair and balanced’ defined? The question is up for debate.

The Bush administration has added conservative journalists to the federal payroll, ensuring that their views get pushed to page one. In January, conservative columnist Armstrong Williams, whose column was syndicated by Tribune Media Services, admitted that he had been paid $240,000 by the Department of Education to promote President Bush’s education program “No Child Left Behind.”

After Williams’ dirty deeds were uncovered, two more conservative columnists, Maggie Gallagher and Michael McManus, admitted they had been paid to promote Bush’s marriage initiative. Gallagher, president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, also writes columns that are syndicated by Universal Press, and re-published on Townhall.com, a Web site run by the conservative Heritage Foundation. McManus has written his syndicated “Ethics & Religion” column since 1981, and is the president and co-chair of Marriage Savers, Inc.

Finally, in late March, one of Florida’s most visible television reporters, Mike Vasilinda, a freelance reporter from Tallahassee, confirmed that he had earned more than $100,000 through contracts with Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s administration. Is this fair? Can this type of journalism be balanced?

What do these events all have in common? Serious breaches in journalistic ethics, for starters. Journalists are supposed to remain independent from the subjects they cover; these incidents represent huge conflicts of interest. The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics says, “avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived…deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.” Clearly, columnists are allowed to bring their opinions into their editorial pieces. However, it is not right for the government to purchase their opinions for a fee and directly influence news coverage.

The 1996 Telecommunications Act banned payola: the “bribery of an influential person in exchange for the promotion of a product or service.” Payola became a huge problem in the music industry when record labels began to pay disc jockeys thousands of dollars to have their songs played on the radio.

Today a new form of payola has emerged. The government that banned payola is now paying conservative journalists to have the government’s views printed, broadcast and distributed online.

Whether you lean to the left or the right of the political spectrum, you should be concerned about the government’s desire to control the media. Journalists have often been described as “the fourth estate” — the fourth arm of the government that acts as an independent watchdog over the government and serves as an added check on power. If the media is on the federal payroll, it cannot remain independent, and free press as we know it will be destroyed.

Sarah E. Bower is a staff writer for The Wake and submits columns regarding media ethics. She welcomes comments at office@wakenews.org.