 |
Interview by Jane Hall The Media Research Center, the conservative media watchdog group, has been getting a lot of attention for its reports alleging liberal bias in the media. They’ve been severely critical of Peter Jennings’s and ABC World News Tonight's reporting before the war in Iraq — and their reports get a lot of pickup on the Internet, through e-mails and on cable talk shows. Look, I’ve been dealing with this myself since the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement, when reporters were accused of having a liberal bias. The fact of the matter is, if I don’t establish a bond with the NBC News audience that is based on my credibility and my integrity, then I go out of business. We’ve been doing this for a long time. NBC Nightly News still has the largest single audience of any media outlet, print and electronic, in the news business. The simple test is that if people thought I had a bias, they wouldn’t watch me. What is the impact, do you think, of a steady drumbeat of such criticism? Does it not have an impact on the network? It is a little wearying, but you’ve got to rise above it and take it case by case. Most of the cases are pretty flimsily made. I’m glad that Peter, Dan, and I have been doing this long enough that we’re confident in our own abilities to withstand that. I understand the Rush Limbaughs of the world. I have less trouble with that. That’s who he is and what he does — and he’s very skillful at it. Rush has a strong point of view — and that’s fine. What I get tired of is Brent Bozell [president of the Media Research Center] trying to make these fine legal points everywhere every day. A lot of it just doesn’t hold up. So much of it is that bias — like beauty — is in the eye of the beholder. So it hasn’t impacted the way you cover stories? No, it hasn’t. We work very hard at trying to determine what the facts are on a weekly basis — and that’s a full-time job. I don’t have time to engage in some kind of a conspiracy. See the entire Columbia Journalism Review Transcript Also See: |
January/February CJR: