By Michael Barone
© National Journal Group Inc.

Part I Introduction Part II The Politics of Networking Part III The Reshaped Electorate Part IV Taking Exception to American Exceptionalism Part V The Shape of the Political Future Part VI The Party of the Future Part VII Old Media and New Media

If American politics doesn't stand still, neither do the media through which Americans gain their understanding of politics and government. In the last quarter-century, with a quantum leap in the 2004 campaign, American political media moved from centralization to decentralization. In 1980 most Americans got most of their information about politics and government from the three broadcast TV networks, ABC, CBS and NBC. Those networks' news organizations in turn took their guidance in very large part from two newspapers: the New York Times and the Washington Post. For the purposes of this essay, call them Old Media. Of course other media outlets were of some importance-metropolitan area newspapers, radio networks, news magazines. But the days when regional newspapers had great political influence, like the Chicago Tribune in the 1930s and 1940s, were gone. Time and Life magazines, once the advocates of a liberal Republicanism, had taken on other coloration. But the three broadcast networks and the Times and the Post had an influence that far outweighed them.

The people running and working for these news organizations believed they had a responsibility to present the news accurately and fairly and, for the most part, worked hard to do so. But it was also a fact that their personnel was overwhelmingly Democratic and liberal: surveys show that by 1992, 89% of the people in leading Washington media voted for Bill Clinton. Inevitably this has some effect on the news they present. As the Washington Post's David Broder explained in his book Behind the Front Page, journalists look for stories where they expect to find them. They decide what is news on the basis of how they think the world works. Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, moderates and those farther off to the left or the right-not always, not on every issue, but at least sometimes, on some issues-differ on where they expect to find news and how they think the world works. They will have these differences even when they are trying hard to be fair and objective. One broadcast network news executive, asked whether the fact that 90% of his people were Democrats affected their work product, replied that it did not: they had professional standards, they were capable of objectivity. Then, asked whether that meant that the work product would be identical if 90% of his people were Republicans, he said, "No. Then it would be biased."

In 1980 Old Media did not have much competition. You could have gotten a pretty good idea of what Americans were learning about the fall presidential campaigns if you had been able to sit each day in five rooms: the two rooms where the Democratic and Republican candidates' campaign staffs held their morning meetings and determined their message of the days and the three rooms, all of them on the West Side of Manhattan, where the three broadcast networks' producers and anchors met to determine the lineup and story lines of their evening newscasts. Cable news had only started to exist: CNN presented its first news program on June 1, 1980; it was available to just 1.7 million households. Talk radio did not exist. The FCC's fairness doctrine which required stations to give equal time to different points of view was not repealed until 1987. The Internet was a project being developed by a Pentagon agency, DARPA, with some help from tech-minded members of Congress including the congressman from the 4th District of Tennessee, Al Gore.

Flash forward to 2004. Old Media continues to exist, and continues to be staffed by people about 90% of whom are Democrats. The best description of the effects of that was made by Mark Halperin in ABC News's The Note, a daily Internet posting, on February 10, 2004. "Like every other institution, the Washington and political press corps operate with a good number of biases and predilections. They include, but are not limited to, a near-universal shared sense that liberal political positions on social issues like gun control, homosexuality, abortion, and religion are the default, while more conservative positions are 'conservative positions.' They include a belief that government is a mechanism to solve the nation's problems; that more taxes on corporations and the wealthy are good ways to cut the deficit and raise money for social spending and don't have a negative affect on economic growth; and that emotional examples of suffering (provided by unions or consumer groups) are good ways to illustrate economic statistic stories.... The press, by and large, does not accept President Bush's justifications for the Iraq war -- in any of its [weapons of mass destruction], imminent threat, or evil-doer formulations. It does not understand how educated, sensible people could possibly be wary of multilateral institutions or friendly, sophisticated European allies. It does not accept the proposition that the Bush tax cuts helped the economy by stimulating summer spending. It remains fixated on the unemployment rate. It believes President Bush is 'walking a fine line' with regards to the gay marriage issue, choosing between 'tolerance' and his 'right-wing base.' It still has a hard time understanding how, despite the drumbeat of conservative grass-top complaints about overspending and deficits, President Bush's base remains extremely and loyally devoted to him -- and it looks for every opportunity to find cracks in that base.... The worldview of the dominant media can be seen in every frame of video and every print word choice that is currently being produced about the presidential race."

This description of Old Media will ring true to many readers and false to many others: it is, however, the view of as sophisticated and knowledgeable an observer of Old Media as any and, coming from an Old Media source, an admission against interest. Here there is disagreement only with the final sentence. For in 2004 the worldview of dominant media was not reflected in every video and every print word choice and every radio soundbite that was produced about the presidential race. Old Media had competition, from New Media. The cable news audience had vastly expanded in the preceding quarter-century, and CNN had competition from MSNBC and Fox News Channel, which in the 2004 cycle had more viewers than CNN and MSNBC put together. Talk radio had become a vibrant source of political information and argumentation. And the blogosphere-weblogs sent out over the Internet-provided an additional source of information and networking.

New Media personnel has leaned toward the right of the political spectrum. Not entirely and not uniformly; but enough to provide a counterweight to Old Media. CNN and MSNBC personnel may have a world view little different from that of the three broadcast networks, but Fox News Channel employs a much higher percentage of Republicans than the broadcast networks, yet a percentage that is almost certainly lower than that of Democrats there (and Fox's polling firm is headed by a Democrat). Conservative talk radio hosts have a far larger audience than liberals, large enough that liberals felt obliged to start Air America in 2004 as a counterweight.

The blogosphere presents a more complicated picture. Two of the most viewed websites are run by left Democrats, dailykos.com, run by Democratic consultant Markos Moulitsas, and atrios.blogspot.com, run by economist Duncan Black. They provided a forum where Democrats and opponents of the Iraq war could exchange ideas, hone arguments and establish contact with Democratic campaigns. In the 2004 campaign cycle, Howard Dean's campaign made effective use of the Internet, raising money and attracting volunteers rapidly and effectively. The left blogosphere and the Dean campaign shaped the tone and content of the debate in the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination and in John Kerry's campaign after he clinched the Democratic nomination in March 2004. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps more than 1 million, people were able to make their voices heard and their opinions count, thanks to the Internet.

The right blogosphere was different. The focus of its hatred was not so much on Democrats or John Kerry as it was Old Media. Instapundit.com, run by University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds, supported George W. Bush on the Iraq war and gun control, but opposed his views on abortion, same-sex marriage and embryonic stem-cell research. The proprietors of two websites followed avidly by conservatives, Andrew Sullivan of andrewsullivan.com and Mickey Kaus of kausfiles.com, endorsed John Kerry, although with some disdain. The three bloggers who put out powerlineblog.com and Hugh Hewitt of hughhewitt.com supported Bush pretty much down the line, but added their own emphases and concentrated much of their fire on Old Media.

The interplay of Old Media and New Media in the 2004 can be seen in how they handled two issues: the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's charges about John Kerry's service in Vietnam and activities thereafter, and Dan Rather's report about George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard.

Kerry had spoken often of his military record in the primary season and after he clinched the Democratic nomination; he was accompanied by veterans who had served on the same boat with him, most of whom praised his service and supported his campaign. The Swiftvets (as the organization refers to itself on its website) held its first news conference in May, at which veterans who had served in the larger squadron criticized Kerry's service and the statements he made to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971; eventually most of the veterans in the squadron and one veteran in Kerry's boat endorsed the Swiftvets' charges. They got little or no coverage in Old Media. They received more notice in New Media, on conservative websites and on talk radio programs. The Kerry campaign decided not to respond and made his military service the central theme of the Democratic National Convention in late July. Shortly afterward, the Swiftvets announced their first television ads criticizing Kerry. The ads were covered by Fox News and got wide circulation in New Media. Many of the differences between the Swiftvets and the veterans supporting Kerry involved differing recollection of events that had occurred 36 years before in the heat of combat, differences that would certainly be hard and probably be impossible for any non-observer to resolve. But that was not entirely true. Kerry had claimed repeatedly to have spent Christmas or Christmas Eve 1968 on a secret mission to Cambodia, in an article in the Boston Herald in 1979, on the Senate floor in 1986, to the Associated Press in 1992. The Swiftvets said he was never in Cambodia. On August 11 Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan abandoned the claim that Kerry had been in Cambodia in Christmas 1968; he said he had been on missions there in 1969. No corroborative evidence of this has appeared, even from Kerry's boatmates who supported him; one said they had been near the Cambodian border.

On August 19 Kerry addressed the charges against him, and Old Media began covering the Swiftvets' charges, though not as exhaustively as many in New Media were. After the election, Kerry campaign strategists said that the Swiftvets charges did hurt him. It's possible they might have scripted the Democratic National Convention, Kerry's moment of maximum exposure, differently if they had thought that these charges would become a major issue. Whether you credit the Swiftvets' charges or not, this is an issue which had some impact on the campaign and which would not have emerged if Old Media still had a monopoly.

On September 8, Dan Rather aired charges on CBS's Sixty Minutes II that Bush had failed to perform his duties in the Texas Air National Guard. The charges were based largely on documents dated 1972 that CBS put on its website. Before midnight Atlanta lawyer Harold McDougald posted on freerepublic.com, a conservative website, a note pointing out that the documents were in proportionately shaped fonts, not in general use in 1972. "I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old. This should be pursued aggressively." It was. At 6:30 a.m. on September 9 in St. Paul, Minnesota, Scott Johnson reprinted that posting under the heading "The Sixty-First Minute" on powerlineblog.com and asked readers for information. It came pouring in, from document experts, typography experts and people who had typed National Guard documents in 1972. Almost all of it discredited the documents. Later that morning blogger Charles Johnson in California duplicated the CBS documents using Microsoft Word with default settings and then electronically overlaid this copy with the CBS document on littlegreenfootballs.com; they matched exactly. Bill Gates founded Microsoft in 1975. It took CBS 11 more days before it admitted it couldn't authenticate the documents, and in fact never had. But its story, which obviously had the potential to damage Bush, was undermined in less than 24 hours. CBS asked outsiders to investigate the incident, and Dan Rather retired as anchor of CBS Evening News in March 2005, a year earlier than he had planned. A quarter-century before, perhaps even as recently as 2000, the documents would have been widely accepted as genuine and probably never challenged: the Old Media monopoly at work. But in 2004 they were quickly discredited by New Media and it was CBS, not Bush, which had its reputation damaged.

The changes in the media are apparent in a Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2004; the poll showed a 6% increase between 2002 and 2004 in cable news consumption and a 4% increase for Internet news, but only a 2% increase for nightly network news over the same period. A November post-election survey by Pew found that use of the Internet as a primary source of news about presidential candidates and the campaign had grown 10% since 2000-twice as fast as television as a whole. Mistrust of the media was much higher in 2004 than in 2000, with Republicans much more likely to mistrust Old Media outlets than Democrats. The increasing importance of New Media and the partial eclipse of Old Media in the 2004 campaign cycle seems, on balance to have helped George W. Bush and the Republicans. The left blogosphere pushed Democrats toward a vitriolic critique of Bush, which did not result in victory, while the right blogosphere sowed mistrust of Old Media, which undermined its negative coverage of Bush. But there is no guarantee that the interplay between Old Media and New Media will help one side or the other in future elections. What is clear is this: You might have been able to cover the 1980 presidential campaign in five rooms. But you could not cover the 2004 presidential campaign in 100 rooms. The political media have moved from centralized command-and-control toward a more decentralized networking model. The consequences for the future are unclear.

Part VI | Back To The Top Thursday, Sept. 1, 2005 [an error occurred while processing this directive]