The Big Spike: What Media Bias Withholds From the News

 by Allan Levite  

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If voters overwhelmingly oppose gun control, would the news media report it?

I often hear: "Chronic liberal media bias cannot exist, because . . .", followed by the most flimsy logic imaginable. For example, "journalists have no liberal bias; they fear offending their conservative readers." (This would diminish readership, which might finally leave the journalists jobless.) But the bias I’ve seen indicates that such pecuniary reasoning is absent. The media almost always identify conservative panel, debate, and talk-show guests as conservatives or lobbyists, while almost never identifying liberal guests or lobbyists as such ― which automatically makes them objective and impartial while their conservative opponents become shills of a vested interest.

On November 2, 1976, Massachusetts voters, arguably the most liberal in the union, rejected by a wide margin the first state ballot proposal to outlaw handguns. This was a major story, since it involved a highly controversial issue and a statewide vote. The Washington Post covered it on November 4 with a headline ― but a tiny headline within an article on initiatives on page 28. The New York Times mentioned the results on the same day in a similar article ― on page 22 ― and not in the headline.

Six years later, the voters of California roundly rejected a statewide handgun registration-freeze proposal (Proposition 15). But in the Chicago area, one suburb had already banned handgun possession, with other suburbs soon to follow, strongly supported by the local press. On election day, November 2, 1982, the Chicago Tribune ran a story on page 15 about state initiatives ("Gambling, Gun Control, Statehood Among the Initiatives Before Voters"), which specifically mentioned Proposition 15. The next day's issue should have at least stated the results. It didn’t.

Because Chicago's newspapers disliked the outcome, they buried the news of the initiative's resounding defeat. The Tribune didn’t carry a single word about this major story in the next morning's editions (November 3), despite the fact that the initiative's backers conceded defeat less than an hour after the polls closed. (The Chicago Sun-Times very briefly referred to the vote in its November 3 edition ― on the bottom of page 90.) But on November 3, the Detroit News and the Washington Post, with one hour less time to print West Coast news, mentioned Proposition 15's defeat. Somehow, the Tribune heard about the victory of most of the nuclear freeze referenda in time for the November 3 edition, reporting this on page 17. Even so, having "missed" this edition, there was ample time to carry the Proposition 15 story in the next day's Tribune, but it was also silent on the matter. On November 3, the New York Times barely mentioned Proposition 15 ― in the very last paragraph of a long general article on the election ― without mentioning its results. The next day's edition buried the results in the midst of a page 22 article bearing a headline about nuclear freeze initiatives.

The Tribune's coverage of this issue was still awful in 1998, when a referendum in neighboring Wisconsin approved by a landslide an amendment to the state constitution to guarantee the people's right to bear arms. On November 4, the day after the election, an article on page 19 about initiatives dismissed the results:

In Wisconsin, where schools and businesses in some towns close down for deer hunting, voters approved an amendment to the state Constitution guaranteeing a right to bear arms. [Who ever heard of the media trying to explain away a liberal election result like this?]

This was the 13th of 15 paragraphs. But it omitted that the amendment guaranteed this right "for security, defense, hunting, recreation or any other lawful purpose" ― not just for hunting. Only three years earlier, a Milwaukee handgun ban referendum was voted down by a 2 to 1 margin. These voters would be much less likely than rural Wisconsinites to go hunting frequently, and even less likely to use pistols for it.

The November 4 New York Times ran a section on election results in every state ― five paragraphs on Wisconsin election results ― but not a word about the bear-arms vote anywhere in the entire edition. The next day's Times ran the same state-by-state coverage, reworded ― but again, no mention of the gun initiative in the Wisconsin section. This issue also carried an article on initiatives nationwide ("THE 1998 ELECTIONS: THE STATES — INITIATIVES; From Same-Sex Marriages To Gambling, Voters Speak.") But nowhere were Wisconsin or its referendum even mentioned. The Washington Post's November 4th and 5th editions each carried sizable articles ― by different reporters ― on how initiatives fared in various states. Both articles related that there were 61 initiatives nationwide (one was titled "Initiatives Bypass Traditional Lawmaking") but neither article even mentioned Wisconsin, let alone its firearms referendum. (Obviously, the fact that the Post uncovered the Watergate scandal does not mean that it is above suppressing news itself, when the news is unwelcome.)

In 1997, the state of Washington's Initiative 676 would have required safety courses for all handgun owners and trigger locks for all handguns sold. This referendum lost badly, which is why the Washington Post buried it on page 16 next day (November 5, 1997) ― barely mentioning it deep inside an article that had started on page 1, on the New Jersey governorship race ― and why the New York Times' national edition mentioned it on page 24, inside an article headlined "THE 1997 ELECTIONS: REFERENDUMS; Oregon Stays With Its Law On Suicides."

Readers who find this hard to believe can verify it in their libraries' microfilm rooms. Such blatant censorship makes a mockery of "the people's right to know," and debunks two widely-held notions: (a) that reporters' professional ethics keep the news honest; and (b) that only rich advertisers can spike a story. We hear: "They do not make the news; they only report it." In these cases, they spitefully refused to report it. Perhaps the press should enact a Freedom of Information Act for itself.

The police are forbidden to use excessive force; politicians to take bribes; soldiers to loot civilian property. Violators may be prosecuted or even executed. Yet the same media pundits who uncover such abuses claim that their virtually risk-free ethical code is working fine. The above examples refute this. We also hear that conservative editors prevent liberal reporters from biasing the news. Here, this safeguard was asleep.

Thomas Jefferson believed that citizens can govern themselves as long as they are well-informed. Now, sometimes, reading newspapers can make them ill-informed.

I believe that most liberal media bias is unintentional, a result of the same socio-economic forces that make writers, actors, professors, poets, and playwrights just as liberal as journalists. Coverage of these initiatives, however, was an exception. The media had tried every device to make public opinion seem overwhelmingly anti-gun, so this news could not be printed without the public realizing that it had been misled. This was deliberate, Orwellian news suppression ― not just routine news, but election results, newsworthy because the issue is controversial. If the New York Times and the Washington Post are still America's dominant "newspapers of record," then what are they recording?

Culture: Media, Second Amendment

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