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Their constant indictment of television as liberal only confuses the subject. Sometimes they mean nothing more than television's addiction to sex and violence. At other times they mean a liberal slant in news coverage. This charge beclouds any real discussion of TV news coverage for its superficiality, its choppy brevity for fear of dial turners, its preoccupation with visual excitement (fires, hurricanes, riots). Television journalists resent the accusation of leftism, which has been repeated so often as to give a loose charge some credibility. Whatever their political views (many on TV have only a patronizing disdain for all politicians), as professionals they constantly cross-check one another, responding much as does a jury instructed by a judge to lay aside personal prejudices in arriving at a fair verdict.
The charge of liberal bias in network news has been effectively refuted in the April Washington Journalism Review by Michael J. Robinson, an adjunct scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. His Media Analysis Project at George Washington University analyzed network news coverage from Labor Day to Election Day 1984, and in studying 800 exam-pies looked not only for biased judgments but for "bias by agenda" in stories chosen to be covered. He reached two firm conclusions: "television news has no meaningful partisan ideology"; in the slight distinctions to be drawn between networks, CBS proved a touch more conservative than NBC or ABC, and Dan Rather (Senator Jesse Helms' favorite target) in his own comments was even more conservative than the rest of CBS.
If professional detachment makes the three network evening news programs essentially alike except for anchor personalities, what would happen if one network decided to be different, be openly conservative? The usual reaction among journalists is that none would dare. In the enormously expensive world of television reporting, even the wealthiest ideologues would hesitate to bear the losses of a partisanship that narrowed that network's audience and lowered its ratings. Could this be too complacent an attitude?
Dolan's efforts on the Today show were clumsy, but it is possible to imagine deliberate bias more skillfully executed. Such a program might even become as popular as Paul Harvey's conservatively tinged, sharply phrased, crisply delivered news broadcasts on ABC radio.
Until now, network television has been considered off limits to declared partisanship (sometimes a correspondent or a commentator goes astray, but networks jealously guard a reputation for neutral professionalism and acknowledge this is how they should be judged). The argument is that television is both a powerful medium and the place where most people get their news. Television news should reflect, and quote, the many diverse opinions in a pluralistic society, not just the point of view of one side, excluding or misrepresenting all others. This would put blinkers on any viewer's understanding of the world and limit his sensible participation in the public debate.