Rep. Akin and his fans.

Pervasive media bias against them has the added affect of making Republicans and conservatives both paranoid and less likely to perceive their own flaws. In this it is like racism: that black Americans know that elements of society refuse to treat them fairly makes it difficult for them to assess their own accountability when they fail. Given the opportunity to blame failure on ourselves or others, most of us are inclined to choose the latter: psychologists call it the fundamental attribution error. That tendency, however, undermines our ability to evaluate areas where we need to improve, and to improve them.

The news media’s leftward bias warps public opinion, tilts elections and distorts public policy. A few candid  journalists acknowledge this, like ABC’s Jake Tapper, who opined to Laura Ingraham yesterday that the media “helped tilt the scales” against Hillary and John McCain in 2008, saying that “Sometimes I saw with story selection, magazine covers, photos picked, [the] campaign narrative, that it wasn’t always the fairest coverage.” Weasel words for unethical media bias, true, but for a member in good standing of the liberal Beltway media like Tapper, an admirable confession. This is justly frustrating to conservatives, but they can’t let it drive them stupid, for this is the Catch 22 of all pervasive bias. If a group blames everything on bias, it begins to make the bias look justified.

Hypervocal, a snazzy blog that delves into such matters and much else, has an excellent analysis of a current example of this phenomenon, as conservatives complain that the news media is ignoring a juicy Minnesota scandal involving a gay Democrat while overplaying Rep. Todd Akin’s self-outing as an ignorant fool regarding rape, abortion, and female biology. This is such a regular refrain now any time an embarrassing event occurs involving a Republican that it is both predictable and laughable, and it is always unseemly. It happens on Ethics Alarms—as soon as I mentioned, for example, that a supposed expert on the Founders like Michele Bachman shouldn’t get John Adams and John Quincy Adams mixed up, I was deluged with e-mails and comments chastising me for not criticizing President Obama when a brain cramp caused him to say that there were 57 states. (Of course, Obama did not then try to claim that there were 57 states, while Michele argued that John Quincy, who was all of 8 when his father signed the Declaration, was still a “Founding Father.”)

If you missed the Minnesota scandal, it involves 56-year-old Minnesota State Rep. Kerry Gauthier, a Democrat, who was recently was arrested by police at an interstate rest stop for engaging in oral sex with a 17-year-old boy whom he had contacted via Craig’s List. This is not a proper or dignified activity for a lawmaker, to be sure, and as with Republican U.S. Senator Larry “Wide Stance” Craig and former Democratic Congressman Anthony “Pecs” Weiner, I would hold that such conduct on the part of a public official shows wretched judgment and a deplorable lack of appreciation for the image public officials must project, and warrants resignation. Still, there are many features of the Gauthier story that make it less newsworthy from a national perspective than Akin’s idiocy, as enumerated by Hypervocal:

• The age of consent in Minnesota is 16, so this was no sex crime.
• Gauthier is openly gay.
• There will probably be no charges filed.
• He’s a state legislator, not a national one,  is not running for a closely contested U.S. Senate seat, and his conduct, while icky, does not implicate his competence, only his judgement.

That’s more than enough to justify the national media’s news priorities. (Hypervocal also sees nothing wrong with gay state legislators having late night hook-ups with boys less than a third their age in public places, but that misjudgment is a separate issue. On that score, Hypervocal is wrong.)

On sounder ground are Republican complaints that the Gauthier incident is being squelched while the national news media has a field day with GOP Kansas Congressman Kevin Yoder’s 2011 nude swim in the Sea of Galilee, along with other (more clothed) colleagues and members of a Congressional “fact-finding” mission to the Holy Land. Is the fact that Yoder is a Republican fueling some of the media ridicule? I’d guess yes, but again: he’s a U.S. Congressman, not a state legislator, and such conduct while a U.S. official is representing his country on official business abroad is so irresponsible and disrespectful (especially at a holy site like the Sea of Galilee, where Christians say Christ walked on the water) that Gauthier’s roadside hummer doesn’t compare.

The news media is largely biased against Republicans and conservatives, but Republicans and conservatives begin to justify that bias by reacting to their own misconduct with a reflexive “Why don’t you look over there?” and complaints of double standards, rather than serious self-criticism, accountability, and contrition.

______________________________

Sources:

• Hypervocal
• Mediate
• Politico

Graphic: Daily Kos

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.