Germany, it is rather assumed that diversity will make up for the prevalence of partisan
tendencies (Humphreys 1996). The trend towards market concentration that permeates
every local, state and national media market in the U.S. may be one of the key reasons
why professional journalism, and the rejection of bias, has become perhaps even more a
trademark than a norm in U.S. journalism (Brandenburg 2006b). As debates about the
‘marketplace of ideas’ metaphor have indicated (Napoli 1999, Splichal 2002), the
concept of professional journalism serves to reconcile the tensions between economic
pressures and democratic pretensions. With the help of this concept, an industry and its
personnel can keep up the myth that it serves the public interest, even though neither
being accountable for not doing so, nor being economically driven to do so. And
essentially, all debate about alleged media bias is a request for public service provision
in compliance with democratic norms from an industry that is by definition not a public
service provider and is becoming increasingly less regulated (Napoli 1999).
Outside academic debates which tend to populate the ambiguous middle ground, there
are two main views about media bias in the U.S. Both views tend to treat ‘the media’ as
an almost monolithic entity, presupposing tendencies that tilt not just particular outlets
but the entire industry in one direction from the centre (Harmon 2005: 110f.) The less
influential argument (at least with regard to public opinion) is that economic rationale,
ownership structures and market concentration have led to a conservative bias (Lee and
Solomon 1991). This essentially implies that journalism fails to fulfil its democratic
obligations because it is an unregulated industry (McChesney 2004). The more
dominant strand in the bias debate, the liberal media bias allegation, is in its essence a
cultural argument. Journalists, as a community, are unrepresentative of the American
public, they are culturally, economically and politically homogenous, and hence
professional journalism as such must tilt to the left.
This argument can be traced back to the then Vice President under Nixon, Spiro Agnew:
We can deduce that these men read the same newspapers. They draw their political and
social views from the same sources. Worse, they talk constantly to one another, thereby
providing artificial reinforcement to their shared viewpoints. Do they allow their biases to
influence the selection and presentation of the news? (Agnew 1969)
So, the first element of the liberal bias argument is about the social and educational
background of journalists.
‘Journalists are younger, better-educated, and more liberal than the American public’
(Baron 2004: 5).
Their opinions have been repeatedly surveyed. As Niven (2003: 312) points out, we can
go as far back as the 1936 election during which 64% of the Washington press corps
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Convention