In TierneyWorld, Liberals Block Young, Right-thinking Journos

By: Greg Mitchell Are journalism-school faculties hotbeds of liberalism, and should colleges take steps to address this? John Tierney, the self-described libertarian/contrarian columnist for The New York Times, certainly thinks so--or so he said in a recent column, which drew a wide response from readers.

Tierney is not entirely wrong, of course, but one should keep in mind that this is the man who, this past summer, dubbed the Valerie Plame/CIA leak scandal "Nadagate," saying it featured "a spy who was not endangered, a whistle-blower who did not blow the whistle and was not smeared, and a White House official who has not been fired for a felony that he did not commit." As late as a month ago he was still claiming it added up to "Nada."

Tierney often cherry-picks facts to support his opinions. We all do this, of course, but in his case he likes to cite the experiences of friends or other solitary figures to prove larger points. That's what he did in his unintentionally comical columns earlier this year hyping Social Security privatization. One of them was so goofy he had to admit that readers who called him a "superficial nitwit" were "at least half-right." But which half?

Actually, I thought he had written a parody of himself when he started his Liberals Are Twisting the Minds of Young Journos column by citing a study by crusading right-winger David Horowitz ? and then compared cronyism at j-schools to a president picking his own lightly qualified counsel for the highest court in the land.

Alas, it seems he was serious.

Citing Horowitz's Center for the Study of Popular Culture, Tierney wrote that a check of voter registration rolls found that Democratic mind-benders outnumbered Republicans 6 to 1 at j-schools and 8 to 1 at selected law schools. Only one journalism school, the University of Kansas, had a majority of Republicans (by 10 to 8). The alleged Democrat- to-Republican ratio ranged from 4 to 1 at Northwestern to Columbia's 15 to 1 and beyond (Berkeley, of course).

From the get-go, problems with the survey are obvious, though not noted by Tierney: It covered only nine out of more than 450 j-departments in the country. Further, there are Democrats (Joe Lieberman), and there are Democrats (Howard Dean).

But how does Tierney know liberal indoctrination is a major problem? Well, a "lot of young conservatives and libertarians have simply given up on the traditional media, either as a source of news or as a place to work." Instead, some of them, he noted, "post on conservative blogs."

In Tierneyworld, it can't possibly be true that these young people no longer get their news from, say, his own paper, but instead rely on Fox News and partisan Web sites simply because they don't want their views challenged. Or that they might have had other, non-political reasons for not even trying to make it in newspapers or on TV. If he can name a few highly qualified conservative bloggers who once sought (and trained for) media gigs, and then got discouraged, I wish he would do it. My impression is that most of them chose better-paying jobs in the law or business world and have few regrets about that, especially since they can now blog in their spare time.

E&P did a cover story on liberal bias in August 2004, in which several conservatives cheerfully admitted that their brethren didn't care much about working in the media. "It's just not the kind of thing conservatives do," Cal Thomas said, noting that the profession "doesn't pay that well." He said he opposed any kind of affirmative action program here.

Other conservatives, along with j-school chairs, point to this trend: There are plenty of conservative students and faculty in journalism schools but they gravitate to the increasingly popular (even dominant) public relations and advertising fields, which pay better. The "social reformers" stick with journalism. One j-prof told us, "Journalism tends to attract wide thinkers ? people who are idealistic and not narrow in their beliefs."

Out in the heartland, Larry King, executive editor of the Omaha (Neb.) World-Herald, told us that based on his experience there, conservatives are "perhaps more attuned to the financial aspects of the world." Joe Worley, executive editor at the equally GOP-friendly Tulsa World in Oklahoma, said, "There are a lot more conservative journalists out there, but they are often attracted to publications that espouse their conservative view."

Our interviews with chairs of j-departments at a wide range of schools found no one noting any liberal browbeating. Every semester for 14 years, David Rubin, dean of the Newhouse School at Syracuse University, has been reading teaching evaluations. "With very few exceptions," he said, "I don't read student complaints that professors were indoctrinating them on some social issue."

And what about political bias within the working press? Note the sleight-of-hand when Tierney observes in his column that "you have a press corps that's heavily Democratic -- more than 80 percent, according to some surveys of Washington journalists." Is Tierney so isolated that he equates the "press corps" with "Washington journalists"?

This is the same fellow who famously conducted a personal survey on this subject at the Democratic convention in 2004--during a press party.

Certainly, for some of the reasons cited above, no one can deny that reporters are more liberal than your average American. But in fact, every major poll in recent years has found that while there are more Democrats than Republicans and more liberals than conservatives in newsrooms, there are more moderates or independents than anything else.

If Tierney has real evidence of discrimination, he should produce it. Until then, we'll consider this "nada" story. Editors and j-schools, meanwhile, await an outpouring of conservatives interested in their field. There' s no denying that more diversity is desirable. Perhaps Tierney should campaign for better pay for academics and reporters. That might get things moving to the right.

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FEEDBACK

A reader writes:

Enjoyed your column on Tierney, although I think you should have challenged his numbers more. In Horowitz?s highly selective and unscientific study, a majority of the journalism professors were non-partisan or not registered. Out of 314 journalism professors studied by Horowitz, 120 are registered Democrats, or 38.2%. That?s a smaller figure than most surveys of journalists reveal.

Although the proportion of Republicans in journalism schools is smaller than among the general public, this reflects the fact that conservatives like Tierney can make more money in the corporate media, while liberals are willing to sacrifice high salaries because of their desire to teach. Instead of denouncing professors for a bias Tierney can?t prove, perhaps he ought to attend a few of their classes and learn the basics of sound reporting.


John K. Wilson
coordinator, Campus Journalism Project (www.indypress.org/cjp)
founder, www.collegefreedom.org
author, Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies (Paradigm, 2006)