LETTER FROM THE EDITOR: A MEDIA PERSPECTIVE: HOW LOBBYISTS MISS MARK

From time to time I hear someone describe the media as being the megaphone for liberalism. I suppose what is meant by this is that big news organizations like -- and these are the ones mentioned most -- the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, CBS, NBC and ABC often express liberal views or present news in such a way as to make it look like the news has a liberal focus.

Generally, as a conservative I find it easy to conclude that any publication or broadcast outlet that presents information I happen to dislike is taking a liberal tack. I suppose that liberal-minded readers and viewers would say the same thing about presentations with which they disagree.

So much for human nature.

What amuses me sometimes is the notion that there is a central clearinghouse where editors and publishers go to find out what they should present to the public based on whether they are liberal or conservative. Editors and publishers I know do have strong views on most every topic imaginable, but it is harder than heck to get them to agree on anything.

This ability to uphold the principles of journalism while disagreeing heartily is what makes a free press so valuable. The alternative would be a government-controlled press. And don't be fooled. Outside these United States, there is no truly free press that is permitted to express views and news unchecked. Great Britain has its Official Secrets Act to keep the news media in tow on most any topic about government. It also has a whole maze of rules about what you can and can't say about the royal family, even though recently it looks like no one is keeping tabs.

A free press means, quite literally, that a news organization is unfettered in presenting the news in any fashion it wants: biased or unbiased, clearly or muddled, fully or partially. As with any freedom, there is a responsibility to present news in such a way that it will be credible. Any news organization that goes out on limbs or tangents isn't likely to last long.

The so-called manipulation of the news by a liberal press, however, is nothing compared to the attempts by large and powerful lobbying organizations to use the news media in forwarding an agenda.

Take the National Rifle Association, for example.

Editors across the country have been deluged by little yellow postcards this past week from NRA members. Each postcard has the name and address of a member, and each card is addressed to the editorial page editor, the editor-in-chief or the news editor of the newspaper.

These postcards were mass produced by the NRA, which mailed the cards to its members and asked them to sign them, affix postage and drop them in the mailbox. No muss. No fuss.

I wonder if many of the more than 20 NRA members who sent cards to the Southeast Missourian (by Thursday's mail) even bothered to read what the cards were about.

Here is what the cards say, in part:

"I'm extremely concerned about the way the media has blamed gun owners for the rising tide of crime in our country."

Whoa! When did that happen? Show me where "the media" did that. Was that one of the things we of the media picked up at our liberal/conservative news clearinghouses?

The card goes on to ask the newspaper to review a book by Wayne LaPierre called "Guns, Crime and Freedom." This book, the postcard says, counters the "myths that have surrounded the gun-control debate."

Unfortunately, we don't write book reviews. Sometimes we publish stories about authors from here. Nor do we cotton to mass mailings by organizations whose members don't know we don't write book reviews. Nor do we like the notion that a group like the NRA would use such tactics to cow newspapers into publishing a review of a particular book.

A final note: Of the 20-something postcards I got, only three had 19-cent postcard postage affixed. Everyone else spent a dime too much. I don't know what to make of that exactly. And of the postcard signers, exactly a third were nonsubscribers (we have a database too). I do know that I would like to find some NRA member who has read the book and can tell me what it says. That might make a dandy letter to the editor.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.