News liberals, Kerry's ploy

Here are a couple of interesting items from my recent readings:

Pew survey finds moderates, liberals dominate news outlets: Those convinced that liberals make up a disproportionate share of newsroom workers have long relied on Pew Research Center surveys to confirm this view, and they will not be disappointed by the results of Pew's latest study released Sunday, May 23.

While most of the journalists, like many Americans, describe themselves as "moderate," a far higher number are "liberal" than in the general population.

At national organizations (which includes print, TV and radio), the numbers break down like this: 34 percent liberal, 7 percent conservative. At local outlets: 23 percent liberal, 12 percent conservative. At Web sites: 27 percent call themselves liberals, 13 percent conservatives.

This contrasts with the self-assessment of the general public: 20 percent liberal, 33 percent conservative.

The survey of 547 media professionals, completed this spring, is part of an important study released recently by The Project for Excellence in Journalism and The Committee of Concerned Journalists, which mainly concerns more general issues related to newsrooms.

While it's important to remember that most journalists in this survey continue to call themselves moderate, the ranks of self-described liberals have grown in recent years, according to Pew. For example, since 1995, Pew found at national outlets that the liberal segment has climbed from 22 percent to 34 percent while conservatives have only inched up from 5 percent to 7 percent.

The survey also revealed what some are sure to label a "values" gap. According to Pew, about 60 percent of the general public believes it is necessary to believe in God to be a truly moral person. The new survey finds that less than 15 percent of those who work at news outlets believe that. About half the general public believes homosexuality should be accepted by society - but about 80 percent of journalists feel that way.

When the question of which news organizations actually tilted left or right, there was one clear candidate: Fox News. Fully 69 percent of national journalists, and 42 percent of those at the local level, called Fox News "especially conservative." Next up was The New York Times, which about one in five labeled "especially liberal."

Not surprisingly, views of how the press has treated President Bush would break down along partisan lines. More than two out of three liberals feel the press has not been tough enough on Bush, while half the conservatives feel the media has been too tough.

Still, a little over half of national journalists (53 percent) give national media coverage of the administration an A or B rating.

While the sample of 547 interviewees is not large, Pew says that this selection represents "a cross-section of news organizations and of the people working at all levels of those organizations." Newspapers were identified and circulation ranked using the 2003 Editor & Publisher International Year Book.

In an essay accompanying the survey, the directors of the sponsoring groups - Bill Kovach, Tom Rosenstiel and Amy Mitchell - declare that broad conclusions about the political findings should be tempered by analyzing some of the details in the findings. For example, they identify strong "libertarian" leanings among journalists, including doubts about the role of "big government."

-- Editor & Publisher

Even though John Kerry has decided to accept his party's nomination at the DemocraticNational Convention, the following written before his decision is germaine:

Potemkin convention: Thank you, John Kerry. The news that the Massachusetts senator may delay accepting the presidential nomination until several weeks beyond the Democratic Party's late-July Boston convention exposes two truths that the political class hates to admit.

The first is that the party conventions are now little more than free advertising vehicles. They long ago lost all political drama ... . The next step would be for the media finally to agree not to cover them ... .

Even better, this Kerry trial balloon exposes campaign-finance limits as a monumental farce. The Kerry camp is considering this maneuver so it can keep raising and spending money as long as possible without having to abide by spending limits that kick in once a party formally nominates its candidate.

Of course, the late July date was the Democratic Party's own choice-and it was selected precisely so it would let the nominee accept matching federal campaign funds a month earlier than President Bush, who will be nominated in late August.

The assumption had been that the Democratic candidate would have run out of cash by this summer, but Mr. Kerry has been raising more money than he expected.

In other words, Mr. Kerry embraced the rules when they helped him but now wants to ignore them when they don't.

This is always the way with campaign-finance limits. Politicians endorse them to sound holier-than-thou but then immediately turn around and exploit or invent loopholes and exceptions. No sooner had the McCain-Feingold reform that was supposed to ban big-dollar contributions become law last year than such billionaire reform supporters as George Soros were pouring cash into the loophole spending vehicle known as "527s."

This spectacle has become gross enough that some of the reform cheerleaders in the press corps may finally be catching on.

In a column last week, even David Broder of the Washington Post sounded disillusioned. "Once again, unanticipated consequences of new rules are largely subverting their intended purposes," he wrote. "It is virtually impossible to control the flow of money from the private sector into the political world."

Now he tells us.

-- Wall Street Journal

Gary Rust is the chairman of Rust Communications.