The Bias Bias: What We See, and Don't

Will we ever being able to have a productive discussion about gender and race bias in the political media? Based on the evidence I saw today, I'd say probably not.

I spent the morning at the Paley Center for Media, where I watched two panel discussions on "Bias, Punditry and the Press in the 2008 Election." I went in hoping to gain some insight into a topic that's been much in the news lately but left with the conclusion that the only biases we're capable of spotting are the ones we're looking for, and that we detect them even where they don't exist.

Two examples stood out. Decrying the press corps' treatment of Hillary Clinton, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, noted that a certain journalist had, in an interview with Clinton, asked a series of gender-skewed questions, including whether her nickname in high school was really "Miss Frigidaire."

What Jamieson neglected to say was that the journalist in question was Katie Couric -- not only a woman, but a woman who herself has complained publicly about misogynistic treatment of Clinton.

Then there was Pamela Newkirk, a journalism professor at NYU, who, by way of illustrating the supposed racism of the press, claimed, "On Fox News, Bill O'Reilly has called for a 'lynching party' for Michelle Obama, and he still has a show."

As I pointed out to Newkirk afterwards, O'Reilly actually said, in response to an angry caller, that he didn't think a lynching party was in order absent proof that Obama is anti-American -- a tasteless and menacing thing to say, to be sure, but one that could be put down to an unfortunate choice of metaphor, unlike Newkirk's version of his remark.

When I asked her whether she'd mischaracterized O'Reilly's words, Newkirk said she didn't think she had. "I certainly don't know what O'Reilly intended, only what he said, and it was a lot to say. There is no place for such offensive language, even in jest. Lynching is one of the ugliest sins of our nation's past and should never be glibly invoked."

Jamieson, meanwhile, said she had only failed to note that Couric was the asker of the "Miss Frigidaire" question because she didn't want to single out individual journalists. She said she blamed the gender-biased nature of Couric's 60 Minutes interview with Clinton on the show's producers, who edited the segment, rather than on Couric herself. "Is Katie Couric a hypocrite? No," she said. "I give anyone credit for examining the assumptions underlying reporting."