Media bias is inescapable, but it's also a sign of freedom

A few days ago, the Appeal ran a news story important to every Nevadan. "Russia wants to store world's nuclear reactor waste; Bush wants to help," said the headline.

In an upbeat report, we learned that Presidents Putin and Bush planned to open talks for American support of Russia's proposal to turn global waste storage into a profitable national business for itself.

But hold on. On the same day's Opinion page, readers saw the Appeal's lead editorial headline: "Bush should listen to people on nuclear waste."

This piece told us 90 percent of Russians oppose their leader's plan, that Bush would have to reverse longstanding U.S. policy to help achieve it, and reminded us that "Russia has never been a stable country."

Bush is either seen in a positive light, as one story implies, or a negative, as the other implies. Or in current political idiom, the Appeal is giving evidence of itself as a biased medium - against one side, the other or both.

A national survey of Americans last year reported 85 percent of respondents detected "bias in news reporting." That seems a strong condemnation, until one read that 48 percent found this bias liberal, 30 percent found it conservative-and 12 percent found it both!

A lead news page of another regional daily was filled with stories on the Bombay railway bombings, how the White House was forced to renounce its terrorism detainee policies, 60 violent deaths in a single day in Iraq, the collapse of a downtown Boston tunnel ceiling and the successful return to space of the shuttle program.

It was only a random sample, but none of the writers or editors whose work appeared betrayed satisfaction at the mortalities, unhappiness over the space launch or solidarity with the detainees at Guantanamo.

So I wondered: Does the media audience surveyed above even know the distinction between news and editorial content?

The real problem, I suspect, whether the source be broadcast (TV, cable or radio), Internet (Web sites and blogs) or publications, is that much of the audience may not care enough to think about whether they're reading news or opinion: what matters is whether they agree with it or not.

Of course there are biased journalists. There are biased baseball fans, biased electioneers, even biased police and public officials. The federal government itself is biased, as it showed when it paid, in secret, a USA Today columnist nearly a quarter-million dollars to write and say complimentary things about the No Child Left Behind policy.

I think we do have the dilutions of journalistic traditions with the practices of capitalism and politics to blame for the initial confusions of the American audience between what is "news" and what is "message." When is an "expert" guest commentator speaking the known facts or background of a story, and when is he or she delivering opinion under cover of intent or special access or self-aggrandizement or the aims of the medium's owner? How can you tell?

Does the Fox News Network have it right? Or does "ABC World News Tonight"? How do you know where the newsplay, reporting and editorial judgment of the Washington Post match those of the Washington Times?

And there are no doubt many, often unrealized, strains of bias the reporter brings to the job. There is the subjective intent to use press power to right perceived wrongs. The reporter is most often the product of a university and a middle-class family, exposed to and experienced in none of life's other realities, rural or inner-urban. He or she is assigned a story that roots out the unsavory, the opprobrious, even the criminal - and just tells it like it is, in all its ugliness.

But none of this acquits the media audience, for bias remains within the mind of the beholder. It was also in the minds of the Founding Fathers, which is why they wrote a Constitution that gives us, in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, the freedom and even the encouragement to say, but not to accept, anything we want, with protections only against real and illegal injuries to others.

And they gave us much more: With the First Amendment, the framers actually made the press a real part of Constitutional government. Uniquely different from the other three branches, the free press has no formal accountability to any other arm of government. Instead, it is in exercise of its discretions answerable solely to the real sovereign power over these United States: to us, the citizens. Media is not an organ of the state in our country, and no citizen has the right to expect that it act as such.

So the fact that you can read and see and hear "bias" out there is your best guarantee of freedom as a citizen. You will meet it, without doubt. Everyone else will, too.

Your solemn duty as a citizen is that you are reciprocally obliged to search for, and be open to, more views and information from whatever direction on matters important to the country, the community, yourself and your family.

So stop complaining about "media bias," be thankful, and do your damn job.

• Robert Cutts is a career journalist who has been a news reporter, magazine writer and editor, author of two nonfiction books and a college journalism teacher. He lives in Gardnerville and Japan.