Influencing the call

Seeing the controversy this week over the bad calls made in the NFL playoff games i'm reminded that the news media in many ways are like referees. Both have a huge influence on how events will turn out. Just as a referee in a sporting event has to make a call as to who committed a penalty or foul, those in the news media must do the same when deciding what angle to take when doing a news story. Both bring to the table their own personal biases despite the fact that it's supposed to be their job to be unbiased. Many times this bias shows itself subconsciously. For example you'll often see more fouls or penalties called on visiting teams in most professional sports while many times fouls or penalties committed by the home team will be overlooked. Why is that? Well the referees know that they're supposed to be unbiased yet subconsciously they also know that they'll face the wrath of the teams hometown fans.

Just like referees can sometimes be intimidated by coaches or players, the news media can be intimidated by politicians or their supporters. Tennis player John McEnroe used to terrorize linespeople and chair umpires when he played. Whenever he thought he got a bad call he'd throw one of his famous tantrums filled with four letter expletives. Often times he'd complain about bad line calls even though it was obvious that he was wrong. Why did he do this? He did it so that any future call that was close would go his way. It was his way of intimidating the linespeople so that they were afraid to make that out call. You see examples of this in many sports. Basketball coaches whose team is going to go up against Shaquille O'neals team will often complain to the media before the game that certain fouls are never called against Shaq. They do this in order to have an influence on the referees who will be officiating that game. There are examples of this in all of professional sports.

Republicans have become very good at "influencng the call" when it comes to the news media. By constantly complaining about liberal bias they've managed to intimidate people in the news media into not reporting on certain stories or into putting a conservative spin on those stories. How else can you explain the reporting on the whole Jack Abramoff scandal? The news media has continually reported this as a bipartisan scandal when the facts show that it's a Republican scandal. Then there is the latest flap about Hillary Clinton using the "plantation" reference. Seeing the news media play this up like it's a huge news story when anyone can do a google search and see that many Republicans used the same reference shows a clear bias in the main stream news media. They're so afraid of that liberal bias tag that they're ignoring facts. What's frustrating is that this kind of thing has become common practice for the news media. If you think i'm just making this up then go to mediamatters.org and you'll see thousands of examples of the main stream media either not reporting on stories negative of Republicans or putting a positive spin on those stories.