The influence of the media on voting was debated Tuesday night as the upcoming presidential election drove the conversation.
About 30 people gathered in Chumash Auditorium to hear Cliff Kincaid and Norman Solomon debate the topic, “Does the media sway votes?”
Kincaid is the editor of the conservative watchdog organization Accuracy in the Media (AIM) and Norman Solomon is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, a national association of policy researchers and analysts.
Kincaid and Solomon each had 20 minutes for their opening statements and 10 minutes for rebuttal.
Psychology freshman Kelli Hoffert said she attended the debate because she didn’t have homework and wanted more information.
“I think the media does sway votes, but it’s interesting to see other people’s points of view,” Hoffert said.
Kincaid opened his remarks by saying The New York Times and all other newspapers are biased. He mentioned how he and others at AIM call The Washington Post, “The Washington Compost.” Kincaid “didn’t hide that fact” that he is a conservative, but said that based on his experience, there are few conservatives in journalism. He called the media too liberal and supportive of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill).
“The bottom line is our major media are in love with Barack Obama,” Kincaid said. “I’ve never seen more one-sided coverage of a campaign than this one.”
He said coverage of presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) “has been three times as negative as that of Barack Obama.”
Most people think the media is biased and they overwhelmingly think the media wants Obama to win the election, Kincaid said. He also said that media coverage of the election affects voters.
“I don’t doubt that the media bias is real and has an impact,” Kincaid said. “I think it’s probably responsible for five to 10 points in the polls. I think it’s that powerful; it’s that important.”
Solomon opened his statement with a quote from a press critic from the The New Yorker: “The freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.”
He mentioned how newspapers endorsed Republican presidential candidates from the 1930s to the 1980s, with the exception of Lyndon B. Johnson. He also cited Democrats the press didn’t support such as Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt.
“The media coverage does sway some votes,” Solomon said. “But I think we can see a lot of (times when) the ownership of media has tremendous effect on the way news is filtered.”
Solomon said he agrees that most people who work in newsrooms are liberal, but counters that it’s the owners of newspapers who decide what is printed. There are increasignly fewer owners of media outlets which means fewer gatekeepers, or those who decide the news, he said.
“If you’re going to have democracy, you need the circulation within the body of politics, of ideas, of information, with a multiplicity of sources,” Solomon said.
It’s too easy to say there is a bias in the media toward liberalism or conservatism, he said. The media helps form people’s perspectives, but it is also “responsive to the market.”
Kincaid disagreed in his rebuttal. He called reporters lazy, saying they report poll numbers because it’s easy and said that just because a company is large doesn’t mean it favors Republicans.
Kincaid said he understood that people want Obama to succeed because he represents “the American dream,” but “that doesn’t get the press off the hook for failing to subject (Obama) to the same scrutiny that they (gave) John McCain.”
Solomon rebutted by saying the Republican party is historically more corporate than Democrats. He added that there are virtues and dangers of a capitalist system and one danger is that people with money are the people who rule.
Solomon argued that journalists do have values and they should embrace this. He also discussed the concept of balance, saying that just because someone writes a story about the negative effects of racism doesn’t mean they also must write a story about the positive effects of racism.
“There are such things as facts,” he said. “We should all want information. The facts should be on our side.”
Afterward, the floor was opened for audience questions. Cal Poly senior Dan Karbousky, who’s in the teaching credential program, asked how to find unbiased facts about both general news and the presidential candidates.
Both Kincaid and Solomon recommended looking at several sources of information, instead of using one news organiziation as a “gospel source” as Solomon said.
“I thought the debate was really good,” Karbousky said. “I liked their answer to my question. I think the media is biased and they do have an influence on votes and what people think.”