by Alan Colmes
Radio programmers, with a few exceptions, don't particularly like to take chances. There's an old show-biz joke that your career goes like this: "Who is Alan Colmes?" followed by "Get me Alan Colmes." Then Alan Colmes becomes so successful that you can't get him (reminder: this is only a joke), so it's "Get me someone like Alan Colmes." And the last phase is, once again, "Who is Alan Colmes?" For years, the talk radio industry has been in the "Get me someone like Rush Limbaugh" phase. When I was nationally syndicated during the '90s, the program director of one of my stations told me that my show was tremendously entertaining, was doing well, and was personally one of his favorites, and that he was canceling my show, but would have kept it on his station if only I were a conservative.
What this (now former, I hope) program director didn't seem to get was that it's not just about whether you're left or right, but rather whether can you entertain an audience. Too many radio professionals (and too many Americans in general) get caught up in labeling. Michael Harrison, the editor and publisher of Talkers magazine, has featured in his pages the adventures of "The Lone Liberal." With mask, cape, and the flashlight of truth clipped to his belt, "The Lone Liberal" has racked up hundreds of media appearances where he has brought logic, reason, and sanity to what has become a right-leaning medium. "The Lone Liberal" believes in non-race-based solutions, basic human decency, and a strong moral code. "The Lone Liberal" voted for George W. Bush for president. But conservative hosts and listeners vilify "The Lone Liberal" simply because of his name: "The Lone Liberal"; so much so that he has to fight the good fight anonymously.
As for talk radio, the numbers speak for themselves. Rush Limbaugh, according to Talkers magazine, has 14.5 million plus listeners a week, and is the most listened-to talk-show host in America. Following Rush is my television partner Sean Hannity with 105 million plus listeners, then Dr. Laura, with 8 million plus, and Michael Savage with 6 million plus. And the single most listened-to radio personality is Paul Harvey, also a conservative, who attracts 23 million listeners a week.
Among syndicated columnists, the ones with the most newspapers under their belts are conservative. Cal Thomas comes in first with 537 newspapers, followed by George Will with 450. Arthur E. Rowse in his book Drive-By Journalism: The Assault on Your Need to Know shows that conservative columnists outreach liberal columnists 3-1 based on the number of newspapers in which writers of each political persuasion appear.
If you look at the best-seller lists, you'll see that books by liberal authors are far less popular than those by their conservative counterparts. (Of course, I aim to be totally wrong on this one, should what you're holding in your hand rocket into that piece of the conservative media firmament.) Ann Coulter's book, Slander, debuted on the New York Times best-seller list at number one, on July 14, 2002, and her book Treason was another immediate best seller a year later, entering the Times chart on July 13, 2003, at number two (albeit this time behind Hillary Clinton's best seller). My friend Sean Hannity's book debuted at number three on the New York Times best-seller list on September 8, 2002. As Stanley Kurtz pointed out in the National Review Online, "The January 6 [2002] list was chock full of conservative books. Bill O'Reilly's No Spin Zone has been holding down number one for weeks. Bernard Goldberg's Bias comes in at number six, followed at seven by Barbara Olson's The Final Days. At number twelve there's Peggy Noonan's Reagan biography, When Character Was King. Next week, Pat Buchanan's Death of the West will make its debut on the list. And those are only the most obviously conservative entries."
By March 17, Bernie Goldberg's Bias made it to number one, and is now doing wonderfully in paperback.
GOP-TV?
I've often had to fend off critics on my own side of the political fence who have accused me of working for "GOP-TV," as some like to call the Fox News Channel. Most disappointing was Al Gore, who suggested during an interview I'd agree with his assessment of Fox News as a conservative outlet if we were talking off camera. But we were talking on camera, and here's what was said:
COLMES: . . . You singled out Fox News, among other conservative media outlets, and said that they were kind of a fifth column in American journalism. You know, conservatives for years have complained about CNN and said it was too liberal. Is this just the flip side of that coin?
GORE: No, I don't think it is. I think it's a different phenomenon. I think that your network finds it profitable to orient the news in opinion format toward the expectations of a core audience . .. that forms a profitable part of your base. I think that cable television news changed the economics of the news business. And once again made it profitable to try to deliver a more predictable point of view. Now you're one of the Democrats ...
COLMES: Well, I'm a liberal. I'm on every night prime time on the Fox News Channel.
GORE: Absolutely.
COLMES: My views . . .
GORE: I understand.
COLMES: . . . and my support of you has been prominent.
GORE: I appreciate that very much.
COLMES: So clearly . . .
GORE: But you probably wouldn't—well, maybe you would— but maybe if we got off camera, you might not dispute the proposition that overall, Fox is pretty well tilted toward the conservative Republican.
COLMES: Well, we got Geraldo. We've got Greta Van Susteren. We've got me. O'Reilly, I think, is pretty unpredictable.
GORE: But overall, wouldn't you say that it's more sort of... I would say that we give vent to conservative voices . . .
GORE: Yes.
COLMES: . . . that previously have not been heard necessarily as loudly on cable news.
GORE: Well, I'm not going to urge you to bite the hand that feeds you.
During my interview with Gore, I wasn't shilling for my network because I had a Fox News camera aimed at my head. The network isn't successful because it's a Republican mouthpiece. And research bears out that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the audience is not all that different ideologically than that for CNN, a network perceived as more liberal in its appeal. Indeed, in its August 13, 2003, edition, the Hollywood Reporter wrote that the ad agency Carat USA found that in any given week, CNN reaches more viewers who term themselves "very conservative"—37 percent compared to 32 percent for Fox News. A Pew Research Center poll of 3,002 adults, conducted between April 26 and May 12, 2002, showed that 46 percent of Fox News viewers considered themselves conservative, 32 percent moderate, and 18 percent liberal. Among CNN viewers, 40 percent claimed to be conservative, 38 percent moderate, and 16 percent liberal. Maybe all the liberals are watching QVC because of their patriotic desire to turn around a failing economy. And for a network that has been unfairly characterized as a cheerleader for the Bush 43 administration, Fox News devoted plenty of time to debating accusations that Persian Gulf II was based on trumped-up intelligence and outright lies.
No media outlet that was truly a mouthpiece for one party or the other would be successful. The public is too smart for that. When news came out that well-heeled financiers wanted to put together a liberal radio network to combat all the conservative talk on radio, I had my doubts. Although they never asked my opinion and never approached me to participate, I don't want to be the mouthpiece for a political party or a rich political operative. If I'm beholden to someone with an agenda, then I don't have the independence I need to state my views honestly. And if the audience knows that I'm a paid operative, my credibility is damaged. A broadcasting company, not an agenda-driven patron, gives me the best opportunity to compete in the free marketplace of ideas.
On February 24, 2003, Fox News debuted Fox News Live with Alan Colmes, the initial offering of Fox News Radio. Talk radio is known as a conservative bastion, and Fox News is regularly criticized as having a right-wing agenda. Interesting, isn't it, that their first radio host is a liberal? So, either Fox doesn't have a political agenda or I'm not a real liberal.
People tune in to the Fox News Channel because it was founded on the premise that all sides should be presented fairly.
This has upset the "media establishment" but has made Fox the most powerful name in news. I'm proud that Hannity & Colmes has contributed to this success, an achievement that has been often dissected by liberal media pundits who argue that Sean is more aggressive than I am and therefore dominates the show. In fact, some of my harshest critics have been liberals who regret that my style on the left doesn't exactly mirror what Sean does on the right:
From: Damian
Sent: Thursday, February 20,2003 6:14 AM
To: colmes
Subject: The worst
Alan,
You are the worst liberal I have ever seen.You lack the strength, fire and guts that Hannity displays on the show, and you seem (at the core) shameful for being a liberal. Do us a favor and leave Fox.
Disgusted Liberal
Most of our viewers, however, are too smart to try to equate Sean and me stylistically. They understand that our show works because our styles are different, not in spite of it. And, as you've seen from some of the e-mails in this book, I get under conservative skin as effectively as Sean causes rashes in liberals. But sometimes they like me in spite of themselves:
From: Martin R..
Sent: Saturday, February 08,2003 2:28 AM
To: colmes
Subject: my favorite liberal
Hello Alan,
Just wanted to let you know there are at least 2 Texas conservatives who are big fans of yours. My wife and I are very conservative in our political views, but enjoy hearing your passionate and articulate opposing views. It's obvious, to us, that you genuinely love your country and are truly sincere in your beliefs.You haven't coverted us yet, but you have made us realize that not all liberals are crazy.
Sincerily,
Martin R.
Lafayette, LA
Martin, I'm not looking to convert you or your wife, but I'm glad I have your attention.
And by the way, so what if my boss is a Republican? Larry Tisch is a Republican, and he used to own something called CBS. Richard Parsons and his predecessor Steve Case of CNN/Time Warner/AOL are Republicans. And Michael Eisner of Disney, which owns ABC, gave more to Bush 43 and Senator John McCain than he did to Gore and Bradley, and supported Rick Lazio over Hillary Clinton in the 2000 New York Senate race.
Bias, Schmias
Bernie Goldberg, the former CBS newsman, wrote a best-selling book called Bias, in which he tried to make the case that the media is biased to the left. But Goldberg is often selective in his criticism and guilty of the same offenses he tags on others. It disturbs him, for example, that a staffer at CBS referred to then presidential candidate Gary Bauer as "the little nut from the Christian group" in 1999. And it should. But he then refers to gonzo journalist Hunter Thompson as "an acid-popping weirdo."
The Media Research Center, an admittedly right-leaning group headed by Brent Bozell, backs up Goldberg, of course, and claims, based on a Nexis search, that ABC, NBC, and CBS are four times as likely to label someone "conservative" as they are to label someone "liberal." But Geoffrey Nunberg, a Standford University researcher, challenges this claim, saying it can be made only if the names of liberal and conservative groups appear with equal frequency. Only then can you see if they are being labeled to the same extent. What Goldberg and the Media Research Center really discovered, says Nunberg, is that conservatives get mentioned more than liberals:
But in my own data, I found, for example, that the Heritage Foundation was mentioned in press stories five times as much as the [Americans for Democratic Action], and that Jesse Helms was mentioned five times as often as Barney Frank. By choosing not to report the use of labels as proportions of the frequencies of the names of groups, or to report those frequencies at all, the MRC loaded the results—in fact, it implies that the fact that the networks generally talk about conservatives more than about liberals is evidence for their liberal bias!
As a matter of fact, Nunberg, who combed newspapers, looked at references on ten well-known politicos in thirty newspapers. He came up with one hundred thousand references and discovered that liberal lawmakers had a much greater chance of getting tagged politically than conservatives. Nunberg reported this on the March 19, 2002, broadcast of NPR's Fresh Air: "I did find a big disparity in the way the press labels liberals and conservatives, but not in the direction that Goldberg claims. On the contrary: the average liberal legislator has a thirty percent greater likelihood of being identified with a partisan label than the average conservative does."
Bob Somerby, who was Al Gore's roommate in college and runs a nifty website called "The Daily Howler," studied Goldberg's book and refutes some of his claims. For example, Somerby points out, Goldberg tries to convince us that two networks went out of their way to imply that the homeless problem got worse because Bush 43 was president.
I also choose not to believe that when the Sunday edition of ABC World News Tonight rediscovered the homeless story just three weeks after George W. Bush was sworn in as president it was nothing more than coincidence. That when reporter Bob Jamieson said, "In New York City, the number of homeless in the shelter system has risen above 25,000 a night for the first time since the late 1980s," it was not an attempt to say, "Here we go again—a Republican is in the White House and the homeless are back." And on August 4, 2001, when CNN also rediscovered homelessness and quoted sources saying, "The number of homeless people is on the rise this summer," I choose to believe it was not CNN's way of suggesting that now that a conservative Republican is president, Reagan-era misery will soon be back with us in full force.
You're right, Bernie, it was not either AEC's or CNN's way of suggesting that homelessness was attributable to the Bush 43 White House. What ABC reported on February 11, 2001, the date in question, was: "The 175-bed shelter in this city of 130,000 has recorded a steady increase in homeless for the last year, particularly families with children." And CNN's John Palmer said on August 4 of the same year, "It's not just New York City. Many cities across the country report sharp increases in the number of people searching for places to live. Demand for emergency shelter in 25 surveyed cities increased an average of 15 percent in 1999, according to the U.S. Conference of Mayors." So you see, they were blaming Clinton, not Bush. Is this anti-liberal bias, then?
Bernie is much closer to the mark when he points out that there may be a cultural bias, and that the media would go tough on your liberal grandmother if it would help them get an audience. But if we agree that our system is based on supply and demand, are we also to believe that the media is much more liberal than the people who watch it? Is the media really controlled by a bunch of left-leaning media monoliths? And if there is such a bias in the media, why was Bias treated so favorably? One of its major targets, the New York Times, gave it a positive review, saying, "Bias should be taken seriously." Even Goldberg himself acknowledged the favorable treatment he received during his book tour while appearing on Fox News: "I would say ninety percent of what I've heard and read about the book has been positive."
Not bad for such a "biased" media.
Gored
The media is not the liberal's best friend. The "liberal" media really did a number on Al Gore. It tried to paint him as a liar in the same way it did Clinton. The most often-repeated lie about Gore is that he claimed to invent the Internet. What he really said to CNN's Wolf Blitzer on March 9, 1999, was, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Gore spokesman Chris Lehane explained the context here, stating that Gore "was the leader in Congress on the connections between data transmission and computing power, what we call information technology. And those efforts helped to create the Internet that we know today." He did take the initiative, which helped to pave the information superhighway, but he never used the word invented.
Trouble began when the magazine Wired took issue with Gore's comment and said he couldn't possibly have invented the Arpanet, since Gore was much too young at the time it was created. But Gore never mentioned the Arpanet, which wa
s developed by the Defense Department and was the forerunner of the Internet. Congressman Dick Armey jumped on the anti-Gore bandwagon and released a statement that said, "If the Vice President created the Internet, then I created the Interstate highway system." "Created" morphed to "invented" in a March 15, 1999, USA Today article called "Inventing the Internet," and the rest, as they say, is history.
The "liberal media" also continued to repeat a falsehood that had Gore taking credit for investigations into toxic waste in the "Love Canal." Gore addressed a group of students at Concord High School in Concord, New Hampshire, on November 30, 1999, about a letter he received from a girl in Toone, Tennessee, about toxic waste in her town. Gore said, "I called for a congressional investigation and a hearing. I looked around the country for other sites like that. I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal. Had the first hearing on that issue, and Toone, Tennessee—that was the one that you didn't hear of. But that was the one that started it all."
But the next day the Washington Post reported that "Gore boasted about his efforts in Congress 20 years ago to publicize the dangers of toxic waste." The piece then went on to misquote Gore: " 'I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal,' he said, referring to die Niagara homes evacuated in August 1978 because of chemical contamination. 'I had the first hearing on this issue.'. .. Gore said his efforts made a lasting impact. 'I was the one that started it all,' he said."
"It was the one that started it all," became "/ was the one that started it all." This misquote was repeated until it became generally accepted that Gore took credit where none was warranted.