By Matt Friedeman
December 15, 2005

(AgapePress) - "Bush's World," reads the front cover of this week's Newsweek. "The Isolated President: Can He Change."

Hilarious, really.

Of course the president is isolated, what with every nutcase terrorist here and abroad that would love to place flying lead in his cranium. Of course Mr. Bush is isolated -- insomuch that he doesn't read the editorials of the Washington Post and the New York Times. Of course W. is out of touch, when a steady diet of talking heads on television would only serve to introduce fruitless ideas of highly partisan flaks.

But the funniest part in all of this is that two self-important writers from the media elite, Evan Thomas and Richard Wolffe of Newsweek, consider someone else -- anybody else! -- "isolated" from the rest of the world. These are the same kind of guys who wonder where all those "red states" came from. And how the rest of the country can be so backward on issues like homosexual rights, full-blown abortion-on-demand, guns, traditional values and paying less to the federal government to do jobs they don't want the federal government to do.

Maybe this president is isolated, and maybe, as the authors suggest, more than ever before in the history of the presidency. So? Effectiveness does not lie in focus groups and talking to people who leak and taking Trumanesque strolls across D.C.

But let's just say it does, and then let's apply the same standard to the media.

The Lichter, Rothman and Lichter studies began back in the 1980s to take the "balanced" façade off the national media. The researchers interviewed 238 journalists from the entire spectrum of mass media including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, CBS, NBC, ABC, and PBS and asked them questions about their backgrounds and beliefs.

The research is old but the reality lives. Guess what? The media elite were liberals. A healthy majority admitted it; even more admitted it of their colleagues. Half had no religious affiliation at all; only 8 percent attended church or synagogue weekly. Just 17 percent placed themselves on the conservative right of the political spectrum. Only nine percent were convinced that homosexuality was morally wrong. Fifty-four percent saw nothing wrong with adultery; only 15 percent "strongly agreed" that extra-marital affairs were wrong. Ninety percent believed a woman should have a right to an abortion.

These were the people controlling the news flow to the nation. And that was just the start of such a raw look at our friends in the media centers of the nation. All indices since seem to indicate much the same. Said CBS News reporter Bernard Goldberg in 1996: "No, we don't sit around in dark corners and plan strategies on how we're going to slant the news. We don't have to. It comes naturally to most reporters."

A left-of-center bent to the news, as well as a Newsweek cover that touts an out-of-touch president, do indeed come naturally to reporters, writers, and editorialists. They are at least as "bubbled" as the president whom they mock. They certainly don't think they are; but cast your eyes back over the statistics, realize that they haven't changed much across two and a half decades, and then remember that in their own minds these journalists are the middle of mainstream.

Is change possible? I don't know about the president, but those writing commentary from the offices of periodicals like Newsweek -- well, don't expect ideological repentance any time soon.