By Matt Friedeman, PhD
March 10, 2005

(AgapePress) - Dan Rather is gone. And what are you going to do about it?

This columnist has spent a fair portion of his adult life in the secular media and, let me say, what a ride it has been. Done a lot of columnizing, a lot more talk radio, and some analysis for local television. I have been there enough, in other words, to know that cultural conservatives whine a lot about the media and most have no plan to rectify the left-leaning situation.

And mark it well -- the media does lean left. News that comes our way is, for the most part, devoid of a perspective that reflects anything close to a Judeo-Christian, culturally- and economically-conservative position. One of the first columns I ever wrote received a smack-down response from the local liberal: it presented the old research on the media elite which interviewed 238 gatekeepers of media perspective at America's most influential media outlets: the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, and the news organizations at CBS, NBC, ABC, and PBS. Individuals were selected randomly from the news staffs. Half had no religious affiliation at all; only 8 percent attended church or synagogue weekly. A majority saw themselves as political liberals; just 17 percent placed themselves on the conservative right of the political spectrum. Only 9 percent were convinced that homosexuality is 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.

A columnist was quoted as saying of left-leaning distributors of opinion, "We no longer represent a wide diversity of views. We have ceased to be neutral in reporting events." Indeed. And that research from Lichter/Rothman/Lichter back in the 80s is as relevant (if not worse) today as it was then.

It reminded me of two quotes, the first by Dan Rather and the other about him:

• "If we [CBS Evening News co-anchor Connie Chung and Rather] could be one-hundredth as great as you and Hillary Rodham Clinton have been in the White House, we'd take it right now and walk away winners .... Tell Mrs. Clinton we respect her and we're pulling for her." (To President Clinton, via satellite, at a May 27, 1993, CBS affiliates meeting)



• CBS' Andy Rooney to Larry King: Rooney admitted he has "a liberal bias" and is "consistently liberal in my opinions," but described news reporter Rather as "transparently liberal."

That sort of sums it up for Rather -- a transparent liberal who was in love with transparent liberals and their liberalism.

But the real point to be made in all this: what is our plan?

The media is biased to the waaaay left. And conservatives, with the obvious exception of talk radio, aren't flocking to the arena of journalism to replace or displace.

Other fields of endeavor are more attractive to the Christian crowd. Or, if we choose to enter into the fray, we congregate instead of infiltrate; we feel more at home on the Christian pages and programs than we do providing a balanced report or conservative opinion from within the likes of the media elite.

Maybe if we aren't putting up, it's time we start shutting up about the bias of the media. If we don't have a plan to go toe-to-toe with the leftist beast, then let us admit it, walk away and continue to hunker in our evangelical ghettos.

"Enemy occupied territory -- that is what the world is," wrote C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity. "Christianity is the story of how the rightful King has landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage."

Not into sanctified sabotage? Then whining about the problem is a sorry option.