The Godless Party

Media Bias & Blindness And the Big Story They MissedRod Dreher

4/03

Touchstone Magazine

As a practicing Christian, a political conservative and a professional

journalist, I often find myself explaining how newsrooms work to my fellow

believers, and trying to disabuse them of the notion that reporters and

editors begin their days thinking, “How can we trash Christianity and/or

conservatism today?” Even at this late date, over a year into the Catholic

sex-abuse scandal, it is possible to find stalwart Roman Catholicsnot only

bishops, believe it or notwho are convinced that the whole thing is a

put-up job by the Godless Liberal Media. Look, I say, of course the media

are prejudiced against political and religious conservatives, but its not

as simple and clear-cut as you might think. There will always be diehard

conspiracy theorists who cannot be reasoned with, but I find most

conservatives are open to a more nuanced, accurate view of the media-bias

phenomenon.

I wish I could say the same for most of my former newsroom colleagues. I

have long been amazed at how ignorant and uncurious even intelligent and

urbane journalists Ive worked with are about conservatives, especially

religious conservatives. They are, if anything, stauncher believers in the

monolithic and uncomplicated evil of religious conservatives than

vice-versa. Many erstwhile colleagues have looked at metheir friend,

despite my Catholicism and Republican Party registrationwith the same

slack-jawed incomprehension as elderly Southerners when they step off the

tour bus in London and hear a black man speaking with a crisp British

accent (Ive seen this, and its a hoot).

Ignorant of Religion

People like me and theereligious conservatives who are reasonably

intelligent and sociablearent supposed to exist. You may recall the furor

a decade ago when a Washington Post story described Christian conservatives

as “largely poor, uneducated and easy to command.” Its bad enough that a

reporter for one of the top newspapers in the country made an error like

that; its staggering to think that it got through several layers of

copyediting. They didnt know any better. For all the caterwauling about

“diversity” among media executives desperate to conjure up newsrooms that

“look like America,” you will be hard-pressed to find in any Catholic

parish on Sunday morning the same uniformity of thinking as you find in

most American newsrooms on any day of the week. Try telling that to an

editor or news director, though, and hell have no idea what youre talking

about. Believe me, Ive tried.

True story: I once proposed a column on some now-forgotten religious theme

to the man who was at the time the city editor of the New York Post. He

looked at me like Id lost my mind. “This is not a religious city,” he

said, with a straight face. As it happened, the man lived in my

neighborhood. To walk to the subway every morning, he had to pass in front

of or close to two Catholic churches, an Episcopal church, a synagogue, a

mosque, an Assemblies of God Hispanic parish, and an Iglesia Bautista

Hispana. Yet this man did not see those places because he does not know

anyone who attends them. Its not that this editor despises religion; its

that hes too parochial (pardon the pun) to see whats right in front of

him. Theres a lot of truth in that old line attributed to the New Yorkers

Pauline Kael, who supposedly remarked, in all sincerity, “I dont

understand how Nixon won; I dont know a soul who voted for him.”

In the mainand Ive had this confirmed to me by Christian friends who

labor elsewhere in the secular mediathe men and women who bring America

its news dont necessarily hate religion; in most cases, they just believe

its unimportant at best, menacing at worst. Because they dont know any

religious people, they think of American religion in categories that have

long been outdated. For example, to hear journalists talk, Catholics are

berated from the pulpit every Sunday about abortion and birth control;

reporters think Im putting them on when I tell them that Ive been a

practicing Catholic for 10 years and Ive only heard one sermon about

abortion and none about contraception. For another, outside the Jewish

community, there are no stronger supporters of Israel than among American

Evangelicals, and thats been true for at least a generation. The news has

yet to reach American newsrooms, where Ive been startled to discover a

general assumption among Jews and non-Jews alike that these

“fundamentalists” (i.e., any Christian more conservative than a Spong-ite

Episcopalian) are naturally anti-Semitic.

In a further comment, that New York Post city editor inadvertently revealed

something else important to me about the way media people see religion: As

far as he was concerned, Catholics and Jews were the only religious people

who counted in New York City (he himself is a non-practicing Jew), because

they were the only ones who had any political pull. Because journalists

tend not to know religiously observant people, they see religious activity

in the only way they know howin terms of secular politics. Thus, when your

average journalist hears “Southern Baptist,” she immediately thinks of an

alien sect whose rustic adherents lurk in the shadows thinking of cunning

ways to manipulate Republican politicians into taking away a womans right

to choose. The trouble is, she doesnt think much further, and it is

unlikely that anyone in her professional and social circles will challenge

her to do so.

The Secular Party Emerges

So what? The bias of the news media against religious conservatives is by

this point a dog-bites-man story of the first degree. Everybody knows that

pro-life marchers and churches who resist gay “marriage” arent going to

get a fair shake from the newspaper, and weve gotten used to that. But the

importance of this phenomenon is both broader and deeper than individual

stories. In a media-driven society, the press sets the terms of public

debate, and in so doing establishes the narrative that will inescapably

influence the way society thinks about and acts on issues and challenges.

Anti-religious media bias has profound implications for the future of

American politics, or so say social scientists Louis Bolce and Gerald De

Maio in “Our Secularist Democratic Party,” an important article published

in a recent issue of The Public Interest. The Baruch College researchers

say that the parochialism of journalists is blinding them to one of the

biggest stories in American politics: how the Democratic Party has become a

stronghold of fervent secularists, and how secularism “is just as powerful

a determinant of social attitudes and voting behavior as is a religiously

traditional outlook.”

Among political journalists, the dominant paradigmwhat you might call the

“official story”holds that religious conservatives bullied their way onto

the American political scene with the election of Ronald Reagan, and rudely

brought into the political arena the culture war that had been raging since

the 1960s. Thats exactly wrong, say the authors, who attribute the “true

origins of this conflict” to “the increased prominence of secularists

within the Democratic Party, and the partys resulting antagonism toward

traditional values.”

Until relatively recently, both major parties were of similar mind on

issues of personal morality. Then came the 1972 Democratic Convention, at

which secularistsdefined as agnostics, atheists, and those who seldom or

never attend religious servicesseized control of the party and nominated

George McGovern. Prior to that year, neither party had many secularists

among its delegates. According to a comprehensive study of survey data from

the Democratic delegates, the party was badly split between religious and

moral traditionalists on one side, and secularists on the other. They

fought over moral issues: abortion, womens rights, homosexuality, the

traditional family. What the authors call a “secularist putsch” triumphed,

giving us what Richard Nixon mocked as the party of “acid, amnesty, and

abortion,” and instigatingwith help from the Supreme Court on January 22,

1973the long march of religious and moral conservatives to the GOP, which

became the party of traditionalists by default. “What was first an

intra-party culture war among Democratic elites became by the 1980s an

inter-party culture war.”

Survey data from the 1992 national conventions show how thoroughly

polarized the parties had by that time become around religious orientation.

Only 20 percent of white Democratic delegates (N.B., this secular-religious

antagonism is a white voter phenomenon, the authors say) went to religious

services at least once a month, while over three times that number of white

Republican delegates did. A fascinating set of statistics emerged when

questioners polled each partys delegates on their views of various

subgroups among the other partys activists. Both Democrats and Republicans

were “significantly more negative toward groups associated with the newer

religious and cultural division in the electorate than toward groups

associated with older political cleavages based on class, race, ethnicity,

party or ideology.” That is, Republican delegates felt much warmer toward

union leaders, mainline liberals, blacks, Hispanics, and Democrats than

toward feminists, environmentalists, and pro-abortion activists. For their

part, the Democrats were more favorably disposed to big-business types, the

rich, political conservatives and Republicans than toward pro-lifers and

conservative Christians. Of the 18 groups covered by the survey, Christian

fundamentalists came in as the most despised, with over half the Democratic

delegates giving them the absolute minimum score possible. Put another way,

Republican delegates thought more highly of those who favor the legalized

killing of unborn children than their Democratic counterparts thought of

people who believe in a literal interpretation of Scripture.

Anti-Religious Secularists

For their analysis, Bolce and De Maio defined secularists as “those who

rejected scriptural authority, had no religious affiliation, never attended

religious services or prayed, and indicated that religion provided no

guidance in their day-to-day lives.” Traditionalists were “those who prayed

and attended religious services regularly, accepted the Bible as divinely

inspired, and said that religion was important to their daily lives.” Most

people surveyedtwo-thirds of the respondents in the American National

Election Study (ANES), which polled a cross-section of the electoratefall

somewhere between these two extremes, with the remaining respondents evenly

divided around the respective poles.

ANES data covering the last three presidential elections found that to be a

secularist in America today is to embrace moral relativisma position

strongly rejected by traditionalists. And, say the authors, “secularism is

no less powerful a determinant of attitudes on the contentious cultural

issues than is religious traditionalism. In most instances, secularists

consistently and lopsidedly embraced culturally progressivist

positions”the mirror image of traditionalists. The authors conclude that

the increased polarization of cultural attitudes within the American

electorate is, contrary to conventional wisdom, not because traditionalists

have become more conservative, b

ut because secularists (and to a lesser

extent religious moderates) have become more liberal.

Indeed, religion has become such a galvanizing issue for both parties that,

say the authors, “the religious gap among white voters in the 1992, 1996

and 2000 presidential elections was more important than other demographic

and social cleavages in the electorate; it was much larger than the gender

gap and more significant than any combination of differences in education,

income, occupation, age, marital status and regional groupings.” The media

have thoroughly reported the key role religious conservatives play in

Republican Party politics; what theyve ignored is the equally important

role militant secularists play in setting the agenda of the Democratic

Partyas the late pro-life Governor Bob Casey, denied a decent podium at

the 1992 Democratic convention, could have attested.

The divide has become so stark that the authors have discerned a new kind

of voter: the “anti-fundamentalist.” According to the 2000 ANES data, the

hatred of religious conservatives long apparent among Democratic convention

delegates has found a home among a disproportionate number of Democratic

voters. Twenty-five percent of white respondents in the ANES survey

expressed serious hostility towards religious conservatives, as opposed to

only one percent who felt this strongly against Jews, and 2.5 percent who

disliked blacks and Catholics to a strong degree. (Ironically, these are

people who say they “strongly agree that one should be tolerant of

persons whose moral standards are different from ones own.”) Eighty

percent of these voters picked Bill Clinton in 1996, with 70 percent

choosing Al Gore in 2000. Conclude the authors, “One has to reach back to

pre-New Deal America, when political divisions between Catholics and

Protestants encapsulated local ethno-cultural cleavages over Prohibition,

immigration, public education, and blue laws, to find a period when voting

behavior was influenced by this degree of antipathy toward a religious

group.” If Al Smith were to return and run for president today, his enemies

wouldnt be yesterdays rustic anti-Catholic bigots of the Bible Belt, but

todays urbane anti-Christian bigots of liberal coastal cities dubbed (by

the Wall Street Journal ) the Porn Belt.

The News Gap

This could be the most important development in American party politics of

the past 20 years, say Bolce and De Maioand Americas two leading

newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post, whose influence on

the reporting of other newspapers and TV networks cannot be overstated,

have both completely missed it. In a search of the Lexis-Nexis database of

every domestic political news story, op-ed, and editorial published in

those papers from 1990 to 2000, the authors found a grand total of 14

stories that mentioned the religious gap between the two parties.

“The minimization of the religious divide between the parties is also

apparent when compared to the amount of press attention devoted to other

gaps in the electorate,” the authors write. “During this same time span,

the Times and Post published 392 articles on the gender gap. In the 1992,

1996, and 2000 presidential elections, white women on average gave

Democrats 9 percent more of their vote than did white men; the average gap

separating secularists and religious traditionalists in these same

elections was 42 percentage points.”

But their most striking finding was the near total lack of editorial and

news coverage devoted to the increased importance of secularists to the

Democratic Party versus the role of traditionalists in the GOP. The numbers

are mind-boggling: 43 stories on secularist Democrats, 682 stories on

traditionalist Republicans. In 1992, the Times alone published nearly twice

the number of stories about Evangelicals in the GOP than both papers did

about secularists among the Democrats for the entire decade. The bias is

even worse among television journalists, who filled the airwaves with

stories about the “Religious Right” and the Republican Party, but who

didnt file a single storynot oneabout the Secular Lefts relationship to

the Democrats.

Why is this important? Because studies show that news media shape the way

the public views social groups. The authors found that in the Times and

Post s coverage, the connection between traditional religious belief and

political conservatism was clearly drawn. The message was clear:

Traditional religion makes people oppose abortion, vote Republican, and

adopt intolerant attitudes. There was no similar connection between devout

secularism and its link to pro-abortion fervor, Democratic loyalty, and

anti-religious prejudice. “And thus it is not surprising,” say the authors,

“that ANES survey results indicate that the more attention a person pays to

the national political news media, and especially to television news, the

more likely is that individual to believe that Christian fundamentalists

are ideologically extreme and politically militant.”

And theyre more likely to see all religious conservatives in political

terms, and make political decisions based on how they feel about religious

conservatives. In other words, the more a person exposes himself to the

news media, the closer he comes to adopting the viewpoint common in

American newsrooms, which is one of suspicion and hostility toward orthodox

religious believers. It is fair to say that our news media, through heavily

biased reporting and analysis, are turning significant numbers of American

voters against religious conservatives and are delegitimizing the place

believers have made for themselves at the table.

I suspect that most reporters, editors, and producers would be shocked by

these findings, and reject this conclusion. They pride themselves on being

objective, and they really do think of themselves as, to pinch a phrase,

“fair and balanced.” Yet there is the well-known survey Robert Lichter

conducted a few years back, polling national reporters blindly about their

political affiliation. Something like 90 percent answered “Democrat,” and a

similarly large number said they voted for Clinton. Bolce and De Maio cite

that Lichter studys numbers on religious affiliation among the media

elite, which reveal that half the journalists surveyed claimed no religion

at all, and 80 percent said they seldom or rarely attend religious

services.

The Godless Party

The authors also cite a poll showing that a majority of TV news directors

and newspaper editors felt that Evangelical and fundamentalist Christians

“have too much power,” and fully one-third of those surveyed considered

these believers to be “a threat to democracy.” The same survey found that

only four percent thought secularists and nonbelievers had too much

influence over public life, and the number of media professionals who

perceived secularists as a threat was . . . zero. You see in these numbers

why my former New York Post editor concluded that our city was thoroughly

secular and that covering religion was unimportant: The media elite think

that marginalizing religion in ones life is normal, and that those who are

serious about faith are mad, bad, and dangerous to know.

When it comes to religion, America is a far different place from its

newsrooms. Ours is still a religious nation, even if it is, in the main, a

mild “church-of-your choice” civic religion of the sort President

Eisenhower had in mind when he remarked, “Our government makes no sense

unless it is founded on a deeply felt religious faithI dont care what it

is.” Belief in God is, for most Americans, a sign of character. According

to a March 2002 national survey conducted by the Pew Research Center and

cited by the authors, more than half of those polled thought negatively of

“nonbelievers.” Only half that number had a low opinion of the “Christian

conservative movement.” Bolce and De Maio wonder if the media elite

understand, deep down, that America has always been a country that reveres

God, and consciously do the Democrats a favor by not pointing out what, for

all intents and purposes, they are: the Godless Party. “Perhaps it is for

this reason more than any other,” they write, “that we do not hear in

election-night analyses and postmortems that Democratic candidates have

shorn up their base among the unchurched, atheists, and agnostics, in

addition to the ritualistic accounts and warnings about how well

Republicans are doing with evangelicals of the Christian Right.”