WASHINGTON — During a media panel discussion a few years ago, ABC
News high priest Ted Koppel intoned that he never discloses how he votes
— not even to his wife. Serious journalists don’t do that, he implied.
He’s not alone. Getting any member of the media elite to reveal who
they voted for president is like getting them to give you the pin number
to their ATM card. They’ll tell you in the most high-minded tone that
they can’t talk about such things, because doing so would prevent them
from compartmentalizing their personal politics from their reporting.
What a fraud.
Most reporters in this town want to keep you in the dark about their
vote so they can continue to cloak themselves in the pretense of
objectivity. You see, if they told you they voted for Clinton, which
most did, or Gore, which most will, they’d give you the long-missing
piece of information you need to test the veracity of their reporting.
So they stay mum, and the myth of impartiality survives another cycle of
election coverage.
But you, as news consumers, are entitled to know the personal point
of view of a reporter, especially a political reporter — right up
front. Only then can you really spot the perfumed data or the selective
facts or the friendly sources reporters smuggle into stories. Only then
can you really be informed.
I think all reporters should volunteer to disclose their voting
records. It could easily be done by running just a little line of agate
type under their bylines or droplines, in the case of TV news anchors
and correspondents. If they’re registered under a party, just add
“registered Democrat” or “registered Republican.” If they don’t vote
straight-party tickets, just type in the initials of the last four or
five presidential candidates they picked.
I’ve never registered as a Republican or Democrat, because my
Jeffersonian views — that government has no place in the boardroom or
bedroom — don’t really align with either party. I vote according to the
candidate. So my byline would read like so: 84 RR 88 GB 92 RP 96 BD.
I was first eligible to vote in 1984. That decision was a no-brainer:
Ronald Reagan had turned around the economy while bouncing back from a
gun-shot wound to the chest. He went on to prove himself an even more
remarkable leader by staring down the Soviet bear.
Voting for George “Voodoo Economics” Bush in 1988 was a mistake,
seeing that he did about as much as Michael Dukakis would have done in
repealing Reaganomics. And I wasn’t that impressed with his Gulf War
“victory,” because it wasn’t really a victory. Yes, we freed Kuwait, but
we spared Saddam Hussein. Bush said he was handcuffed by the U.N.
resolution, but the same resolution gave the coalition a mandate to
“restore peace and stability in the region.” Last I checked, Saddam is
still threatening peace and stability in the
region. Should have voted Libertarian that year.
When the 1992 election rolled around, I was itching to fire Bush, but
didn’t trust Bill Clinton, who tried to discount the ’80s boom and link
it to the mild ’90s recession so he could blame “12 years of failed
Republican policies.” Such Orwellian revisionism alarmed me. So I voted
for Ross Perot. Another mistake.
Four years later and Clinton’s dishonesty well-established (though
amazingly not yet in full blossom, as we would see in 1998), I punched
the ballot for Bob Dole, the better man, though clearly no Reagan.
After Nov. 7, add “00 GB” to my byline disclosure. I know, big
surprise.
But until last week, I was only voting against Al Gore and what would
most certainly become the institutionalization of lying and corruption
in our highest office. Bush never struck me as the sharpest knife in the
drawer, and there was always the specter of his father. (Indeed, I voted
for McCain in the primaries, in large part because I thought he had the
grit to withstand Gore’s nastiness.)
Then, while listening to Bush give a particularly articulate and
rousing stump speech in Sanford, Fla., on Oct. 25, I heard him say
something that convinced me to vote for him and not just against Gore.
It wasn’t a poll-tested line. He said it like he was exhaling his
soul, and he showed me all at once that he was wise beyond his years:
The presidency, Bush said, “requires a leader who loves his country
more than he loves himself.”
Can you imagine Gore — or Clinton or Hillary, for that matter —
saying such a thing, or if they did, saying it with a straight face? I’m
not sure any of them love this country. But I do know they love
themselves. Over the past eight years, they’ve turned the White House
into a monument to solipsism.
So there’s where I’m coming from. I have a point of view, just like
every reporter. If they tell you they don’t, they’re lying. I try not to
let my point of view bleed over into my reporting, but if it does, you
have a way to gauge my intellectual honesty, and knowing that you have
that gauge, in turn, makes me strive to be more intellectually honest.
All reporters should come right out and say how they vote, who they
favor and why, instead of pretending to be objective. Both reporters and
their audiences would benefit from such truth in advertising.
Until that happens — and don’t hold your breath that it will — it’s
safe to assume the political news you are consuming is manufactured by
someone who votes a straight Democrat ticket. It’s a fact, backed by
polling over the years, that most of the media elite vote in lockstep
and for one party — Democratic.
Between 1964 and 1976, the share of top journalists who voted for the
Democratic presidential candidate never drops below 80 percent,
according to the nonpartisan Center for Media and Public Affairs.
In 1964, for example, they picked Johnson over Goldwater by a 16-to-1
margin, or 94 percent to 6 percent. The popular vote was 61 percent for
Johnson. In 1972, when more than 60 percent of all voters chose Nixon,
over 80 percent among the media elite voted for McGovern (only 3 percent
overall voted for McGovern).
The media’s pro-Democrat tilt was once again out of synch with the
general population in 1992, when 89 percent of Washington reporters
voted for Clinton, versus just 43 percent of all voters.
No wonder Ted Koppel doesn’t want you to know how he votes.
