SLANTING THE STORY:  THE FORCES THAT SHAPE THE NEWS

Trudy Lieberman

New York:  The New Press, 2000.  167 pp.

 reviewed by William Du Bois and R. Dean Wright

Brookings, SD and Drake University

 

There is a category that we put some books in:  the best book ever written.  Slanting the Story belongs there.  It is one of the best books on the media ever written.  It is the story of how right wing think tanks manage the news; how spin doctors work; and how you are being lied to.

Trudy Lieberman has provided the reader with an especially solid critique of the power that right-wing think tanks and special interest groups exert over an increasingly placid media.  Her book not only analyzes how the right-wing has exerted influence over critical social issues and decision makers but she documents her presentation in a careful and near academic manner.  When you finish reading the book you cannot help but be impressed with her detail and thoroughness.  She convinces you that the right-wing pulls the strings on both the identification of the issues that the media opts to cover and the "facts" they will use in developing their conclusions.  She documents how intimidation and outright false "documentation" are tools the right-wing has used in attacking AARP to prevent the organization from criticizing medical and drug practices that benefit "big business" at the expense of the common everyday person; changing governmental regulation and approaches to the FDA; slanting the news through lies and false data to bring down Head Start; and a variety of other social issues that benefit proponents of the right-wing at the expense of human needs.  This is a book that is a must for any person who has an interest in understanding how and why we can simply not trust either the right-wing or the media when they deal with human issues.

What is frightening is how successful these folks have become in selling their agenda.  On television news shows, academics are being replaced as experts on the issues by representatives of propaganda mills such as the Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute.        

Managing the media has become a sophisticated combination of new manipulation techniques and winning by intimidation.   A media consultant "works with reporters, feeding them story ideas and making suggestions about who they should interview, and how they should shape their reports" (26). 

You may not be familiar with what the Heritage Foundation is "doing" for the news media.  They flood reporters across the country with "research"  briefs.  On a slow news day, it is an instant story.  Even more important, reporters are likely to pick up their biased "statistics" and run them.  "Research" is carefully constructed to make the point they want.  Popular themes are how social programs inevitably create more problems than they solve; that government is evil, bungling, and wasteful; and that deregulation of business is the only thing that makes sense.  Even if only some of the weekly barrage gets published, it has an effect. 

The "easy interview" has become the backbone of authenticating a news story.  Rather than using objective academics, right-wing think tanks have "experts" already identified and provide their names and numbers for a newsperson's Rollerdex.  This right-wing list makes it "easier" for the lazy journalist to do a story and when the same "easy" source is quoted over and over and over the result is that "right wing opinions" become "journalistic facts."  Constant repetition is the key.

Another technique for manipulating the media is old fashioned bullying -- the journalistic equivalent to emotional battering.  "Inevitably, the constant critiques grind journalists down, and they begin to subtly, and not-so-subtly embrace the conservative spin.  The organization helps create a climate to neutralize the efforts at honest reporting" (26-27).

When the Republicans wanted to cut Medicare, focus groups found people responded much more favorably if it was called "slowing the rate of growth" rather than "cutting Medicare benefits"  "Slowing the growth" is technically true, but the impression it creates is entirely inaccurate.  If benefits don't keep up with inflation, that is clearly a cut.  The participants will find this out when they try to get their medical bills paid.  But any story that talked about medicare cuts immediately earned telephone calls from staffers complaining that it was really only "slowing the rate of growth"  The right wing succeeded into bullying the press into portraying the cut in their deceptive vocabulary.

Journalists' ideology of objectivity has made them easy prey.  Social scientists play into this.  Liberal think tanks feel that an honest presentation of the issues naturally will lead to progressive conclusions.  But that is where they don't get it.  Conservatives have no intention of having an honest discussion.  They are like cops planting evidence on someone they already "know" is guilty.  They play to win and feel like the end justifies the means.  When one side is trying to present an accurate picture and the other side is trying to win at all costs, we are in trouble if journalists try to present a balanced view by splitting it down the middle.

The right wing has learned to use social science as a tool of spin doctoring.  For the most part whereas liberal think tanks "embrace the academy not to influence government programs but to produce a neutral scientific evaluation of a particular activity.  Conservative groups have the opposite goal: "the right wing economic elite ..pour money into these so-called think tanks to pretend that independent research verifies their world view" (38)

Foundations that support progressive causes actually have several times MORE money than conservative foundations.  However, they don't see it as an ideological battle whereas the conservatives know full well that it is.  Indeed the progressive foundations see ideology as tainted.  "If progressive organizations are to reclaim ground in the ideological war, they must rethink what they stand for, be brave enough to tell the public, and sell their ideas more forcefully."  (164).

If the book is released in paperback,  it ought to be required in Intro Sociology and Social Problems classes.  Even at $21 for the hardback, it is worth serious consideration for Social Problems.  There is no better way to get students to think than by showing them how they are being manipulated.

 

from Humanity and Society, Volume 26, Number 2, May  2002