Roy Peter Clark responds to my mockery of his column on the public’s bias against the media.

Kevin, thanks for the attention, but I’m afraid you are proving my point. You get my gist, but fail to mention (for space or on purpose) that the first half of my essay makes a list of legitimate grievances by the public against the press. You make it sound as if I think the problem is ALL the fault of the public. My goal was to balance the scales: to say that the perception of bias comes from the performance of the press, and also from forces in the culture, including you, who have shaped public opinion against the mainstream media. Thanks for listening. Trinominally yours, RPC. (It’s shorter than William F. Buckley Jr.!)

My response to Clark (edited a bit):

Having worked in the mainstream press for many years (Morris Communications, Journal Register) it seems to me that the public is, if anything, not skeptical enough of news sources. It also seems to me that attributing bad faith to one’s critics is a weak form of argument.

I do not see, in the first half of your essay, a list of legitimate grievances by the public against the press.” I do see a bullet list of occasions in which bias may be, in your words, “perceived,” along with a lot of explaining away, and one sentence that reads: “OK, so I’m granting the public those legitimate grievances and acknowledge that journalists need to work hard at doing better.” That’s pretty limp for a nostra culpa.

Part of the problem is sloppiness, part of the problem is ignorance (particularly innumeracy), but a big part of the problem is the fact that many people working in journalism have a political ax to grind. I was once asked during a job interview at the major U.S. newspaper whether I had voted for George W. Bush. Does that not seem like an indicator of something amiss? I have not seen the data for the Sacred Heart study, so I am in no position to comment on the strength of those particular findings. But markets are smarter than surveys; there’s a good reason Rush Limbaugh has become a rich man denouncing media buffoonery while the establishment press has seen its readership evaporate. People aren’t skipping their newspapers because they cannot afford 50 cents a copy while they’re drinking their $5 latte. They are concerned about wasting their time, not their two bits. Newspapers aren’t going to solve their problem until they recognize what the problem is.