The Media's Town Hall Bias: How cameras bend reality

The news media has long had a problem with mis-portraying reality, but the bias that creeps into coverage usually doesn't come from journalists' own opinions. The real problem is the media's need to be sensational.

Often, for example, local TV news has hyped crime stories to the point that viewers thought they were living through a crime wave. In reality, the number of crimes either hadn't changed or had decreased.

These days it can look like Obama's attempt to reform the health care system has been shot down by widespread citizen revolt. Everytime you turn on the TV, there's yet another town hall meeting where yet another member of Congress is being screamed at by his or her constituents.

Today E.J. Dionne stated the obvious:

(W)hat if our media-created impression of the meetings is wrong? What if the highly publicized screamers represented only a fraction of public opinion? What if most of the town halls were populated by citizens who respectfully but firmly expressed a mixture of support, concern and doubt?

There is an overwhelming case that the electronic media went out of their way to cover the noise and ignored the calmer (and from television's point of view "boring") encounters between elected representatives and their constituents.

Obama & Warren On & On: Don't exalt ignorance & hatred

Thank you Richard Cohen! He writes in the Washington Post:

He (Obama) went on to say, "We can disagree without being disagreeable and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans." Sounds nice.

But what we do not "hold in common" is the dehumanization of homosexuals. What we do not hold in common is the belief that gays are perverts who have chosen their sexual orientation on some sort of whim. What we do not hold in common is the exaltation of ignorance that has led and will lead to discrimination and violence.

Finally, what we do not hold in common is the categorization of a civil rights issue -- the rights of gays to be treated equally -- as some sort of cranky cultural difference. For that we need moral leadership, which, on this occasion, Obama has failed to provide. For some people, that's nothing to celebrate.

E.J. Dionne offers another point of view.