CONSERVATIVE MEDIA BIAS

Conservatives know about liberal media bias. But conservative media "bias" is more subtle. It does not mean what the liberals think, that talk radio has more influence than network media. Any rational person knows that liberals still dominate network, most cable and newspaper media. Fortunately, there is general awareness about liberal bias today and the existing conservative media handle the problem well. Rush Limbaugh alone is sufficient for the task.

The problem for conservatives is non-conservative media parading as conservative. The editors of the Weekly Standard dominate television as presumed leaders of conservative opinion. Yet, its professed editorial philosophy is "national greatness" conservatism, which even its editor Bill Kristol admitted at its founding had no mass base among conservatives. Its executive editor, Fred Barnes, is best known for his writing on the benefits of "big government" conservatism, although he sometimes is concerned about its rate of growth. While this editorial position is a legitimate one and deserves a voice, it has nothing to do with the conservatism devised by Bill Buckley, Frank Meyer and Ronald Reagan. Big government conservatism is flying false colors for those who do not read closely and the limited government conservative majority could use a voice to guide them through its executive opinions.

One would assume that Buckley's and Meyer's National Review would be the spokesman of straight-line, traditional limited-government conservatism today. Clearly, it did so when Buckley and Meyer were editing that journal of opinion. But the two most recent editors have set a new policy for the magazine, about which we will have more to say in the following article. In short, they decided to reject the earlier ideological orientation of the magazine and turn it into a more "objective" journalism, with a moderate right of center orientation. This too is a legitimate editorial position but it does not fulfill the original mission of National Review. Conservatives need to become aware of this major transformation of its editorial policy.

The Washington Times was created as the daily conservative newspaper voice in Washington. Its editorial position supporting the Medicare prescription drug bill proved this function has changed over time at least for that section. Its editor in chief Wes Pruden's own column and the Commentary section keep to their original mission The editorial specifically cited its unwillingness to accept "electoral risk" for the Republican Party as its reasoning for support of this $7 trillion bill, as well as what it called the "last chance to begin important market-based Medicare reforms," ones that somehow eluded the 42 conservative activist groups and all of the right-leaning think tanks that opposed the bill because it had almost no market reforms. Conservatives should know they should read the editorial page with some skepticism.

Certainly there are sound conservative media. Rush Limbaugh still promotes the unadulterated conservative philosophy, as he proved once again with his leadership in opposing the Medicare drug bill, which he correctly labeled the largest expansion of entitlements since Lyndon Johnson. Human Events was just as dogged on that issue, as it has consistently been in covering the news over the years. Even The Wall Street Journal provides a reasonably conservative line on domestic policy, if it sometimes is a bit tone deaf about federalism--and we will have more to say about foreign policy in the coming weeks. We will also review the so-called paleoconservative media in later issues.

So why is there a need for ConservativeBattleline? None of these voices is a journal of opinion that explicitly, passionately and regularly expresses, defends and advances the fusionist conservative philosophy that created the modern conservative movement. The American Conservative Union was founded on those principles by Mr. Meyer himself and its voice-undoubtedly with some lapses over these forty years-has maintained that philosophy handed to us consistently ever since. As such, we have some claim and obligation to carry this mission forward through our own publication. In any event, we will give it a good try.