The veteran conservative journalist Robert Novak was on the Diane Rehm Show on Monday. He was talking about his 50 years in journalism, and talked about how liberal the profession is. He said that conservatives don't want to go into journalism, but for those who do:
“The advice I give them is to go into the closet. Don’t tell anybody you’re a conservative, because you’re not going to get the job, and you’re not going to get the advance.”
That's smart advice, I think. It is hard to convey how unfriendly, even at times hostile, American newsrooms are to conservatives, especially religious conservatives. I know a person who works at the very top of American broadcast journalism, who is literally afraid that her colleagues will find out that she's an Evangelical Christian, for fear of what this will do to her career. There are so few conservatives working in daily journalism that it's easy for stereotypes to be taken as fact by journalists. The thing that's striking to me, coming to the end of my second decade as a professional journalist, is not that the media are liberal, but that so many journalists have no idea how liberal they are. That is, they take their own political and cultural views as normative, because most of the people they know share those beliefs.
I don't suppose I will ever understand how journalism executives will make such a fetish of "diversity" in hiring, but make no apparent effort to reach out to graduates of religious colleges, or other places where they might actually find people whose beliefs are consonant with a rather large segment of the public whose views are grossly underrepresented in newsrooms. As a purely business strategy, this makes no sense. Nor does it make sense for a publication that wants to report on the community as it actually is, in all its contradictions and complexities, as opposed to the community that one's ideology directs one to see.
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"I have yet to read a conservative religion section."
The religion sections at Newsweek were conservative while Kenneth Woodward was in charge of them. Unfortunately, this changed when the editor decided the magazine was a forum for his own personal faith quest, but for a good long while Newsweek had extremely fair coverage. By fair I mean examining the ideas presented as understood by those participating in them. It also means broadening the scholarship beyond the Jesus seminar folks.
One thing also in regards to the lack of social conservatives. I went to a Christian college and there was a huge amount of honor for those who went into missions and "good works" sort of jobs. The idea of a high salary really wasn't an issue. Helping the poor. Getting involved in social causes. Going to other countries to help with their poor. That's heroic. Which means that journalism is in a curious middle ground. Become a doctor who works in India. Or a lawyer who helps the poor in inner cities. Missions work isn't just about, or often even at all about, evangelism, but rather participating with the suffering as Jesus commanded. Folks who yearn to do that don't see journalism as being the best road for it, so those who happily will be way underpaid would rather be way underpaid doing more engaged good works.
It's not really "doing" enough for those who really want to do something in this world. Thus the social conservatives who don't care about money have so many better, more impacting options. A liberal, however, has less options if they want to change the world. There are some, to be sure, especially with certain causes. But not quite as many and not nearly as socially accepted within those circles.
So, economic conservatives probably aren't interested in the low pay. Social conservatives have many other outlets that are more immediately effective. Most don't see journalism as a way to change the world, as do many on the other side of the fence. Which leaves a smaller pool of the interested, and an even smaller pool of those who are willing to push their way through the cultural obstacles of the newsroom.
No comment.
"To echo the previous comments, I believe that the low pay that one can expect even after years in the profession (unless one is at the top levels of journalism) might drive some conservatives away."
An interesting point. Anybody who thinks there are not enough conservatives in journalism, teaching, legal aid, etc. ought to give serious consideration to raising the salaries in those fields to something a self-respecting capitalist would accept.
For purpses of truth in allegd "conflicts of inerests," I have an M.A. in Journalism, looked for over two years after my degree for a newspaper job. And finally went into Technical Writing for more than twice my only offer for a reporting job. I have been active in the conservative movement since 1969, became a Repblican in 1964, and my Master's Project was on "The Conservative Newsletter in the U.S.A."
Now that that's over, I agree wholheartedly with the comment by Mr. Novak about would-be conservative jounalists having to tow the PC mark or else. I have a friend at a religious pape right now in precisely that situation. Whagt happens to the conservative who somehow manages tgo get a media job reminds me of nothing so much as when on a nature TV show when I was a kid I saw a coati mundi fall into the Amazon River right in the middle of a school of piranhas. Within a couple minutes, the poor coati was reduced to a bit of bones and fur. Now there was no conspiracy amongst the piranhas to desgtroy the coati. They just each took a bite or two out of him.
Continuing the above post:
What happens to the media conservative is the liberals actually tre him vey nicely to his face. There is no conspiracy against him. Manyof the liberals consider themselves his friend and thnk themselves very tolerant towards him. But his work is held to a different standard. Flaws that would be tolerated in a liberal's work are pointed out, exagerated and condemned in the conservative's. And the liberals don't even realize they are doing it. The problem is they are more likely to judge by political/ideological standards than a conservative. Everyone's "world view" is the lens through which he views reality. But, due to the nature of their ideology liberals are more likely to use ideological standards to judge non-ideological issues. But I am sure I am nearly out of space. I refer you to Dr. Thomas Sowell's "A Conflict of Visions" for a thorough discussion of why this is so. This is a very important book which should receive more attention than it does.
The important question is, "Why don't conservatives do a better job of founding alternative media?" Would we rather whine?
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