Repetition politicscan accomplishalmost anything

We printed an editorial cartoon Friday that was well above average in the cleverness department. It depicted three torch-carrying puritans from the witch hunt days pointing accusingly at Sarah Palin, John McCain's newly minted running mate.

She bore the scarlet letter "R" for Republican beneath a sign that read, "Impure woman." Her detractors were labeled as well: "Dems/MSM," for Democrats/Mainstream Media.

I loathed this piece of work, even though it did what political cartoons should do: deliver a powerful observation with few words. Invoking novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic image of a woman ostracized captured nicely the hypocrisy of some liberals who seem especially upset that McCain anointed not only a staunch conservative, but a female conservative. As if that gender should be reserved only for national candidates of Democratic persuasion.

I hated the cartoon nevertheless, because it reinforced a notion many political conservatives have long pushed: that the news media holds a liberal bias. Palin has borne her scarlet "R" for just a few days, we've had an "L" plastered on us for decades.

In politics, repetition matters. If you have a national stage and state the same message often enough, it can become accepted as fact without facts to back it up.

I've been in this business almost 30 years, at newspapers big and small. And I'm here to tell you, the folks in newsrooms have trouble staying organized enough to pull together their daily product; they aren't sitting around plotting how to give the news a liberal twist or listening to secret messages from the hallowed halls of the New York Times. So forget the theories of a left-wing conspiracy.

There are more liberals than conservatives in the media. That's because newsrooms are populated by college-educated people who don't own their own businesses. But these same people are taught the essentials of journalism: to be objective, to tell all sides of a story. And they just aren't getting paid enough to violate their principles. Besides, media outlets are generally owned and operated by business people far more conservative than their news staffs. They aren't about to let their companies be co-opted by the left wing.

What has become a rather common perception that the news media leans left is the result of dogged determination by certain elements of the right. The politics of repetition. Say it enough times and people start buying it. It's politically brilliant, but cynical to the core. Once you discredit the overall veracity of the media, you can cast aspersions on anything that gets reported as merely the product of biased news organizations. Accountability dissipates.

You can even create your own cable news network, blatantly slant it to the right, and call it "fair and balanced."

Where does all this leave us? With the Internet as our accomplice, we've become a society increasingly reliant on specialized sources of information such as blogs that mix facts and opinions into concoctions that satisfy our political tastes. This customization of the news makes America more polarized than ever, and ultimately that's not good for liberals or conservatives. And it's especially not good for those of us who passionately believe in American ideals, but don't happen to occupy either of the political fringes.