Ex-CBS journalist Lara Logan on Friday unleashed a blistering, uncensored attack on the extreme liberal bias polluting America's news outlets. Logan derided the “horses**t” “propagandist” press that has no interest in fairness.
Appearing on Mike Drop, the podcast of former Navy SEAL Mike Ritland, the foreign affairs correspondent and former 60 Minutes reporter berated slanted coverage in a way rarely seen by those in the mainstream press: “We’ve become political activists in a sense. And some could argue, propagandists, right?” Logan’s outburst came after noting former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson's admission that the paper publishes “raw opinion” against Donald Trump.
Not holding back, Logan fully agreed with the idea that the press was hard-left:
The media everywhere is mostly liberal. Not just in the U.S. But in this country, 85 percent of journalists are registered Democrats. So that’s just a fact, right?... So the facts are on the side of what you just stated. Most journalists are left or liberal or Democrat or whatever word you want to give it. I always joke about the other 14 percent were too lazy to register. And there’s maybe one percent that’s on the right.
Though the findings have varied over the years, numerous outlets back up Logan’s contention. Media Research Center Research Director Rich Noyes explained: “Surveys over the past 30 years have consistently found that journalists — especially those at the highest ranks of their profession — are much more liberal than rest of America.” In 2014, MRC Vice President of Research and Publicans Brent Baker reported on a survey finding four times more self-identified Democrats than Republicans. Former CBS journalist Bernard Goldberg insisted that 85 percent of journalists voted for Obama.
Logan recounted how she used to not believe in the claim of a liberal press. But now she laments the “horseshit” low standards practiced by her fellow reporters:
I didn’t even notice there was a bias in the media. People would say it to me all the time and I argued passionately and ferociously against that because I really believed when we do it well, and the majority of serious journalists were all trying to do their best to overcome those biases and rely on the facts and good systems. We have a few conventions — because they are not really rules — but you need at least two first-hand sources for something, right? Those things help keep your work to a certain standard. Those standards are out the window. I mean, you read one story or another and hear it and it’s all based on one anonymous administration official, former administration official. That’s not journalism. That’s horseshit. Sorry. That is absolute horseshit.
Regarding the idea that Fox News balances out the liberal press, Logan shot back: “There’s one Fox. And there’s many, many, many more organizations on the left.” She added, “But the problem is the weight of all of these organizations on one side of the political spectrum. When you turn on your computer or you walk past the TV or you see a newspaper headline in the grocery store, if they are all saying the same thing, the weight of that convinces you that it’s true. You don’t question it because everyone is saying it.”
Finally, Logan appeared to call out people like White House diva Jim Acosta for the argument that because Trump is rude, they can be mean back:
I do think journalists have to stand up and we have to back each other. And I don’t mean backing someone being rude at a press conference at the White House because, quite frankly, I haven’t seen a lot of that kind of behavior in my lifetime. I never saw someone treat George Bush like that. And I say that to my colleagues and they say, “Well, George Bush never treated us the way this President does.” And I say, “Yeah, but I don’t tell my kids, ‘Oh, that kid’s an asshole, so you can just be an asshole to him.’” Right? I tell my kids, “You have to consistently live to the standards that you have set for yourself.” Even when someone’s an asshole to you, you still have to be the better person and a good person and rise above it and not sink to their level.
The entire Mike Drop podcast can be found here. The discussion of media bias starts two hours and sixteen minutes in. A partial transcript is below. Click “expand” to read more.
UPDATE: A previous version of this article referred to “CBS’s Lara Logan.” According to CNN’s Brian Stelter, “Lara Logan's role at CBS News ended last year, according to a network spokeswoman.”
Mike Drop podcast
2/15/19
2 hours and 16 minutes in
LARA LOGAN: You say the media is mostly liberal. Do I agree with that? Does everyone listening to that agree with that? What’s the opposition on that? I agree with you. It’s true. Why? Can I say that with certainty? Well, first of all because I’ve been part of this for all my life. I’m 47 now and I’ve been a journalist since I was 17. And the media everywhere is mostly liberal. Not just in the U.S. But in this country, 85 percent of journalists are registered Democrats. So that’s just a fact, right? No one’s registering Democrats when they are rarely Republican. So the facts are on the side of what you just stated. Most journalists are left or liberal or Democrat or whatever word you want to give it. I always joke about the other 14 percent were too lazy to register and there’s maybe one percent that’s on the right.
That’s a joke, but mainly when you think about it, visually, anyone who’s ever been to Israel and been to the Wailing Wall has seen that the women have this tiny little spot in front of the wall to pray, and the rest of the wall is for the men. To me, that’s a great representation of the American media, is that in this tiny little corner where the women pray you’ve got Breitbart and Fox News and a few others, and from there on, you have CBS, ABC, NBC, Huffington Post, Politico, whatever, right? All of them. And that’s a problem for me, because even if it was reversed, if it was vastly mostly on the right, that would also be a problem for me. My experience has been that the more opinions you have, the more ways that you look at everything in life — everything in life is complicated, everything is gray, right? Nothing is black and white. You never have a fight, even the ones where you really think you’re in the right where you are right about everything.
So, someone very smart told me a long time ago that — how do you know you’re being lied to? How do you know you’re being manipulated? How do you know there’s something not right with the coverage? When they simplify it all [and] there’s no grey. It’s all one way. Well, life isn’t like that. If it doesn’t match real life, it’s probably not. Something’s wrong. For example, all the coverage on Trump all the time is negative. There is nothing — there is no mitigating policy or event or anything that has happened since he was elected that is out there in the media that you can read about. Well that tells you that’s a distortion of the way things go in real life. So my starting point is if I want to find the truth, where do I begin there and I investigate from that point onwards. It’s got nothing to do with whether I like Trump or I don’t like Trump. Right? Or whether I believe him or identify with him, don’t. Whatever. I don’t even want to have that conversation because I approach that the same way I approach anything. I find that is not a popular way to work in the media today because although the media has always been historically left-leaning, we’ve abandoned our pretense or at least the effort to be objective today. The former executive editor of the New York Times has a book coming out, Jill Abramson. And she says, “We would do,” I don’t know, dozens of stories about Trump every single day and every single one of them was negative.” She said, “We have become the anti-Trump paper of record.”
Well, that’s not our job. That’s a political position. That means we’ve become political activists in a sense. And some could argue, propagandists, right? And there’s some merit to that. So it doesn’t mean everything that’s written is untrue. It doesn’t mean that — it doesn’t say anything about where I stand on an issue.
...
2:21 in.
LOGAN: So, it’s bad enough that in the media we lean towards one side of the political spectrum or we favor one ideology. But you could argue that’s a function of the way it is and there’s enough good journalism out there and there’s enough accountability that we get at least a decent representation of the truth a lot of the time. I don’t even see that happening today.
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RITLAND: [Fake news] started as a joke. But, Christ, it’s really become that way. Like you said, there’s so many times, especially if it’s from a specific news outlet, specifically MSNBC, you can rest the fuck assured that they are going to cherry pick the most significantly negative parts of the story.
LOGAN: And people would counter that by saying, “Well, Fox is going to do all the positive stuff.” But this is the problem I have. There’s one Fox.
RITLAND: Yeah. Yeah.
LOGAN: There’s one Fox. And there’s many, many, many more organizations on the left. So, if you say, “Well, if they are lying about this is and this is propaganda,” and whatever. They are pushing their viewpoints. Oh, well. The other side Yes. Both sides do terrible things. Both sides lie. Both sides manipulate. Both sides push their point of view. But the problem is the weight of all of these organizations on one side of the political spectrum. When you turn on your computer or you walk past the TV or you see a newspaper headline in the grocery store, if they are all saying the same thing, the weight of that convinces you that it’s true. You don’t question it because everyone is saying it.
One ideological perspective on everything never leads to an open free diverse tolerant society. The more opinions and views … of everything that you have, the better off we all are. So creating one ideological position on everything throughout your universities, throughout academia, in school and college, in media, and everywhere else, that’s what concerns me. I don’t have to agree with everybody.
...
LOGAN: We don’t even question if what we see on social media is real or not. We don’t even question if a grassroots movement is really grassroots. You know, there’s a way to start a grassroots movement. You write an algorithm, and you create all this outrage, right? And you’re basically throwing out all the sparks that light the fire, so then it becomes a grassroots movement because it takes nothing to set that in motion. But did it really begin as one? And if it didn’t begin that way, but was manipulated and paid for by someone and serves someone’s political purpose, is it really what we believe it is?
…
LOGAN: I didn’t even notice there was a bias in the media. People would say it to me all the time and I argued passionately and ferociously against that because I really believed when we do it well, and the majority of serious journalists were all trying to do their best to overcome those biases and rely on the facts and good systems. We have a few conventions — because they are not really rules — but you need at least two first-hand sources for something, right? Those things help keep your work to a certain standard. Those standards are out the window. I mean, you read one story or another and hear it and it’s all based on one anonymous administration official, former administration official. That’s not journalism. That’s horseshit. Sorry. That is absolute horse shit.
...
LOGAN: I do think journalists have to stand up and we have to back each other. And I don’t mean backing someone being rude at a press conference at the White House because, quite frankly, I haven’t seen a lot of that kind of behavior in my lifetime. I never saw someone treat George Bush like that. And I say that to my colleagues and they say, “Well, George Bush never treated us the way this President does.” And I say, “Yeah, but I don’t tell my kids, ‘Oh, that kid’s an asshole, so you can just be an asshole to him.’” Right? I tell my kids, “You have to consistently live to the standards that you have set for yourself.” Even when someone’s an asshole to you, you still have to be the better person and a good person and rise above it and not sink to their level.
