Gale Warning

NO COMMENT: Both parties chide the local media for bollixing the election.

Photo By: Michael Mergen

It's the Media's Fault

by Daryl Gale

A funny thing happened to me this week. Not funny, ha-ha. But funny, hmmm. In conducting interviews for a wrap-up story on the mayoral election ("The Last Word,"), I found that both the Republicans and the Democrats had a common enemy: me. Well, not me specifically, but the media in general.

Democratic City Committee Chairman Bob Brady told me that the whole notion that Mayor John Street wouldn't do well in white wards was an invention of the Philadelphia media corps, and clearly illustrated the media's anti-Street bias. Vito Canuso, Brady's opposite number over at the Republican City Committee, said that we cowards in the media are responsible for allowing Street's minions to get away -- unchallenged -- with accusing the GOP of racist dirty tricks.

Both camps managed to come away from this thing believing that the city's newspapers and television and radio stations were all stacked up against them and for the other side. Both can't be right, but why let facts get in the way?

A few summers ago, when the Republican National Convention rolled into town, I had a similar experience. During the day I covered the protests -- and there were anti-GOP protests every day -- where any and every disheveled representative of the Great Unwashed who wielded a bullhorn hurled invectives at the assembled media, calling us tools of the imperial government and pawns of the military industrial complex.

At night, I would go to the convention itself at the First Union Center, where endless streams of Republicans took turns at the microphone lambasting the liberal media as a tool of the radical left, and for being solely responsible for the fall of Western civilization.

I remember thinking that maybe both sides should get together and get their stories straight. Either I'm a willing puppet of the corporate establishment or a radical commie liberal troublemaker, but I can't be both.

The truth is, and this seems simple enough, there are as many media viewpoints as there are media outlets. If you're a conservative, you've got Rush Limbaugh, the National Review, G. Gordon Liddy and other standard-bearers for the right. If you're a liberal, National Public Radio or The Nation will probably be more to your liking. If you'll take the time to look, I guarantee you'll find newspapers and magazines, and television and radio networks out there that are perfectly suited to your particular worldview.

During the next few weeks, you're probably going to hear a lot of talk about what it will take to heal the city's racial divide. Toward its end, the mayor's race became a referendum on racial attitudes. White folks tended not to understand why the black community was so up in arms over the FBI probe, and shook their heads in disbelief as black leaders managed to curse the Justice Department while seemingly ignoring the fact that maybe there really was a problem with the way the city awards contracts.

Black people, on the other hand, were just as confused by whites' willingness to ignore the FBI's shameful history regarding past black leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Mayors Coleman Young of Detroit and Willie Brown of San Francisco. Both sides blamed racism, and once again the finger pointed at us muckrakers in the media.

I happen to work for a media outlet that takes what I consider a slightly left-of-center view. Here at City Paper, I like to think we're liberal enough to willingly support programs that use our tax money to benefit the needy, but conservative enough to want those taxes cut.

But even that could be a gross oversimplification. We wrangle over these issues at staff meetings fairly often, and sometimes I come down on the side of the liberals, sometimes on the side of the conservatives.

We do, however, have the freedom to research and write our stories from several angles and points of view, which not only keeps us sharp, but reminds us that life, like the mayor's race, is not all black and white.

Daryl Gale’s weekly radio show, Dialogues, with co-hosts Rotan Lee and Bill Miller, is burning up the airwaves Fridays 7-10 a.m. on WURD (900 AM) in Philadelphia.