A Lesson in Media Incentives

Jamison Foser's weekly column at Media Matters is, as usual, an excellent read. He takes a close look at the questions Chris Matthews asked the Republican presidential hopefuls in Thursday's debate and compares them to the questions Matthews' colleague, Brian Williams, asked the Democratic hopefuls the week before. The contrast is pretty stark. While Matthews tossed up one softball question after another--most of them very open-ended--Williams' questions were invariably loaded and accusatory (and incoherent).

Sample Matthews' questions:

-"Mayor Giuliani, how do we get back to Ronald Reagan's morning in America?"

-"What would you need, as commander in chief, to win the war in Iraq?"

-"We're in the house of Ronald Reagan. Every cab driver in America knew what Ronald Reagan stood for: defeat communism abroad; reduce big government at home. Can you, Senator McCain, restore that kind of unity of purpose?"

Sample Williams' questions:

-"Senator Clinton, your party's leader in the United States Senate, Harry Reid, recently said, 'The war in Iraq is lost.' A letter to today's USA Today calls his comments 'treasonous,' and says, 'If General Patton were alive today, Patton would wipe his boots with Senator Reid.' Do you agree with the position of your leader in the Senate?"

-"Senator Obama, you go first. You've promised in your campaign a new kind of politics, but just this week, the Chicago Sun-Times reported on questionable ties you have with a donor who was charged last year for demanding kickbacks on Illinois business deals. Aren't you practicing the very same kind of politics that many of the others on this stage have engaged in?"

-"Senator Obama, you have called this war in Iraq, quote, "dumb," closed quote. How do you square that position with those who have sacrificed so much, and why have you voted for appropriations for it in the past?"

-"Senator Edwards, you've spoken with great passion and energy and eloquence about the issue of poverty in the United States, your 'two Americas' theme. And yet I want to read you a quote from the political journalist Roger Simon. 'Many people missed the point about the haircut. The point is not the cost. John Edwards is a very rich man and could afford even a $4,000 haircut. But why did he pay for his haircuts out of campaign funds?' Senator?

What accounts for this obvious disparity? Well, as with most things in life, the answer is somewhat complex. As an initial matter, one has to question whether Williams and Matthews are biased. After all, anyone who watches Hardball regularly knows that Matthews has long had a man-crush on both John McCain and Rudy Giuliani and a bizarre antipathy toward Senator Clinton. And as Bob Somerby has relentlessly documented, Williams has a history of saying disparaging things about Democratic candidates. He was particularly unfair to Al Gore in the 2000 race. And this is the same Brian Williams who once revealed this in an interview:

I do listen to Rush. I listen to it from a radio in my office, or depending on my day, if I'm in the car, I will listen to Rush. And he will tell you I've been listening for years. I think it's my duty to listen to Rush. I think Rush has actually yet to get the credit he is due, because his audience for so many years felt they were in the wilderness of this country.

That said, I suspect that both Matthews and Williams are more concerned with advancing their own careers than with pursuing any personal political agenda. In other words, I don't think pointing to evidence of personal bias has the explanatory power that many people seem to think it does. Both Matthews and Williams would have asked very different questions if they thought it was in their own best interests to do so.

Let's consider Williams first. Williams has done pretty well for himself. He's the face of NBC News, the top anchor on a major network, and therefore a card-carrying member of The Mainstream Media. Conservatives have been very successful over the years in perpetuating the notion that there is some sort of pervasive "liberal bias" in mainstream news coverage. Williams knows, therefore, that if he doesn't appear sufficiently "tough" in his questioning of the Democratic candidates, that people like Rush Limbaugh will question his integrity and accuse him of soft-pedaling to Democrats. He also knows that he's very unlikely to be criticized by anyone (except lowly liberal bloggers) for being too tough on the Democratic candidates. He knows that most left-leaning folks, particularly those who make up the Beltway pundit class, value independent-mindedness. And if he can manage to trip up one of the candidates, that's good for ratings. Finally, having already achieved the pinnacle of his profession, as the voice of NBC Nightly News, Williams has very little incentive to ingratiate himself with the candidates themselves. He knows that no matter what questions he asks, the candidates will always return his calls and leap at the opportunity to appear on his program.

Matthews, on the other hand, toils away on a relatively low-rated cable talk show. He's always trying, sometimes in rather desperate fashion, to get the big-name candidates to appear on his program. He knows that if he asks the kind of loaded, unfair questions that Williams did, he'll be accused of liberal bias by legions of conservative pundits and bloggers, which is never a good thing for someone who is trying to rise through the ranks of a major news network. He also knows that if he asks these kinds of questions (or even hard but fair questions) he may well anger the candidates and their campaign staff, who have plenty of other venues to choose from other than Hardball. In other words, Matthews has every incentive to toss up softball questions, at least to the top-tier candidates, and very little incentive to ask questions that might genuinely put McCain or Giuliani or Romney on the spot.

This asymmetrical incentive structure has been working to the Republican party's advantage for years now. I do think that the emerging influence of liberal blogs is starting to change this incentive structure somewhat. But there's clearly still a long way to go.