'We report. And we decide'.

What Liberal Media? The Truth about Bias and the News Eric Alterman Basic Books, $25, 322pp.

The belief that the media are decisively liberal is a tenacious bit of contemporary folklore, only a little more credible than the widely held notion that the September 11 terrorists were Iraqis or the conviction that the government is covering up its contacts with extraterrestrials. In reality, the dominant media--most evidently, television--fear to offend any significant part of a mass audience that has only the slightest reason to prefer one channel to another, so that the news, as Eric Alterman observes, becomes more and more like "sitcoms and theme parks," entertainment with an occasional bow to public affairs. Further, as Alterman shows, for a couple of decades, conservatives have been using the charge of media bias to "work the refs," threatening the media into more favorable coverage and edging our political discourse to the right.

Alterman, who writes on the media for the Nation and MSNBC, is also the author of award-winning books on the "punditocracy" (The Sound and the Fury) and on Bruce Springsteen (It Ain't No Sin To Be Glad You're Alive). He is an admirable stylist, cheerfully acerbic, like H. L. Mencken, but without Mencken's less endearing bigotries and crotchets. Alterman, in fact, unites left-wing convictions and common sense, part of a company that is all too select these days, and he resists the temptation to simplify his story.

Even absent conservative pressure, Alterman points out, the disposition of the mainstream media is to occupy the center as a place of relative safety, positioning themselves as defenders of the status quo. This is especially true in economic matters, where reporters are understandably prone to self-censor criticism of their conglomerate owners. This also applies to the pundits, upper-income media stars with no interest in rocking the boat. (Alterman is right to argue that the corps of pundits includes very few genuinely liberal voices, and his irreverence toward the tribe is welcome, even though his criticism sometimes misses the mark: David Broder is certainly not a "conservative pundit," although he can be described as a "floating centrist" and a loyal member of the Washington circle.)

In recent years, moreover, discourse in the media has been pulled further to the right by the rise of powerful conservative media--the complex of outlets centered on the Wall Street Journal; the empire of Rupert Murdoch, especially the Fox network, whose claim to offer "fair and balanced" coverage is one of the bigger hoots in public life; the thicket of conservative foundations and think tanks; and, at the bottom of the journalistic sea, the lumpen conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Matt Drudge, whose inaccuracies and inventions are likely to turn up in more reputable media as "reports," thereby acquiring both currency and shadow veracity. All of these are informed by a sense of movement and a tendency to solidarity strong enough that Alterman is right to compare the conservative media to the old Comintern.

The drift to the right, though, involves more than money and shrewd tactics. The conservative media could not have succeeded without speaking to strong, neglected strains of American opinion. In the first place, there is an element of truth to the charge of media bias: conservative or moderate in so many ways, the media are clearly liberal in relation to social issues. Alterman concedes this: the media, he remarks, are moved by "corporate-driven PC-sensitivity" and by the "education brackets and geographical locations" of high-ranking journalists, who tend to reflect the views of urban elites. (This is sometimes true even in otherwise conservative reporters: Bill O'Reilly, for example, is prochoice and for gun control.) Even so, Alterman's focus on news coverage underrates the social liberalism reflected in sitcoms, dramas, and "reality" shows, perhaps most stridently on the otherwise conservative Fox network. Dan Quayle's target, after all, was Murphy Brown. And of course, the media are overwhelmingly secular. Religion, as it appears in the media, is regularly associated with extremists and crazies or with the sort of drama that gives the term "supernatural" a bad name.

On occasion, in fact, Alterman's desire to downplay any "liberal bias" in the media actually weakens his case. In the election of 2000, he argues, the media were generally much harder on Gore than they were on Bush, not only because they found Bush more amiable but because the media "expect more" from Democrats. This claim--almost surely an accurate one--suggests that there is a deep-level affinity between reporters and Democrats, but that this kinship works against liberals because it holds them to a higher standard. Clinton and Gore were undeniably hurt by the conservatives who detested and stalked them, but they were damaged at least as much by media liberals who found them disappointing.

In any case, the dominant persuasion of the media is not conservative so much as libertarian--social liberalism combined with a belief in free trade, globalization, and an indisposition to criticize markets, just as in domestic affairs it tends to a distrust of government and public authority. Nevertheless, conservatives have an important strategic advantage: the media need to tell a story that grabs and holds an audience, and Alterman notes that the right is better at telling moral tales that offer enemies and a politics free from ambiguity. Liberals, by contrast, are too inclined to see grays, too apt--like NPR--to be soft-voiced and understanding, too complicated even in their indignation. Alterman does not sufficiently appreciate, however, that conservatism's chosen enemies are the cultural elite, people who are articulate critics of working and middle-class values--family, work, faith, traditional morals, patriotism, and respect for authority. Alterman is right to note that Bill O'Reilly's "populism" shows little or no concern for economic inequality, but corporate and financial elites--liberalism's preferred antagonists--do not openly treat working and middle-class Americans with contempt. They practice exploitation, but not condescension.

This doesn't mean that conservatives will inevitably win the contest of stories: The Simpsons' left-of-center satire commands an audience great enough that even Fox is happy to broadcast it. It does suggest that liberals will have to find storytellers who unite a mastery of their craft with a genuinely democratic vision and voice. Eric Alterman deserves to rank high on that list.

Wilson Carey McWilliams, a frequent contributor, teaches political philosophy at Rutgers University.