CONSERVATIVE VOICES RELEGATED TO THE SIDELINES.

Byline: James Bemis

Resolved: That Ventura County's politics and temperament are primarily conservative.

A survey of the political leanings of Ventura County voters was recently published, and the results are worth pondering. For the county as a whole, 44 percent identified themselves as moderates, 33 percent as conservatives, 14 percent as liberals, and 9 percent as ``others''. (I wish the survey had endeavored to find out who the ``others'' are. Maybe soccer moms?)

In other words, the ``center'' of this county is to the right.

Conservative tendencies are even more striking in eastern Ventura County. In Simi Valley, 52 percent say they are moderates, 28 percent conservatives, 15 percent liberal, and 5 percent other. Moorpark's conservatism is very evident - 48 percent moderate, 34 percent conservative, 12 percent other, and 6 percent liberals. Thousand Oaks has more conservatives than anywhere else: 40 percent.

Considering that we've now elected the second Republican-majority Congress in a row, along with a president who claims that he is a recovering liberal, it is fair to say that today's moderate was probably yesterday's conservative. Any way you slice it, Ventura County is conclusively a predominantly conservative place.

So why are there so few conservative voices carried in our local media? Like a modern Diogenes, one can travel from one end of this county to the other in search of an honest conservative commentator. It's like trying to find a needler in a liberal haystack.

Yet a review of the coverage of local news and politics reveals a persistently liberal viewpoint in both story selection and editorial opinion.

Exhibit A: Campaign funding ``funneled'' from right-wing sources - bad. Campaign funding ``support'' from left-wing sources - good.

Exhibit B: NRA comes to the aid of local gun owners - bad. ACLU comes to the aid of local students - good.

The only consistently conservative opinion, it seems, is seen in the letters to the editor section of the newspapers, which may be the real voice of the people.

Unlike many, I don't think this results from a media conspiracy against conservatives. The truth is much worse than that: It's unintentional.

The basic problem isn't a matter of the media's conclusions, it's a matter of their assumptions. The press operates in a setting where liberal presumptions are the norm and a moderate Democrat is, well, a conservative. (I know: I used to be a journalism major.) Fairness consists in arguing about the margins - a real examination of the underlying principles of an issue is almost never given. Reporters don't notice their own biases because liberalism envelops their surrounding work environment, the way a fish doesn't notice it's in water.

Take the commonly discussed topic of federal government programs, for example. Debate always centers on the pros and cons of a given issue - whether Washington should require teens to be drug tested before getting a driver's license; whether it should increase the minimum wage; or whether it should regulate tobacco sales.

But almost no one in the media asks a more fundamental question, whether the federal government has the authority to enact any of these programs. They simply assume that it does. It doesn't occur to them that there is an entirely different side to these issues: Namely, whether this vast centralization of power which has been usurped by the federal government over the last 50 years might be unconstitutional. They miss this aspect because of their own inclination toward government intervention, a tendency so ingrained they are not even conscious of it.

Political analysts as far back as Cicero have recognized that the best safeguard of freedom is an active and vigorous public debate about the preservation of a nation's ideals. But we can't have a real debate if one side controls the participants and narrowly defines the grounds upon which the discussion takes place. Encounters always conducted on one side's turf are bound to be lopsided; it's like having to play each game on the other team's home field.

Maybe too much is made of the liberal leanings of the press. After all, despite all this, the country continues its rightward drift. But it just seems a little funny that an industry that celebrates diversity in race and gender has so little of it when it comes to opinion. For conservatives in our local media, even in what is demonstrably a conservative county, every contest is an away game.