The former president of CBS News bemoaned a trend he says has become obvious in the national media in recent years.
Van Gordon Sauter, who ran CBS before serving in the same role at Fox News, said media outlets might behoove themselves to embrace any perceived bias instead of fighting it.
“Publications open about their bias might feel freer to focus on the specifics: story selection, presentation, facts, fairness, balance. Not devoid of subtlety for sure, but manageable,” Sauter wrote in an opinion article for the Wall Street Journal over the weekend. “But America won’t reunite until far more people can look at a news story in print or on the screen and, of all things, believe it.”
“News organizations that claim to be neutral have long been creeping leftward, and their loathing of Mr. Trump has accelerated the pace,” he wrote. “The news media is catching up with the liberalism of the professoriate, the entertainment industry, upscale magazines, and the literary world. Recent arrivals are the late-night TV hosts who have broken the boundaries of what was considered acceptable political humor for networks.”
Sauter argued that an apparent deviation from objective, fact-based reporting threatens the media’s long-held standing as an institution in American society.
“More important, how will a large segment of the public ever put stock in journalism it considers hostile to the country’s best interests? Unfortunately, dominant media organizations have bonded with another large segment of the public — one that embraces its new approach. Pulling back from anti-Trump activism could prove commercially harmful,” he said.