Former reporter keeps eye out for media bias
By Dan Meisler
DAILY PRESS & ARGUS

The last straw for Judy Daubenmier, a veteran of more than 20 years as a reporter, came when she was helping to cover Proposal A for The Associated Press.

The complicated plan, completed in a late-night, Christmas Eve meeting in 1993, shifted the burden to pay for schools from property taxes to sales tax. As she worked on the story, another media outlet came out with a story on a dispute between lawmakers over parking spots.

An editor suggested that the reporters do more stories like
that — "cute stories ... light stories" — and that's when Daubenmier made her final decision to find another line of work.

"I didn't feel like that is what I was about," she said.

Since then, the Genoa Township resident has earned a doctorate degree in history from the University of Michigan; taught classes there; and contributed to a movie and a Web log monitoring the Fox News Channel for bias.

Her latest project, a book published in October called "Project Rewire, New Media from the Inside Out," is available for purchase on Amazon.com.

One of the main points of the book is that the multitude of blogs devoted to criticizing the media has the potential to improve the performance of the mainstream press and television news.

More specifically, Daubenmier said that for decades, conservatives have pushed the false idea that the media is biased toward the liberal point of view.

Now, through the Internet, liberals are highlighting conservative bias in the media.

"That's why I think the Internet has the potential for correcting that imbalance, because more people are criticizing the media for their performance," she said.

Daubenmier's examples of conservative media slant are the treatment of Al Gore when he was running for president in 2000 — when he was characterized as stretching the truth — and the proliferation of conservative talk radio shows.

Plus, when she started monitoring Fox News Channel for the Web site www.newshounds.com, she discovered what she said is reporting slanted to the conservatives.

"I didn't really know," she said. "It was kind of eye-opening."

Daubenmier said the war in Iraq prompted her to get involved with the Web site, and that she had never done anything political before.

She disputes the idea that her involvement in a liberal cause after leaving journalism proves there is a liberal bias in the mainstream media.

"It proves that liberals work in the media. There are conservatives in media. The question is, what is the quality of the output?" Daubenmier said.

Before coming to Michigan in 1988 and taking a job at the AP's Lansing bureau, Daubenmier reported for newspapers and the AP in Iowa, and a magazine in Kansas City.

She teaches classes in American Indian history at U-M, and her next book will be on that subject and is due to be published by the University of Nebraska Press, she said.