(Thomas Lipscomb, Oregon Magazine's Berlin Bureau Chief, grew up in the beaver state, then went on to fame and fortune in the Big Apple.  One of his favorite memories of Oregon has to do with passing out programs at Civic Stadium, and so getting to see the old Portland Beaver baseball games for free.  His last corporate job was as the president ot the New York Times book division.  These days, besides serving as our chief correspondent in Europe, he is a columnist whose opinions appear in the major newspapers and magazines in America.)

In the last few weeks, it has become embarrassingly clear that federal government attorneys and employees at agencies as diverse as the Department of the Treasury, the Department of the Interior, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, have been systematically destroying documents to stymie litigation and investigations directly resulting from their actions as public servants.

From a century¹s failure to pay billions of dollars due to Indian tribes by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the Environmental Protection Agency phonying up an "endangered species" field test with fake lynx hairs, many agencies and departments of our government can no longer be trusted to act in a deliberate and impartial manner. Worst of all, as Deroy Murdock has pointed
out, while white collar executives are finally getting the punishment they deserve, these misdeeds and others by federal employees have gone unpunished.

Ironically, these actions come at a time when Congress' primary purpose seems to be attempting to federalize everything from airport security personnel to neighborhood schools to prescription drug prices at corner drugstores. The incidents cited above have two things in common: They were ignored by most of the press and they were alleged to be committed under theClinton Administration.

The illegal possession of less than 10 confidential FBI background files of political "enemies:  led to an appropriate media outcry that ended in jail sentences for Nixon administration officials. But 25 years later, the intentional entry of over 900 FBI background files of political opponents into a far more sophisticated Democratic Party computerized database in the Clinton White House led to yawns from press and television reporters willing to accept the most transparent representations of "an honest mistake."  Has a
double standard indicative of a broad liberal bias among news outlets gradually crept into place?

From the earliest years of the American republic, when an indignant President Washington tried to single-handedly override the First Amendment rights enjoyed by his critics in the press and throw them in jail, the government has had to endure a vigorous press. Media coverage led the way over the years on vital political issues including women¹s suffrage, union representation, civil rights, the Nixon impeachment, and the Vietnam War.  Adolph Ochs bought the struggling New York Times in 1896 so that his
newspaper could pursue a policy of news coverage "without fear or favor," an objective that influenced many papers for many years.

But a recent Pew Center poll shows confidence in both print and broadcast news is declining "from 80% of the public in 1985 to 60% in 2000."  The majority of those polled in the Pew study agreed with the statement that "The people who decide what to put on TV news or in the newspapers are out of touch with people like me."

Another Pew Center study showed that 57% of national journalists and 51% of local journalists agreed that "Journalists have become out of touch with their audiences." Yet there is little evidence that journalists have acted upon their perception.

And it gets harder to get in touch with local markets as more and more news media are collapsed into the 15 giant companies that now control more than 70% of American press and broadcast outlets. Cutbacks in staffing and homogenization of content are keys to profitability with advertising revenues - which are directly related to circulation and consumer confidence - plunging.

Perhaps most troubling is the evidence that the percentage of 18- to 29-year-olds reading newspapers every day dropped from "47% in 1972 to 18% in 2000."

For some reason, left out of this and other studies is any attempt to find out whether a perceived political bias in news reporting is related to this dramatic drop in both readership and the perceived value of the news coverage.

Number one on The New York Time¹s national bestseller list this week is "Slander," by Ann Coulter. Miss Coulter may be without fear, but her favor is almost exclusively given to conservative policies. And yet her attack on liberal media bias is obviously attractive to a large market. It is the third nonfiction book in the past two years on a leftward slant to American news outlets that made the bestseller lists. Bernard Goldberg¹s "Bias" made number one even though the market for hardcover nonfiction book buyers
remains among the most politically liberal in the nation.

Despite determined attempts to compete with the Fox News Network by CNN and MSNBC, Fox¹s lead continues to grow. With fewer station and cable system outlets than CNN, Fox News still draws more actual viewers. Meanwhile, erosion at the traditional network Sunday news shows continues.

This doesn¹t surprise maverick media critic Camille Paglia. In a recent interview with Andrew Sullivan she says: "I loathe this trend of anointing partisan political consultants to host news shows. Hence two programs I used to watch - ABC¹s 'This Week' and CNN¹s 'Crossfire' - have dropped off the list for me." Ms. Paglia¹s problem was the lack of objectivity of their hosts ‹ former Clinton campaign and White House aides George Stephanopolous
and Paul Begala.

Is there any relationship between the plummeting consumer interest in media and a leftward drift in media content? CBS¹s Andy Rooney believes it exists. Most on-air media personalities, like Dan Rather, deny it. But as ABC¹s John Stossel put it, "If you ask a fish about the water surrounding it, it is likely to reply: 'Water? What water?'"  For worried media executives, it might be well worth finding out.

Mr. Lipscomb, tom@digitalfuture.org, whose articles appear in many
publications from the New York Times to the American Spectator, is chairman of the Center for the Digital Future.

© 2002 Thomas Lipscomb