Reading news coverage from Houston's former newspaper of record one could be forgiven for thinking it's been the Texas Republicans on a 20-year victory drought and not, as is reality, Texas Democrats.
From glowing opinion pieces about the relative strength of the two top of ticket "sisters" to gushing news/opinion pieces about the star turn of Wendy! Davis to fawning news/opinion coverage of a group of "rising stars" that discuss all things perceived (by the reporters) as "good" about the candidates and fail to mention that they still are traveling along policy paths repeatedly rejected by 55-60% of Texas voters. One wonders why Texas Democrats haven't been dominating the electorate in recent years.
Contrast that with Chronicle coverage of the Texas State GOP convention where even resounding victories are cast in ominous tones and typical policy skirmishes are treated as political disasters and you might wonder how this GOP Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight ever won an election in the first place.
Granted, it's easier to provide fawning coverage on ideas where you're ideologically in-sync and very hard to be neutral when you stand opposed. This has always been proof-of-case for those who claim a "liberal bias" in the media. Those who oppose the idea of any bias choose to frame the argument in terms of party ID, picking up any story that's moderately negative toward their party of choice as being the ending point in an argument that there is no bias.
Both sides are wrong, of course, because the entire issue of bias in media is more nuanced than a single-issue story here or a anti-party story there. The issue encompasses ALL media stories and requires viewing them as trends, over a long time frame.
When doing this it is very clear that the Houston Chronicle, both editorially and in their so-called "hard news" coverage of politics, clearly falls closer to the left on political issues than the right. The problem with ALL of their coverage however is that they, and many other members of the Texas Lock Step Political Media, fail to take into account anything even remotely approaching an ideological spectrum.
To the editorial and news-gathering staff of the Chronicle you are either a fire-breathing member of the Tea Party/extreme-right-wing, a member of the sensible GOP establishment, or you are a common-sense, moderate liberal with the State's best interest at heart. In the world of the TLSPM, there can be no blurring of these lines because that runs against the political orthodoxy which has been established by Burka the Clown, Slater the Rove-Obsessed, Greider the Newly Risen Star and other political wonks who have made a good living pretty much getting it wrong for the last 20 (or so) years.
There are three main reasons the TLSPM is so off-base when reporting on their primary topic:
The TLSPM doesn't have the kind of access to conservatives that they enjoy with Republican moderates and (most) Democrats. Limitation of access leads to reporting by heresy and reporting of this type is typically incomplete. That most, not all, reporters are transcribers rather actual fact-finders (as Kevin Whited of Blog Houston calls them, secretarial journalists) results in too many reporters practicing journalism behind a desk, which most often results in bad reporting.
When you couple ideological homogenization with an incurious reporting mind, you quite often end up with reporting on issues that is incapable of providing proper context. Too often the news gathering organizations focus on diversity of bodies than they do diversity of opinion. When this is the case reporting on issues becomes blatantly one-sided and opens itself up to criticism. It also leads to shoddy editing, allowing politically charged statements to slip through the editorial net unaltered.
Finally, when you couple lack of access, intellectual laziness and a lack of diversity in perspective with the idea that experience automatically equals expertise, you get a full picture of the failures of the TLSPM. When you hear a reporter suggest that they are an authority because they have "X experience covering" any issue that's your key to tune them out when they start opining about what "should" happen. I've been watching Formula One racing for most of my adult life. You should not mistake this to mean that I could hop into a F1 car tomorrow and complete a lap at speed without plowing it in to the wall at Casino Square. Nor could I, as a Texas political blogger of almost a decade, tell you how the state education system can best be fixed. While I have strong opinions on the same and I vote for candidates who support those opinions, that doesn't mean that I consider myself an expert. Unfortunately, many members of the TLSPM clearly do. This leads to them dismissing potentially workable ideas out of hand and, usually, not giving them proper coverage or column inches.
In a way a lot of the reporting you are seeing today is due to boredom. There is nothing a political reporter wants more than a competitive race with lots of scandal, regardless of who eventually ends up winning. The excitement over King Dan Patrick vs. Van De Putte isn't about a liberal media being hopeful that Van de Putte will win. It's more about the TLSPM (many of them who are rooting for VdP FWIW) hoping beyond hope that controversy, a mild amount of hilarity and some mild demagoguery might make for some easy copy and provide good column inches.
King Dan is an easy target, one that even I can make use of. That it's been enough to create an overarching theme that Texas Dems are on the verge of a comeback shows just how shallow political reporting talent pool is. Right now all we have to go on are the words of a few political journalists who are being very secretarial, reporting the Democratic talking point that "demographics are destiny" despite numbers that reveal no evident trend to support this. Why repeat the lie? For one, it's what they're being told and they're too lazy to do some digging. (Plus, it just sounds right) Most importantly however this provides them hope that one day they will get to cover one of the larger shifts in political history. It doesn't matter which Democrat wins, just that one does, someday perhaps.
Until then the educated voter is going to have to continue navigating the bumpy swells of Texas politics with little help from the TLSPM. This would suggest a rise in the alternative media but just as it's needed most we're seeing signs that it's on the verge of either falling away or becoming just another one of many party house organs, which does no one much good.
None of the above should be read to say that Texas Democrats should have no hope. During their convention, when they attempt to put on their best face to the voters, of course they should. I would just say that it's curious to focus on one party singing Kum-bai-yah while suggesting that the party riding the winning streak is falling apart at the seams. Curious and disingenuous, Texas voters deserve better.
