THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, February 23, 1995 TAG: 9502230346
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL SIZEMORE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 80 lines
The ``liberal media'' is a mantra that conservatives have chanted for years. But as they bask in the glow of a Republican takeover of Congress, conservatives are showing signs of ascendancy in the world of mass communications.
Among those in the vanguard is syndicated columnist Cal Thomas, who will deliver the keynote speech when Regent University in Virginia Beach plays host tonight to a conference for student journalists.
Thomas believes Christian journalists can help bring about a spiritual reawakening in America. That's just what the nation needs, he said, but he doesn't expect it to come from Washington.
``I think it's wrong to promise people we're going to have trickle-down morality just by electing someone to the White House,'' he said. ``The problem is that we've turned our backs on God. I think the political process is the last place you look for change.''
How far have conservatives come in the media? Consider:
Thomas' column now appears in more than 350 newspapers nationwide, including The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star, and he hosts a twice-weekly cable TV talk show.
In a 1993 study, the Times Mirror Center for The People & The Press found that almost half of Americans now listen to talk radio on a relatively regular basis, and that conservatives are twice as likely as liberals to be regular listeners.
Conservative broadcasters can put immense pressure on the political system: When legislation was identified last year as a threat to parents who school their children at home, Christian psychologist James Dobson stirred a flood of 500,000 phone calls to members of Congress from listeners to his ``Focus on the Family'' radio program.
One sign that conservative journalists have arrived at a new pinnacle of power may be that they are allowing themselves the luxury of internal squabbling.
Thomas, for example, takes issue with his fellow columnist Patrick Buchanan for jumping the fence from journalism to politics - not once but twice.
``Somebody said everybody ought to be allowed one trip over to the other side, but then they have to grow up,'' Thomas said. ``I think it's bad for journalism to have a revolving door to politics, whether it's Democratic or Republican politics.''
Thomas says his own spiritual awakening delivered him from despair after he was fired from a job at NBC. He then spent five years working for the Rev. Jerry Falwell's now defunct Moral Majority, which sought to mobilize evangelical Christians on political issues.
What he learned, he said, can be summed up in a comment by Chuck Colson, the convicted Watergate conspirator who had a religious conversion in prison: ``The kingdom of God is not going to arrive on Air Force One.''
Now that they have wrested control of Congress, Thomas said, ``conservatives are making the same mistake that liberals did: putting their faith in institutions to deliver us from our collective ills. More money didn't solve poverty, and more prisons aren't going to solve crime.
``Sounds almost moderate, doesn't it?'' Thomas said.
When he meets with the student journalists at Regent tonight, Thomas will offer himself as a living contradiction of a monolithic ``liberal media'' where religious conservatives are unwelcome.
That characterization has become a stereotype, said Ben Taylor, a Regent student who edits The Paper, a publication of the university's school of journalism.
The stereotype persists, he said, thanks in part to attacks on the media by people like Pat Robertson, the Virginia Beach religious broadcaster who founded the college Taylor attends.
``I think the way that Pat Robertson has made it sound is that the media is out to slant every story toward a liberal agenda, and I really don't see it as such,'' Taylor said.
Thomas has some advice for would-be journalists on the religious right.
``The trouble is that conservatives treat the bias and the closed doors as a fait accompli, and so they don't go into journalism. I think that's a mistake,'' Thomas said. ``Conservatives have got to stop cursing the darkness and start plotting strategies to penetrate it.'' by CNB