MONMOUTH, Ill. — With the presidential election less than two weeks away, those who attended the October meeting of Monmouth Associates on the Monmouth College campus got to hear some timely insight on the media’s role in election coverage.

The speaker was Joe Angotti, visiting distinguished professor of communication at MC, who was a producer for NBC News for 20 years. He was an integral part of the network’s coverage of several presidential campaigns and, starting in 1976, served as the network’s chief political producer of election specials.

At the start of his talk, Angotti addressed the charge that a "liberal media" controls the major networks. While admitting there may be some truth to the allegation, he said it is a distortion, noting there is a much more serious problem regarding balanced coverage today – "point of view" journalism.

"The devil is in the ratings," he said. "Particularly in prime time, networks are more interested in giving the people what they want, not what they need." The networks, he said, have determined that "people want conflict, they want to be emotionally involved. They want people interrupting each other." The guest panelists, some of whom make six-figure incomes above and beyond their regular salaries, "play their roles and are contentious."

Regarding a liberal bias, Angotti said it’s true that many media members "pay more attention to the minority and disadvantaged than we should. Some people would then conclude that mainstream media has a liberal bias … Media point out things that are not going right. If that’s a liberal bias, then I plead guilty."

Angotti also argued that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, with its "27 television stations, 12 networks" and scores of newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, has as much influence on the flow of the news as the liberal media. In particular, he cited the way that Fox News "sprang into action" when Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s "magic began to wear off." What followed, he said, was a "journalistic embarassment," as the network made a thinly-veiled attempt "to prop up a candidate."

Perhaps Angotti’s most telling observation regarding a liberal bias came from mail that NBC News received. He said that during one election, he vowed to keep all the mail the news division received, and he put it in two stacks – one that said the network was showing a bias for the Republicans, and another that indicated a Democratic bias. The stacks wound up being "just about even."

"Viewers saw the same words and the same pictures and reached a different conclusion," he said.