I just viewed this hit piece on the Republican party (more accurately, a hit piece on Republican values):

After enduring a few minutes of shameless pandering to gullible liberals I perused other areas of the website and found this little snippet jumping out at me:

Most political news in America is influenced or controlled by the Republican right, who want you to falsely believe that the media has a liberal bias.

So tell me…who really controls the media?  Is it the liberals that right-wing radio talk show hosts tell me?  Or is it the conservatives of the Republican right?

I make no qualms about being partisan here, but I honestly don’t understand how you can actually believe that the major media outlets are controlled by the “Republican Right”, or right-wingers in general.  I am not a student of the news and this is one of the things that I find infuriating about the public discourse on the matter of media.  I’ve read (and heard) thoughtful commentary on how the media is largely biased toward the liberal side of the political spectrum.  When I read (or hear) comments about how the media is conservatively biased, the arguments seem shallow and reactionary (I hear choruses from the left shouting, “I’m not biased, you are!” or “I know you are, but what am I?”).

As far as I’ve noticed, the only major TV news outlet that has an even remotely conservative tilt is Fox.  The others just don’t come close to being balanced.  Their anchors and commentators come across sounding reasonable and balanced, because they are bland and non-judgmental in their presentation.  Unfortunately, the research that is done prior to appearing on screen is where all of the bias occurs.

Take for example the Joe the Plumber story compared to the Bill Ayers story.  We know a lot about both individuals.  The former because he had the audacity to have a conservative/libertarian type of question for Barack Obama that didn’t come in the normal bad-guy clothing of a scary Republican or talk show host.  The latter because he has a well documented criminal past.  To my knowledge there is no relationship between Joe the Plumber and John McCain so Joe’s influence on McCain’s presidential policies is probably limited at best to the sound bite “Spread the Wealth”.  However, we know that there is a close relationship with Obama and Ayers and that some of the influence of that relationship may even reveal to us some of what Obama’s policies might look like as president.  The first relationship dominates the major news outlets for days (even a week) ostensibly to get all the facts about who Joe the Plumber is and how his views impact the country.  The second relationship is largely ignored by the major news outlets and is only reported because the McCain campaign has actually mentioned the connections on the campaign trail (which is being over-reported, perhaps).

How does that figure into the claims of bias on both sides?  Like I said, I honestly can’t seem how people really believe that there is a generally conservative bias of the news media.  Interestingly, the aforementioned web site encourages readers to check out their news sources in more than one place (especially not TV).  When they list sources to investigate it’s one newspaper (the New York Times, of course), one radio program (NPR, of course), and two Internet sites (the BBC and the barely disguised leftist group, PIRG – Public Interest Research Group).  In other words, check out all the facts, but here is a select list of (left-leaning) places to get your facts.

How can the news be both conservatively and liberally biased?  Only in the minds of liberals who have given up thinking for themselves (probably during a mandatory diversity/sensitivity training course at college – in fairness to colleges, many high schools are helping to train liberals at a much younger age).

MW