June 09, 2006

Bias Most Foul (UPDATED)

Conservatives have long known that the so-called mainstream media have a liberal bias that has only recently been offset somewhat by the rise of talk radio and rightwing blogs.

Apparently, talking points were distributed in the past year or so instructing liberals to argue that, in fact, the MSM is completely objective, or that, if bias is present, it doesn't tilt to either left or right in the aggregate. It's all reminiscent of the Left's love affair with the monster Stalin, denying his true nature even as his score of murdered peasants surpassed even Hitler's grisly record of innocent victims.

Well, for you folks on the Left who see the American Press as the epitome of evenhandedness, you've got some 'splainin' to do. If perceptions of media bias are false, then it should be no challenge at all for the lefties to find their own examples of right-leaning bias. Specifically, find examples of equal or greater prominence that offset the following blatant examples of leftwing bias:

Dan Rather
Eason Jordan
Mark Halperin
Linda Foley

Statistically speaking, three examples indicate a trend; let's add a couple more. Where are the right-biased incidents that offset these:

Calling Florida for Gore in 2000 before the polls in the heavily Republican panhandle were closed.

Eight months of nightly Katrina coverage on NBC.

The MSM embargo on video from the al Qaeda terror attacks on September 11, 2001.

Cross-posted at The Dread Pundit Bluto.

UPDATE: The purpose of this post was not only to point out the sorry state of what passes today for journalism, but to expose the dishonesty and disingenuousness of the Left. The "question" posed was a trick question. There are no "examples of equal or greater prominence" for the ones listed. One might as well demand the name of the American leader who was the equal of Hitler for villainy (and, of course, the Left's lunatic fringe would shout, "George Bush!").

I'm delighted to see that at least one commenter failed to see this Fool's Mate, and embarrassed himself with minor and imagined examples of Righty journalistic perfidy, only to be contradicted by one of his comrades who ascribed the gross liberal bias of the mainstream American Press to the free market. Actually, the free market explains the rise of talk radio, Fox News (which comes closer to unbiased reporting than any other network outlet), and the right side of the blogosphere. As did Mel Gibson in Hollywood, these people found a ready market. The free market also explains the precipitous drop in network news viewership and the dire straits many major daily newspapers find themselves in today.

This same commenter claims that American journalism has always mixed commentary with reporting. Not so. The real decline in American journalism began with the acceptance and codification of "interpretive reporting" in the sixties, devolved further into "advocacy journalism", and, one hopes, has reached its nadir in "agenda journalism".

The state of journalism today is not necessarily the result of intentionally evil motives or hard conspiracy. It's the outcome of editors, themselves liberals, choosing to hire reporters who also self-identify as liberal. When accused of bias, journalists tend to circle the wagons and deny the obvious, rather than taking positive steps to correct the problem. Ernie Pyle's unabashed patriotism (and recognition that true journalism was protected by the US Constitution) is out of style, but journalists can't bring themselves to admit that Edward R. Murrow, who is revered, was more a politican than a journalist, and abandoned objectivity in his war with McCarthy.

The solution is what is actually happening now. The market demands a counter to the obvious, yet unacknowledged, liberal bias of the traditional media. They are getting it, and people are making money by fulfilling that need.

It's just nice, now and then, to rub the Left's noses in their own disingenuity when they claim that ABC, NBC, and CBS are unbiased.