6 Comments Add your own

• 1. Mike Carroll  |  November 17th, 2008 at 4:00 pm

  I don’t know if this is a thread hijack or not but the topic seems appropriate.
  “[S]ome of the conservatives’ complaints about a liberal tilt are valid. Journalism naturally draws liberals; we like to change the world. I’ll bet that most Post journalists voted for Obama. I did. . . . Are there ways to tackle this? More conservatives in newsrooms and rigorous editing would be two. The first is not easy: Editors hire not on the basis of beliefs but on talent in reporting, photography and editing, and hiring is at a standstill because of the economy. But newspapers have hired more minorities and women, so it can be done” — Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell, in an article called “Remedying the Bias Perception.”

• 2. Pat Cunningham  |  November 17th, 2008 at 5:36 pm

  Mike: A lot of what conservatives consider a liberal bias in the media is simply a matter of fact. Conservatives howled about “liberal bias” when the media reported the facts about Vietnam or Watergate or Bush’s war in Iraq. Some Southerners howled about “liberal bias” when the media reported on the effects of Jim Crow laws. Some Catholics howled about “liberal bias” when the media reported on the pedophilia scandal among priests. “Liberal bias” is the default complaint among conservatives whenever the media report on anything that is unflattering to the conservative cause. This isn’t to say that the media don’t make mistakes. They make lots of them, and some of those mistakes actually are beneficial to the conservative cause. That’s why liberals, too, often complain about inaccuracies in media reports.

  But I defy anybody to cite for me a period in American history when the media were mostly fair, balanced and objective in their coverage of the news. Some people labor under the misassumption that the Founding Fathers envisioned objective news media when they wrote Freedom of the Press into the First Amendment. In truth, the Founding Fathers had no notion whatever of media objectivity. The very concept of objectivity was unknown in most media until the 20th century. The newspapers the Founding Fathers read were invariably biased toward one political view or another.

• 3. Billybeermonicagar  |  November 17th, 2008 at 9:02 pm

  I think for the most part journalists remember their high school Quill and Scroll days. I think it was something like they would promise to search out the truth and recorded it as such. The problem is that too many ‘journalists’ think that the truth is their point of view.

• 4. Mike Carroll  |  November 18th, 2008 at 8:17 am

  “Liberal bias is the default complaint among conservatives whenever the media report on anything that is unflattering to the conservative cause. ”
  Pat-I will grant you the above, as well as your historical argument regarding objective media, but the point of my post remains valid. When the ombudsman for the Washington Post admits to liberal bias in the MSM, the argument is over. Liberal bias exists in the media. I would just like to see Liberals, Patrick, be honest enough to admit it.

• 5. Mike Carroll  |  November 18th, 2008 at 8:20 am

  Pat-I posted the above at 7:17 am but it shows as 8:17 am. Is your site somehow tied to the Eastern time zone which, of course, is elitist and liberal.
  Tongue in cheek.

• 6. Juice  |  November 18th, 2008 at 5:58 pm

  Why don’t we ever here the term “liberal” EVER on the national TV broadcasts? Why do liberals move to the center to get elected? Aren’t they proud? or just afraid of backlash. Good news for liberal leaders in 2008 is they have the 40% that don’t contribute to the tax base eating out of their hands and waiting for more handouts. Amazingly gullible, stupid, do-nothing people are the new reality for the USA. Some call it the “dumbing of society” and eventually they are the majority. It happened about 10 years sooner than I thought.

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