Those silly conservatives. They actually believe, as do a majority of Americans, that journalists want Barack Obama to win and are writing that way to achieve the desired results. But conservatives know that the bias isn't just about Barack Obama; it is pervasive and covers a variety of issues.
But according to Matthew Yglesias, we're all delusional. There's no liberal bias in the press because:
1. A former Republican congressman has a program on CNN.
2. William Kristol has a column in the New York Times.
3. The NYT published another opinion piece on media bias in election coverage.
4. Media Matters says so.
Seriously. Yglesias gets paid good money to write this stuff? I'm amazed at the willful blindness of the Left when it comes to bias. So, I'll repeat this slowly: having a couple of conservative columnists--whose opinions are left on the Opinion page--does not make up for the bias in reporting on display on any given day on any given issue.
It's really pathetic when someone who holds himself out as knowledgable uses the tired old canard that "everybody has biases." The difference is that journalists are supposedly taught to minimize their biases in their writing. Most people accept that we all have subconscious opinions, but we don't expect news stories to have deliberate bias, such as the decisions about placement, graphics, headlines, and substance.
I honestly expect better arguments than these from "respected" bloggers on the Left. To argue that allowing a former Republican to have a cable program proves there's no media bias is hopelessly shallow and silly. Do we get to itemize every single television show that has a liberal and/or Democrat at the helm as proof of bias? Does Yglesias consider The Daily Show or The Colbert Report examples of liberal bias? Does Yglesias count the nightly news programs from ABC, CBS and NBC? Do we get to tabulate every columnist as another example of liberal bias?
My guess is that Yglesias and the moonbats would say "no," using a variety of reasons for excluding one or the other of these examples. But arguing that The Daily Show is an example of liberal media is no less legitimate than saying that William Kristol's NYT column proves there is no bias.
Saddest of all was this comment down in the thread:
I think the ultimate demonstration of the lack of a liberal bias can be seen in the way the MSM has treated Palin. If a man or woman with her obvious lack of competence and compulsive propensity to continually spew outright lies had been the Democratic candidate for vice president, the MSM would have mercilessly mocked her, not dissimilar to the way it did Al Gore, who was clearly competent and, if one actually fact checked his public statements, was not prone to telling lies, despite the MSM’s disingenuous and biased attempts to claim otherwise.
Which universe do these people inhabit? If I used drugs, I'd want some of what that person is on!
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