Some of you will disagree strongly with what I write here. Which is cool. All I ask is that you please read the diary before flaming me in the comments.
I think something is often missed in our conversations about bias: Everyone is biased. I am. You are. We all come to the table with our own cultural influences and life experiences. And our leanings often change as life happens to us.
I, for example, used to trend slightly right of center on average, though left of center on some social issues. I have moved measurably left since I adopted my mildly disabled daughter; while now left of center, I am still probably noticeably to the right of the average on this site (while remaining WAY off to the left of, for example, the folks at RedState.com).
What does this have to do with the media? Come with me...
For us to expect individual media folks to be unbiased is unrealistic - remember, in my view everyone is biased. To expect the media to make a concerted effort to set bias aside and be objective is, on the other hand, absolutely necessary. That, along with a quest for the objective truth, was once the minimum standard of journalism.
To be fair, some of the media don’t even try - there’s no other accounting for Fox News. Or Barbara West (of recent Biden interview fame). So why do I insist that the media in general isn’t as biased as you think? Several reasons:
First, much of the strongest rhetoric comes from commentary programs. These aren’t news, they are editorial. From the Princeton Wordnet definition of editorial: "of or relating to an article stating opinions or giving perspectives". So, whether it’s Keith Olbermann or Bill O’Reilly (I know, boo hiss), statement of opinion on an editorial program is fair game. Our problem as a culture is that we’ve forgotten how to differentiate editorial from news reporting.
Second, and this is the one I’m afraid is going to get me flamed, the center is pretty far to the right of the average reader of this site. So it is possible for news coverage that seems pretty right-slanted to you to be fairly close to on-center. I have seen bloggers here up in arms over the right-wing slant, and bloggers at RedStates up in arms over the left-hand slant of the same programs. Chris Matthews takes a big hit on this one, depending on whether he’s beating up a Republican or a Democrat. Truth is, Chris just likes to beat folks up (or let them hang themselves) – it’s why he calls his show "Hardball".
Finally, and here’s the kicker, the media have on average and over a period of time been somewhat to the left of center. So they have started making sure they give the talking points for both sides, without judgment and no matter how bizarre. If they show a positive on Obama, they’ll let Tucker Bounds in there with a rebuttal – and vice-versa. By and large, the media, especially the television media, don’t bother digging for the real truth anymore – everyone’s version of the truth is given equal weight. Give them a panel of one Republican, one Democrat and an on-screen reporter discussing party positions on the issue, and you’ve got the current version of "fair and balanced news".
Which is bunk; but pretty much equal-opportunity bunk. The problem there isn’t bias, it’s a decline in the quality of reporting overall.
And sometimes the issue is good old-fashioned journalistic integrity. Here are two recent examples where actual journalistic integrity seemed to the right-wing crowd to be media bias in our favor:
Why didn’t most of the major media outlets (again, I except Fox) report the Ashley Todd episode until it was debunked, but cover it in high rotation once it was? Because it seemed like a hoax to them from the get-go and they didn’t want to advance it, but after it was debunked the hoax itself was legitimate news.
We were glad for the patience in this case. But ask yourselves this: if it had been an African American Obama supporter making a similar claim against a hypothetical white-supremacist McCain follower, would some here have screamed to the high hills because the story wasn’t picked up by the MSM immediately? Especially in light of what’s gone on at the McCain-Palin rallies? Please reflect before answering that.
And, as the right-wingers are screaming right now, "Why, oh, why, isn’t the MSM flogging the excerpts we have of the Obama NPR interview? They’re in the tank for the left." No, actually, when you listen to the snippets in context it’s clear there’s no "there" there. So there hasn’t been much coverage.
But I’ve seen similar things decried on this and other left-leaning sites, on just as flimsy a pretext, as showing MSM bias because they weren’t reported. Stories about Palin’s baby being actually being Bristol’s, for example, or Palin belonging to the Alaska Independence Party (Todd did, she didn’t), and more. When there’s actually turned out to be something there, the stories have gotten coverage. Maybe not the kind of coverage we’d give them if we ran the world, but again not the kind of coverage the folks from RedState would have given them either. Which is probably fair.
By some informed evaluations, in fact, John McCain is getting the brunt of the negative media coverage. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, I know. And we, of course, think it’s been justified. But it does frame my point: media bias is often (though obviously not exclusively) in the eye of the beholder.