What Else? Media Bias

Radio Equalizer finds the MSM once again quite predictable as to what it regards as an "interesting" story.

The Air America scandal has only been mentioned by the usual conservative suspects-- Washington Times, New York Post, New York Sun. And the story is growing more, not less, scandalous. Quoting from Captain Ed's article in the Weekly Standard (link at Radio Equalizer):

One would expect that mainstream journalists would want to take advantage of this opportunity to cover this harmonic convergence: A greedy corporation had taken a half-million dollars of city grant money from two certifiably sympathetic and traditional victim groups in order to pay off its already-wealthy employees.

...

After speaking with the president of the charity's executive committee, Jeanette Graves, the Sun's David Lombino discovered that the CEO in question got the loans using rubber-stamp replicas of Ms. Graves's signature on documents never seen by her.

Meanwhile, in St. Louis, a pair of hip-hop DJ's have called, on the air, for attacking police, suggesting the best manner of doing so (step one: grab their radios so they can't call for back-up as you assault or kill them), and not a peep from anyone in the MSM.

Conservatives and liberals are each animated by different sorts of stories. We both are selectively interested in stories that reinforce our world-view, or underscore what we believe to be the pressing problems of the day. This is ordinary and human.

But liberals cannot continue maintaining they can pack their newsrooms with almost nothing but blue-state liberals and manage something even close to a balanced coverage of the news. Liberals' antennae naturally only twitter when they detect certain kinds of stories. That is, I guess, excusable, but what is not excusable is that they soon become aware of stories they missed for the first time as they weren't looking for that sort of story and yet continue to embargo them, knowing full well that at least half the country is interested in that story... or would be, were they to lower themselves to report on it.

They claim to have the mission of informing the public, but they only want to inform part of the public, and they only want to inform them of stories that seem to advance the liberal cause.

It's been said over and over, but once again, this time with feeling: There's nothing wrong with a partisan press. One could make the case that such a press is more vibrant and more engaged in the battle of ideas than our supposedly objective press.

But a partisan press masquerading as an objective one is simply a lie. And a lie that is hurting the political debate.

posted by Ace at 12:59 PM

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