Wing Nuts and Alleged Media Bias

In an article for publication in tomorrow's Washington Post, the ombudsman of that newspaper, Deborah Howell, tries to explain the difference between the perception of the so-called liberalism of the media and the actual practice. You can read the whole thing here. There is one point, however, that I would like to bring up.

In the article, Ms. Howell mentions the persistent conservative claim that the media has a liberal bias. On certain issues, that may very well be the case, especially social issues. Journalism tends to attract those who are idealistic and want to change the world, for lack of a better description. This idealism does not necessarily mean that the average reporter will be willing to overlook transgressions by similar idealistic people. Corruption is corruption wherever you go, and the best reporters are the ones that follow the story, even if it means that the target of the story is another would-be world changer.

A couple of weeks ago, on my way home from work, I found myself stuck in traffic on the Garden State Parkway. Having nothing better to do at the moment and not being particularly enamored of the music then playing on any of the stations preset in my radio, I tuned into WABC-AM, the talk-radio station in New York. At that time, the Mark Levin show was on, and in the first fifteen or twenty seconds, the word "liberal" was mentioned in such a way that Mr. Levin practically sounded like it was a piece of bad food he had eaten and was in an awful hurry to spit it out.

My point is that those who often do the complaining about the media's alleged "liberal" bias are those who are quite biased themselves (and the same could be said for those on the far left of the media spectrum who think the media is too conservative), and unlike the print, television, and sometimes radio media they are in such a hurry to vilify, they have no obligation to present an opposing point of view. They are merely interested in preaching to the choir. Peering through such a narrow lens blinds them to their own narrow-minded point of view.