No Media Bias Here -- Part III

No Media Bias Here

Well, no there is....

I read this 2002 piece for Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting by some fellows named Steve Rendall and Peter Hart, who come to the studied conclusion that the mainstream media are no more liberal than the conglomerates that own them or the advertisers that pay their bills.

They cite as absolute proof two surveys done by Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting -- their employer! (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting is neither, from what I can tell.)

The article reads like parody. One laughable charge involves a CBS Evening News report on a flat-tax proposal. The story was one-sided, giving no time to flat-tax supporters, but was it really proof of liberal bias?

A story with flat tax opponents and no flat tax supporters is not biased? This is what the writers consider "fair" and "accurate"?

I think I would put more stock in Michael Malone's piece on ABCNews.com:

Meanwhile, I watched with disbelief as the nation's leading newspapers, many of whom I'd written for in the past, slowly let opinion pieces creep into the news section, and from there onto the front page. Personal opinions and comments that, had they appeared in my stories in 1979, would have gotten my butt kicked by the nearest copy editor, were now standard operating procedure at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and soon after in almost every small town paper in the U.S.

Should I take the word of a man who has worked at Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Fortune and Forbes? Or from two guys who wrote books bashing Rush Limbaugh and Fox News' Bill O'Reilly...