Soccer Dad

The role of media bias

Tim Graham following the 2004 election:

There are two brakes on the arrogance of liberal media bias: One is declining ratings; the other is liberal politicians' losing and conservative politicians' winning. The message of popular resistance to the liberal media has been sent once again. We may be optimistic about the new makeup of Washington, but it makes no sense to be optimistic about the liberal media's recognizing their arrogance. We can only be optimistic that their meltdown continues.

I had figured that the 2008 would finally end the liberal media bias. I would have thought that $4.00 a gallon gas, the cost of environmentalism - one of the key platforms of today's media - would have made the electorate more skeptical of media reports on other topics. However media bias prevailed and the Republicans lost more seats and the presidency.

Jennifer Rubin writes:

As bad as the media bias was, I think it is incorrect to ascribe John McCain's loss to the MSM. Worse, it prevents Republicans from taking responsibility for their errors and from devising a more effective media plan in the future.

I agree to a point. But media bias persists as does its influence. (You figure with declining circulation afflicting the Washington Post and the New York Times contrasted with Rush Limbaugh's recent new deal, that Rush would be more influential.) Fighting media bias will be an essential part of future campaigns.

It's nice of Deborah Howell to kind of acknowledge acknowledge her paper's - the Washington Post - bias (via memeorandum) But as Hot Air notes:

Where was Howell during the last three months? Why wait until the election is over to speak up? That's an answer in itself.

But even as Howell acknowledges that her paper was tougher on Palin than on Biden, most of the rest of the column has a self congratulatory tone about all the things Howell claims that the Post did correctly.

(Clark Hoyt, BTW, didn't even acknowledge the bias of his paper, the New York Times, so I suppose this is progress. The Politico justified the bias arguing that because Sen. Obama's campaign was more successful than Sen. McCain's it got better coverage. Newsbuster threw some cold water on that.)

But one thing that was missing from Howell's column was an acknowledgment that a number of polls reported that most of the electorate sees the bias. (For example, this one.)

Maybe I should be glad when journalists tell us that the bias they feed us is for our own good.