How, then, should I process claims that all the bias is on the left?
By thinking the speaker must be very far to the right?
But seriously, when people loosely speak of the "media" being biased to the left, they are looking at the bias of the media heavyweights: BBC, NYT, WaPo, LaTimes, Boston Globe, CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN. These still hold the lion's share of the media market. Fox, WSJ, WaTimes, NYPost, talk radio and assorted bloggers don't begin to equal the throw weight of the first group. And that group frames its stories in a generally soft-left manner; their stance is noticeably to the left of the American people as a whole if you compare them to poll results (or voting results, for that matter. If only the employes of the first group had voted in 2000, how big do you think Gore's win would have been?). Just look at where the first group stands on the question of Rumsfeld resigning vis-a-vis the results of the Gallup poll, to take one instance. |
