Bias?

Apologizes, all around. We haven't quite hit midterm elections yet, which means it's time to start talking presidents after bush. To get the party started, let's consider the follow verifiable fact.

The mass media press is biased.

I think we can all agree on that. I mean, look at the record. How can there be any contention? In the past six or seven years, they've routinely sided with the presidential candidate of one party and derided the presidential candidate of the other. They've devoted thousands of words to misunderstanding and lies about one party's candidate and maintained that the candidate of the other party was open and honest, regardless of actual history and reality.

Anyone see where I'm going with this one yet? Allow me to continue.

They've smeared one candidate's name through the mud for being, not only a liar, but a bad liar, though this candidate never once lied in any of the circumstances he was painted.

They helped make a war hero look like a monster in two opposing ways. First, they put in the mass media echo chamber the idea that he hated our troops and almost singlehandedly made the Viet Cong prison camps effective. Then, they managed to turn around and lead credence to the idea that he WAS an evil troop member, who shot innocent kids in the back.

Sure, these ideas may have originated from others, but LOTS of weird ideas are out there. It takes the mass media for anyone to know about them.

They completely ignored the scandal, profiteering, and possible insider trading of the candidate for the team they like, just to fit their ridiculously biased story that he was so "open, honest, and fun." Where they acted as the ultimate in echo chambers for lies and general dishonesty against the other team, for this team they breathed hardly a whisper of any wrong doing.

And it continues today. The two leading candidates for the 2008 election are on opposite sides. Ironically, I kinda like both of them, but the press obviously doesn't. Consider: The first candidate has been married to the same person for an adult life time. The second has been divorced once. The divorced candidate went on to marry a wealthy heiress, which allowed the candidate to finance a political career. The first candidate didn't exactly start out poor, but earned a great deal of wealth the old fashioned way: the candidate and spouse worked for it.

Naturally, if you just heard this, and you knew that the press was biased, you'd know exactly whose sex life they'd go after. The divorced one? Of course not. They're gonna go after the sex life of the continuously married couple. They're gonna paint the rigor and hard work of one candidate as ugly and unpleasant.

Why? It's simple. The press is as biased as they come.

I'm not going to bother wondering why. Maybe the press identifies w/ the side they are reporting against, and so the press does not want to be seen as pandering. Or maybe pandering to the other side is simply a monetary issue, as Noam Chomsky would have us believe in his book Manufacturing Consent.

I don't know, and I'm not willing to get into that argument. I'm only willing to state one thing for certain.

In recent presidential elections, the Mass Media (including the NY Times, the Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, the LA Times, and, obviously, Fox news) has been biased...

...against the liberals.


(thanks go to Jamison Foser for his excellent article "Media Matters" in which he provides most all of the research in this post)

Edit: Also, sorry. I promise I'll write about that other stuff tomorrow.