Time for a little Fisking

Our friend Nick over at the Conservative Librarian...oops. Libertarian Librarian, I mean... has jumped on his favorite hobby horse, media bias. I often comment over there, but have been criticized, on separate occasions, for A) not having any supporting references, and B) loading up a comment with references.

So I just thought I'd parse a recent post of his, over here, just for shits an giggles.


Of Deans and the MSM
As promised, I just did a search for editorials on Howard Dean's comments regarding Terri Schiavo in the exact same source I searched for editorials on the Martinez memo. It's been over two weeks since Dean made his comments, so anybody want to hazard a guess as to how many editorials there have been reprimanding Dean? Anybody?

Zero. None. Nada. Zilch.

Nope, no bias here. Interestingly, I did find this article about Dean and his somewhat unusual approach to reaching out to voters in Republican states.

Well, the linked article is about Dean referring to the GOP as 'brain dead'. Nick's snarky comment above presumes that voters in supposedly red states are more or less uniformly Republican. My feeling is that the Democratic or Independent voters in these states would just as soon change the perception of the area being monolithically Republican. The comment also presupposes that there was the intention to aim this at voters in the mythical Red States, or even that the comment was aimed at voters at all.

But let's face it: the die hard Republicans in these states aren't going to change their attitudes about Dean or Democrats. Further, it's not Dean's job to reach out to Republicans, any more than it's Ken Mehlman's job to reach out to Democrats. when was the Last time Ken-Buddy came to Milwaukee?

And finally, it seems to be both sides of the coin to be complaining in one paragraph that a comment by Dean did not get the negative attention it deserved, while in the next paragraph point out another comment being covered by the mainstream media.

In other Dean news-- John W. Dean, the self-same White House legal counsel during Watergate, was part of a panel at last month's L.A. Times Festival of Books, which was hosted at UCLA. I mention this because I saw the panel he was on while watching C-Span last week. He was dreadful. Now in his '60s, Dean made horrible jokes on a wide variety of topics, all received with much enthusiasm by the majority of the audience.

But that's beside the point. Here's the panel for "Lies, Deceit & Cover-ups" (which, oddly, was called "Politics, Science and Society" on C-Span): Moderator Mr. Larry Beinhart, Mr. Eric Alterman, Mr. John W. Dean, Ms. Maureen Dowd, Dr. Michael Shermer, and Mr. Jon Wiener. Anyone see a trend here? Alterman has written two explicitly pro-liberal/anti-Bush books, and arguably three others; Dean has become a Democrat, and has penned Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush; Dowd is a columnsist for the NY Times, and very rarely misses an opportunity to rip on Bush, Cheney or, particularly, Rumsfeld and also recently published Bushworld: Enter At Your Own Risk; Shermer is odd man out-- the founder of Skeptic magazine, he appeared to have no political agenda; and Wiener (no, I'm not making that up) who wrote Historians in Trouble which I have not read but from the blurb provided seems to have a bit of an agenda as well-- and not one favorable to Bush.

All of which is fine, I guess, that's who the L.A. Times wanted on the panely, that's fine. Maybe they asked people like Christopher Hitchens or Cal Thomas and they declined. But the thing that really made me cringe was Eric Alterman (who, btw, was pompous, unfunny, condescending and generally a prissy little sob) claiming there was a right-ward bias in the mainstream media-- which, of course, was met by huge applause from the UCLA audience and the rest of the panel members. And made me hit myself in the forehead and say "Doh!" loudly to no one, as I didn't have anyone there joining me in my nerddom.

I just kept thinking, "Right-wing bias?! Look at your very own stinkin' panely you turd!" It's sponsored by the LA Times, one of the largest newspapers in the country, and it consists almost entirely of liberal commentators-- doesn't that tell you anythign at all?

So a panel of a paper in a predominantly 'blue' city in a 'blue' state, put together for a discussion of a subject that is admittedly less than admiring of Brave Leader (although I confess I missed the edict requiring all references to our esteemed leadership to be admiring and obsequieous) for an audience that would likely be made up largely of people who, astonishing as it may sound, DID NOT vote for Bush in the last election (gasp!). Sounds to me like the paper has a pretty good idea of its readership, and is attempting to provide a forum that responds to its customers' preferences. This must be the exception to the Holy Free Market that proves the rule. When it comes to Newspapers, the free market is... well, it must be broken, because it doesn't provide the result that the Right wants.

And one example of a somewhat left tilt, in the make-up of this panel, does not necessarily invalidate the proposition that overall, the MSM demonstrates more deference to the Republicans. when the allegation of bias is made, it is usually in the form of an anecdote or two, and the shouting of Media Bias! Media Bias! But as has been noted before, data is not the plural of anecdote, and I haven't seen any articles documenting concerted, directed, and intentional skewing of the reporting of news.

We have argued before about the editorial pages, but to me, this is pointless, since the INTENTION of the editorial section is to take a point of view; there is no obligation to present Left/Right, or a supposed 'balance' to the editorial articles.

One last comment, and you'll have to take my word for this, but Beinhart, the moderator, was so heavyhanded in his handling of questions it made me want to smack him. One guy has the guts to get up in front of what is clearly a pro-Democrat/anti-Bush audience and try to ask Alterman about a potentially anti-semitic comment he made and while Alterman is jumping down his throat (very, very defensive he was) the guys kinda loses his place in the question. Beinhart says something to the effect of, "Sorry sir, but since you don't seem to have a question I'm going to ask you to sit down." Five minutes later when a former Woodstock hippie Boomer (I'm sorry, but he SO just looked the stereotype) got up and rambled on for about two minutes on Bush's deceits and no WMD's and 1500 dead without asking a question, Beinhart just nodded and let him babble on. The guy NEVER actually asked a question-- just blathered anti-Bush rhetoric for two or three minutes.

I don't know if this really needs an answer. I did not see the program in question, and have no idea if Nick is presenting these occurrences fairly or accurately. Not to say, of course, that he's not. But as I said, I don't know. Did he watch the whole show? How were other questioners answered? It is apparent from Nick's comment that he pre-judged the second questioner; the first one was argumentative and 'lost his place' in his question, while the second 'rambled on' It sounds as if Nick's judgement would have allowed the first to continue with his question, while he would have disregarded the second. Unfortunately, Nick was not the moderator, and Larry Beinhart was- Beinhart had to make that decision and probably feels there was some justification for doing so.

I guess it wouldn't do to compare this to recent Bush appearances, where the audience is prescreened, and attendees who do not have the requisite approvals, or are wearing non-supportive t-shirts (or even arrived in a car with an anti-war bumper sticker) are denied attendance or even arrested. And this is for the President, who is ostensibly the President even for people who did not vote for him and may even (shocking!) disagree with some of his policies; theoretically, a citizen of this country should have the opportunity to attend a public event featuring his or her Head of State.

No, that Wouldn't Do At All.