Liberal Media Bias????? "Judge" for yourself.

[Moneyguy1]

People look at the ACLU differently, depending on their own view of a situation. In the past, I have been pleased they did certain things, and appalled at their stands on other issues. I admire (grudgingly at times) anyone who takes a stand based on logic and law. This is the only way things get changed in a rational manner over time.

Unfortunately, when there are too many differing and conflicting fundamental views, the following axiom comes into play:

Any government that strives to become all things to all people ultimately becomes nothing to anyone.

[jyl]

I don't see that the mainstream media is particularly "liberal" or "conservative".

If you are referring to bias in coverage, I'd say that liberals have just as many complaints about the media as do conservatives. For example, recall that most of the mainstream media uncritically supported the Iraq war, fawned over Bush post-9/11 and over Rumsfield post-invasion, and did not challenge the justifications for the war. Recall also that the press went after Clinton in the last years of his administration far more than it has gone after some of the Bush Administration's characters. There is a bias in mainstream media coverage, but it is a bias in favor of sensationalism and herd mentality and sloppy reporting, rather than a left / right political bias.

If you are referring to the personal views of people in the media, then I wouldn't argue that many individual reporters tend to the liberal side but would note that the mainstream media is owned and controlled by large corporations. Do you call General Electric, Time Warner, Clear Channel, etc "liberal" or "conservative"? I think of big business as tending to the conservative side.

Turning to the smaller niche media outlets, there's a mix of "liberal" and "conservative". In print, the Wall Street Journal is an example on the conservative side (there's the conservative tilt of big business again). The innumerable TV and radio talk-shows are mostly on the "conservative" side (more so on radio). There are more liberal magazines but their circulation is tiny (when's the last time you saw a copy of Mother Jones, anyway - if they are stil even around).

I think the "liberal media" is mostly a conservative rallying-cry that has little basis in reality. In fact, liberals often complain about exactly the same media, except they call it the "mainstream media" or the "corporate media". If both left and right sides are complaining about the same media industry, I'd say the media doesn't have a systematic political problem. The problem is the indifferent quality of reporting (especially the CNN/FOX/broadcast news stuff).

[jyl]

By the way, I'm not sure why anyone thinks the judge's speech, when he sentenced Reid, was somehow suppressed by the media.

I mean, it was on CNN.com http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/01/31/reid.transcript/ which is as mainstream media as it gets. As well as reported in print media.

As for the speech not being broadcast on the TV news:
- first of all the judge isn't a notable figure
- secondly judges and other officials deliver all kinds of lengthy speeches and we can't (don't want to?) hear them all
- thirdly cameras and sound recording is not permitted in federal courtrooms so the speech couldn't have been broadcast anyway (unless you wanted it to be recited by the TV news anchor or the text to scroll down the screen while you go get a beer from the fridge).

Those who want this speech to have been "nightly news for a week" - well, I guess some people think this was a great, moving, monumental speech, and others think it wasn't. I personally would have been changing the channel.