The Liberal Media?

A friend and I have been having an ongoing debate/discussion about whether or not the U.S. press is biased in a liberal direction. It's an old argument, but it seems to have an increased relevance now that the McCain/Palin campaign is relentlessly accusing the media of attacking her unfairly.

I can't tell if our positions on this issue are mostly driven by our political views (his are more or less centrist while mine are on the far left wing of the Democratic Party). Hence, he sees the press as overly liberal while I see the fourth estate as much too willing to embrace right-wing talking points. Here's what I think is going on:

• The media has been loath to portray the last eight years of horrors—Iraq, state-sanctioned torture, denial of global warming, warrantless wiretapping, Katrina, and all of the Bush corruption—as the catastrophe they really are. Why? Well because the right wing has been so incredibly effective at painting the media as liberal. To counter this accusation, the media studiously avoids offending conservative sensibilities, and is thus co-opted.
  
• The media is lazy. This is pretty undeniable, but I wonder about its importance. Clearly, many reporters are happy to have their stories pre-written by White House press releases and Republican talking points.
  
• Many, perhaps even most, journalists are more liberal than conservative, but publishers and the money people behind news organizations are far from it. The idea here is that editors assign certain types of stories to please their bosses, journalists cover those types of stories to please their bosses, and you end up with a right-wing viewpoint. This seems quite plausible.

Anyway, the point of this post is to begin to peel back the onion on this issue, so we might come to an understanding of what's actually going on in this country's press. I will be keeping an eye on what I see as examples of bias in the news media on either side, because both my friend and I are quite certain of our positions, and we can't both be correct. I'd love to hear what any of you think, too.