There are many ironies here. Fox used to be trumped as what their deceitful slogan suggests, “fair and balanced”. But if we accept this study, we know that PBS is, in fact, the fair and balanced network insofar as news. PBS is under constant attack and scrutiny, though, from conservatives who fear it too liberal. Now that the Democrats control Congress, their funding woes are temporarily alleviated. Al Franken, a clearly liberal comedic talking head, used to quote from PBS all the time. What's going on here?

My own hypothesis based purely on my own perceptions stem from the fact that many liberal policies work and are factually correct. It can't be demonstrated that homosexuality leads to failing marriages among straight couples, for examples, nor that this behavior somehow lowers a society. Working models in the real world where gay marriage has been accepted for years validate this. The media tends to follow the moral zeitgeist of the time. Conservatives, as ever, oppose this inevitable change. The media, in other words, doesn't view homosexuality negatively, anymore than it views blacks as less human than whites. Scientifically, the issue is settled with good evidence-based support, even though many conservative/religious voices object. The recent slight back-lapse running against this progressive march, induced primarily by the Religious right, thrusts nonfactual and opposing views into the public area. Could this be where part of this perception of media bias comes into play?

The same can be said for the evolution versus Intelligent Design “debate”. Debate is in quotes because among scientists, this question was settled over 100 years ago. There is no real debate, but only an invented controversy, also, again, stemming from the increasing power of the Religious right. This is demonstrable and not merely opinion on my part - specific groups, the Discovery Institute being a prime example, sought to introduce a controversy. Politically, it worked. The national perception of evolution has changed towards the conservative side.

Yet, every credible science magazine and media outlet acts as if evolution is the fact that it is, even though roughly half of Americans now think otherwise. Is this bias? What do we call this? Global warming follows a similar path. Conservatives must increasingly attack science itself in order to stick to their guns on this topic. Our own UK forum has a debate history which bears this out, as otherwise intelligent and seemingly intellectual Conservatives where forced to retract support for credible sources, such as factcheck.org for example, and even take the quantum leap of doubting evolution and the Big Bang in some cases – both required in an attempt to poke holes in how science works, a precursor to “showing” that Global Warming is a myth.

And what counter evidence is provided? To varying degrees, the evidence basically amounts to a conspiracy theory, a shadowy combination of scientists working just to get grant money and in league with Marxist forces who want to squash free market societies. No real evidence of this is ever provided, of course (and indeed, we do have real evidence of paying scientists to commit fraud and other purposeful deceit from the anti-global warming camp!) At best, an appeal to authority, a highly degreed opposer of the consensus, is brought forth, his every word taken as Gospel.

Similarly, this issue of Haggard versus an ACLU middle man amounts to nothing. While this could be an example of a liberal media bias, that isn't the most logical or reasonable explanation. A strange light in the sky could be a UFO from an alien planet, but is that the likely explanation? And, wouldn't it take much more work to make the case for aliens?

Attempts to change the frame of the argument are distractions. It isn't about the group which Haggard leads, this enormous Evangelical umbrella organization, versus the ACLU. It is about two men of highly unequal stature. Haggard was known to the “media” before his homosexual incident. The other guy, whose name I cannot honestly recall, the head of the Virginia branch of the ACLU, was not well known before hand. It's been claimed that both attempted to get notoriety. Assuming that to be correct, one succeeded, one failed. Haggard has appeared in several documentaries, one about religion hosted by Richard Dawkins, another an HBO special.

There's no denying that this so called “culture war” is currently raging. Many may not pay specific attention, but their lives will be affected by the outcome. One major criticism leveled at the Right-wing religious infrastructure, which despite the denial of many willfully ignorant conservatives holds significant influence in DC, is that there is a focus on gay issues and abortion, and not on more “Jesus-like” worries, such as the suffering of the poor.

Haggard wanted to break from these two wedge issues somewhat and focus more on the environment and the underprivileged. This made him a bit of a rouge among his fellows, and brought more attention to himself in the process. I was surprised to read that Haggard himself seems to have no real issue with gay unions, though he still condemns homosexuality and remains affiliated with many who want a path towards the outright criminalization of homosexuality. As I said before, there is no evidence that homosexuality is immoral in any measurable way, yet when a man condemns it, even a man who is in some ways a liberal amongst far-Right-wing types, the media can't help but carry the story. Especially given his already-existing prominence which trumps all other concerns in any case.

But, who can really know why the media cover what they decide to cover! Why do the media focus so much attention on kidnapped white women? Why isn't the “liberal” media devoting equal attention to kidnapped black women? Why does the “liberal” media still incorrectly mock Gore for some of his comments? Why do many journalists still repeat tired cliches like, “there are no atheists in fox-holes” (an NPR journalist recently apologized on-air for this in response to a flood of letters, not realizing that there are actually atheists in fox holes right now in Iraq)? How do we make sense out of all of this?

There are also recent studies which suggest that people see the bias that they expect to see, and that the most biased people see the most bias. In some sense, that seems somewhat obvious. Folks read the very start of an article, or listen to the start of a news segment, and make up their minds before the conclusion. I admit neither NPR nor that journalist meant anything by that fox-hole cliche. It would be easy for me to call that theistic bias. There probably is a theistic bias in the country, but the moral zeitgeist hasn't fully accepted the alternative, and indeed, may not for some time. I can work to bring this about or to correct related errors, as those letter writers did, but would anyone take me seriously if I based my entire line of reasoning, my push for humanism, etc., purely on this theistic bias in America?

My personal view is two fold. First, I agree with John Stewart's notion that the media are 8 year old kids playing soccer. They are selling a product and they present the headlines and the news itself in a sensationalist way. The soccer ball is Haggard or Anna Nicole Smith. They tend to fall over each other to cover the “big” story, even if that story is big for “silly” reasons like the notoriety of the individuals involved (note that PBS refrains from this more than any other network). This easily explains Haggard versus the no-name small-potatoes pedophile who worked for a sub-branch of the ACLU.

Was the other story, the less known story, buried? What shadowy group of execs and string-pullers meet in secret to affect the news in this kind of organized way? Tom Pain recently gave another specific example and challenged the liberals here to try and show that it's anything but liberal bias. But why should we? This presumes that there is already bias, it works from that default view, and it also presumes that there is some sort of conspiracy to systematically cover up such stories or bury them. That smacks of an extraordinary argument, one requiring extraordinary evidence. Is there a consistent pattern? If so, where are those facts? Can each individual case be attributed to something lesser? What about luck? Why are only certain missing white people given much attention, while certain other missing white people never make it beyond local news? Surely luck plays SOME role. A prominent reporter or news person with a crucial position in news service likes and puts forth a specific story in lieu of another specific story. To use such incidents to show a prevailing bias would take much work indeed, like showing that the strange lights in the sky are craft from other worlds. How often do the talking heads themselves wonder why a story refuses to die? These things sometimes take on a life of their own, perhaps meme theory can explain some of it.

As far as that challenge, it's like a Creationist challenging an evolutionist to explain how a bombardier beetle could have possibly evolved, or to produce a missing fossil between animal A and animal C. If the answer isn't forth-coming, a preconceived, default, position on their part is assumed. Random statistical ticks and other oddities don't present evidence that an entire system is flawed, or that there is some deliberate or even accidental over-reaching bias or error. One must show independent evidence for an alternate view.

I've already explained the other part of my view on bias above. The media tends to lean to left socially (although as I suggested above about missing black women, this bias isn't nearly as distinct as many think!), and I throw the science issues in here as well because they are often related (the science of homosexuality showing that it's a natural state, and not an illness, for example, nor a personal choice). In Al Franken's, “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right” (a book which elegantly points out that Fox “News” is anything but fair and balanced, as was born out by scientific study later), he explains how he had college students perform their own survey of media bias.

His survey concluded that there seems to be a liberal media social bias (again, involving gays, blacks, the roles of women, and so forth). The momentary back-turn of society influenced heavily by religio-politicking could indeed induce this kind of perception. But this view is morally correct in a measurable scientific, real-world, kind of way. Those who see this as bias simply need to accept the facts at hand, in the same manner that reading the writings of those from the 19^th century seem morally incompatible with most of us today insofar as how women and non-whites are presented, and so on.

Should we say that the media is biased towards technology? What might the Amish think, if they cared? Would that be bias, or something else? Does the fact that most of us think that our technology is a better way to live, or at least, not a lesser way to live, impact this bias? I'm not sure I know the answers, but jumping the gun and screaming bias at every turn is too easy. It's almost lazy, it compresses the argument in a less than desirable lossy manner.

Opposing change is the very nature of the conservative philosophy in any case, so their screams of bias are hardly surprising. I once wrote about that. It is usually the social conservatives in every nation who have issues with the conservatives of other nations, hence, often with the aid of religion, much evil ensues.

In actuality, I think the true liberal position is underrepresented in the media. It has support here and there in terms of the science of many policies and such, but I can't think of a single talking head on a major news network who is a liberal. There are moderates who lean left. There are comedians and entertainers who are liberal. But is there a single serious political liberal journalistic talking head, with his/her own show? The media could stand to lose some sensationalist tendencies (although we have only Americans who'd rather be entertained to blame for this) and stand to gain some true balance, not merely Fox “News”-like false parity, not merely the back tick of fundamentalism which runs counter to our progressive path and which makes us the laughing stock amongst similar nations.

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