Our Perspective on Media Slant

Last night as I was watching Jon Stewart, he praised the media for finally doing their job regarding Katrina. As a member of the ‘left’ (I actually lean to both sides on different issues but usually get labeled as being ‘liberal’) in recent years, I have been frustrated about press conferences and other public opportunities to find out facts about what goes on in the White House, in Iraq, 9/11 and in this administration in general, because the hard questions are rarely asked and if they are asked, they’re not answered.

Because of this apparent fear of speaking and revealing the truth, for the past few years, the Left has been accusing the media of being ‘Right-leaning’ because they weren’t asking the difficult questions of the leaders or their representatives.

Now, it seems the media is finally reporting what’s going on as regards Cindy Sheehan and Katrina at least; asking some tough questions and insisting on getting to the truth of the matter and then, by God, reporting it! And it seems that for the simple fact that they report it at all, they’re being called ‘Left-leaning’.

It occurs to me that if the media is fairly quiet about real news and acts like everything is ok, they get accused of being sympathetic to the right and if they report what’s going on, they get accused of being sympathetic to the left.

Any thoughts on this?

Several months ago I read an article from a local journalist regarding the subject of media bias. He works on talk radio in addition to being an anchor for one of the major stations.

Half the mail he gets accuses him of being biased to the 'right'; the other half is accusing him of being biased to the 'left'.

People only seem to notice the things they don't agree with.