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Now C-SPAN has this ridiculous Conservative, Liberal, and Independent format, which is abused and rarely enforced. Moreover, it makes a mockery of what C-SPAN said was its original charter.

C-Span thinks to consciously be fair, and I don't doubt their good faith (at least, not very much). But the Fairness Doctrine was disasterous for conservatives; it was the reason talk radio was suppressed until Reagan arranged for or allowed the FD to lapse.
The conceit of enforced objectivity is directly at odds with the philosophy of the First Amendment. The fundamental problem of the Fairness Doctrine is that "fairness" is really "absence of bias"--an unprovable negative. Since it can never be proven, defending against bias charges (such as Slander itself) is a Sisyphusian task; each new charge must be independently taken on. (and of course, often the charges are actually true, which makes disproving them even harder!)
Yet the charges are disposed of: they are assaulted with the propaganda power of journalism. Ridiculed, sidestepped, distorted into straw men and destroyed. In operational terms, they are ignored.
Under the First Amendment, which assumes free access to printing by any interested citizen, that tactic has no legal consequence. However, that legal situation is modified by the acceptance of the FCC, which created broadcasting by censoring competition in radio transmission. In so doing the government logically has exactly the task that the First Amendment banned Congress from--deciding "fairness" in publishing.
How then has the FCC decided the issue of fairness? By reference to the consensus of print journalism. But as we have seen, print journalism is legally unregulated; print journalism does not even have the authority of a witness under oath, subject to the laws of perjury. Yet the FCC and the unconstitutional McCain-Feingold law assay, de facto, to assign journalism the authoritative voice of a jury.
All its vaunted legal independence notwithstanding, journalism (print and broadcast) manifests a patent herd instinct. Even those who buy ink by the barrel, it seems, fear to pick fights with others who buy ink by the barrel. So the media outlets compete on the quickest delivery of the most gripping telling of the hardest-to-ignore reports, but they do not compete on the basis of telling the whole story, and telling it accurately.
The whole truth, in context, takes time. The whole truth, in context, is usually less dramatic than the first breathless accounts. The whole story may, in fact, prove to be a tempest in a teapot. Consequently it is the conservative who is more inclined to take the time to get to the bottom of things--and write a nonfiction book. The journalist has moved on by then to other stories, and if new information on an old news story comes out in a nonfiction book, maybe the journalist will discuss the book. But if so, the journalist assumes that journalists are the objective ones--and the writer either confirms journalistic prejudice (the negative angle which made a profitable news story) or is presented as a conservative wingnut.
Or, in the case of the Stacy Koon verdict, the jury was presented as the wingnuts. The first jury saw the entire video of the arrest of Rodney King, and heard an explanation of everything. Journalists, OTOH, edited the tape down to the best case to be made for police brutality, and asked how anyone could justify that. Essentially propagandizing for the riot that followed the verdict.
Slander points out many well-documented examples of anticonservatism; I propose a non-conspiratorial explanation for the reality Coulter describes. The Fairness Doctrine assumes Slander away. C-Span basically operates under a self-imposed Fairness Doctrine--and wonders why unregulated callers ran 5-to-1 conservative.

The central issue of the "Hanoi Jane" phenomenon is coverage of the contemptible antics of celebrities by big journalism. Followed immediately by the gullibility of the public in being influenced by big journalism.
The First Amendment is essential for the protection of freedom of thought, opinion, and discussion. The core principle of the First Amendment is freedom of opinion transmission from the individual to whoever takes interest in it. The Internet in general and FR in particular are implementations of that essential principle.
Big journalism, OTOH, is the implementation of the contrary principle of centralized control of transmission of opinion to the individual. Big journalism began to develop in earnest with the high speed press in the 1830s. It found its (hopefully) lowest expression in the big 3 broadcast networks, enabled by Federal Communications Commission censorship and the "Fairnes Doctrine".
The enabling of talk radio with the elimination of the "Fairness Doctrine," and advent of cable and internet, has had a significant salutory decentralizing effect. And the embarassments of big media outlets such as the NY Times and CNN are encouraging.
But the FCC--the sine qua non of centralized radio transmission (broadcasting) and an abject Constitutional embarrasment--is still sacrosanct. And passage of McCain-Feingold proves that the conceit of "objectivity" is still virulent in America. Like the Fairness Doctrine of old, McCain-Feingold ratifies the essential tenent of Public Relations, legal presumption of of "journalistic objectivity."
Given that half the truth can be a very big lie, and that no one can know all the truth--let alone publish it--objectivity is inherently unprovable. Indeed it is part of the genius of the First Amendment that its plain intent is to keep the government out of the quagmire of arguing over "fairness."
The ridiculous premise of "journalistic objectivity" is transparent cover for cowardly go-along-to-get-along journalistic concensus formed in full public view at the expense of any independent perspectives. At the expense, not infrequently, of perspectives which subsequent events validate.