Lots of you folkses aren't paying attention this morning. This grievous error by the author doesn't help his case, as I'm sure Bernie Goldberg, the author of "Bias" would agree.
The real root of the problem, as Goldberg and this author hint at, is the social elitism the media aspires to. Their model is the old USSR, where the media IS a powerful branch of the government - an entitled class that gets all the perks of office with few of the responsibilities. They get to shop in the Dollar stores. They get the Black Sea dachas. They feel self-righteous and smugly superior, an attitude carefully cultivated by the authoritarians they admire.
Over the last 30 years, the Dems have played the media MUCH better than the GOP, courting them, wining them, getting them virtually anything they could want - in return for their blind allegiance. Now we have an entire generation of newsies who have spent their entire lives in that atmosphere of creeping socialism - which has been crafted as a person benefits package for THEM. Members of the media don't exist in the same economic world the rest of us do. They have their compensation structured by corporate tax attorneys so as to virtually eliminate personal income taxes - which is why high taxes on the public don't bother them - they're NOT members of "the public." (I used to have one of those guys, so I know the drill).
The media has been tacitly promised a democratic socialist Oligarchy, with they themselves as oligarchs. That explains EVERYTHING about their behavior. And dishonest reporting is the easiest way to achieve it.
Michael
The real root of the problem, as Goldberg and this author hint at, is the social elitism the media aspires to.
Mainstream media news reporters are too lazy to put forth the effort. They choose to open doors wherever possible and keep them open. The very people the media should be reporting as crooks, criminals and scoundrels are the ones they praise.
What a colossal hoax it is. For of course the interviewee -- the bigger the better to which politicians and bureaucrats are among the biggest with academics and "specialists" bought by the media mantra of open all doors coming in right behind -- those people (hidden crooks) being interviewed would never open the door if he or she knew that the reporter intended to expose them as frauds.
Put rhetorically: Do you really think a politician or bureaucrat would welcome an interview conducted by a reporter or journalist knowing that he or she was going to expose their participation in government fraud? Do you think mainstream reporters and journalists would expose the politicians and bureaucrats for their frauds knowing that they'd be shutting the door to any future interviews with that politician or bureaucrat and his cronies?
Conversely, there's a large and growing cadre of articulate, well-thought-out writers on the WWW. They are the opposite of the lazy reporters that rely on the easy-to-open doors of covering for crooks.
For the articulate writers on the Web, their open doors are among themselves, and their readers. Their essence is that they have to honestly earn an open door policy with their interviewees and they welcome their readers feedback. Often looking for other articulate writers of integrity and honesty among the feedback they get from readers.
That the mainstream media is liberal biased is not a reflection of congress or the alphabet bureaucracies. It is with both Republicans and Democrats that the government is what it is. The whole good-guy-bad-guy betwixt political parties is a ruse. For voting for the lesser of evils still begets evil.
As Mr. Brown used to jokingly ask us neighborhood kids, "Do you want a fat lip or a busted eyebrow?" That was not lost on me. From Democrats you get one, from Republicans you get the other. There are no winners and losers in politics for they (reps and dems) are two sides of the same coin. The only losers are the citizens, their prosperity and well-being which is mostly represented by the business community. The only winners are parasitical politicians and self-serving bureaucrats. ...Hot on their heels the mainstream media and academics catering to government crooks.