I just watched a taped panel from Saturday at the Family Research Council meeting on liberal bias in the media. The Wall Street Journal’s John Fund and National Review’s Rich Lowry were on it, and though I didn’t catch every minute, what’s fascinating is the degree to which they are convinced the media is biased in favor of liberals. Yet they cannot manage to come up with any empirical evidence to prove it. It’s true because, well, they believe it is and say it is. None of this is new, but I mention it only to point out just how amazing the present, faith-based era has undermined our national debate. Nothing ever needs to be demonstrated or proved. A couple of years back I did a campus debate on media bias with Terry Eastland of Lowry's Review, and he also had little if any evidence to adduce on behalf of the certain “truth” of liberal media bias. Meanwhile, we know from our own former editor Mike Tomasky that op-eds in major papers were tougher on Bill Clinton’s than they have been on George Bush’s. We know from Media Matters that syndicated columnists in the papers across the nation tilt toward conservatives, sometimes decidedly. I could go on, but one can read Eric Alterman, Bob Somerby, Robert McChesney or countless others who have actually done the work of demonstrating conservative media bias with, you know, facts and details and quantitative measures. A final thought: The ability of conservatives to state something without facts, incidentally, only disproves their central claim, doesn’t it? Lowry told some cute stories about living in New York City and marijuana wafting from the rap studio above his office, among other jokes. This, apparently, constitutes proof. So I must be wrong…or I guess I lack sufficient faith to see the truths others see so clearly. --Tom Schaller
