The Alleged CBS Forgeries and Media Bias

Unless you've been hiding under a rock someplace (or been sequestered, in which case you probably aren't reading this, or are a current BJU student, which is kind of like being sequestered), you're aware of the latest big scandal, which I shall dub TypewriterGate. I don't know if Rather's documents are forgeries or not; for the purposes of this post, it doesn't matter.

The thing that interests me is that this story doesn't interest me. Maybe I've just become jaded and cynical to the media and to political dirty tricks, but this just seems like more of the same, except that this time a felony may have been committed instead of just spin. What does interest me is that CBS's (or, more accurately, television news media's) reputation is bad enough that a good number of people believed the documents were a forgeries as soon as the possibility was brought up. The mainstream media is so poorly thought of that it's achieved a status of total distrust (at least for a lot of conservatives/libertarians).

How did the media achieve this status? Probably by claiming they were totally unbiased. It's just like trying to be a referee at a little league game: Neither side is going to believe you are impartial, whether you genuinely are or not. Both the liberals and the conservatives accuse the media of being biased against them, and they can't both be correct.

In fact, it's debatable whether or not a truly unbiased news source can exist. The journalist faces the dilemma of what to put into a two-minute story or a quarter-page article. There's only so much data he can fit into that space, so he's forced to pick and choose which quotes to use, which camera angle to take, etc. These decisions will inevitably be influenced by his political bias and what's most important to him, so to say that his story will be unbiased is inaccurate.

That's why I'd like to see newspapers, TV news stations, etc. admit whichever bias they have. I'd like Fox News to quit saying it's "Fair and Balanced" and call itself conservative, and I want CNN to admit to a liberal bias. The system works well enough for the blogosphere, after all.

But since that's not likely to happen any time soon, perhaps someone with the time, interest, and resources could set up a website detailing the biases held by each of the major news outlets, along with evidence for that claim. The blogosphere does have some features focused on certain issues--Instapundit routinely links to a weekly roundup of anti-gun bias in the media--but there's nothing like that sorted by news outlet instead of by issue.

Unless there is, and I'm not aware of it. If that's the case, please leave a comment. I'd love to see it.

Posted by Blog Jones at September 11, 2004 12:37 AM | Category: Politics