Friday, August 29, 2003

Media Bias is Real!

Well, Brent Bozell turns in a bravura performance supporting the right-wing claim that the media is liberally biased. He references Joe Conason's brilliant new book, "Big Lies, but drops it immediately, apparently aware that he's overmatched.

Instead he turns to Al Franken's latest. Franken was apparently on the Today Show twice this last week, when Ann Coulter hasn't been on it at all (at least to promote her latest book, Treason (or why we should take all the Liberals and feed them to coyotes). Yep that proves liberal bias, and in no way reflects the soft news of the Today Show (which is so soft it's almost like gauze), which favors celebrity (and comedy) over political screeds. And of course it's reaching out to a very wide audience and it's just barely possible that Coulter might offend someone by telling half the country they hate America and should be punished as traitors.

He comments, "How does Franken rate two appearances in one week? Sure he's witty and all that, but he was there to promote a book, a book that wasn't anywhere on any New York Times bestseller list. (With this kind of double promotion, you can be assured that now it will be.)" Actually, Mr. Bozell, you might want to check out a recent controversy with Fox News for why Mr. Franken's book is shooting up the charts.

At any rate, Joe Conason's chapter on Media bias is one of the best of the book. It points out that not only do conservatives have no trouble getting on air time to express their views (Ms. Coulter's failure to appear on the Today Show aside, she has been on plenty of other programs), they also have a very large section of the media dedicated to putting forward the conservative view (including the Washington Times, the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, Fox News, and 99% of Talk Radio.) There's no lack of representation of Conservative ideas in the media, but I can understand why it's fun for conservatives to pretend that there is.

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