John Leo Discovers Liberals Upset with the Media

This is a shocker. According to John Leo's latest article, Liberals don't recognize that the media is 100% on their side. In fairness Leo does better with this subject than most of this colleagues would (I shudder to think what Brent Bozell would do). John Leo, unlike most of his colleagues on the Conservative side, recognizes that Liberals do have a few legitimate gripes.

Liberal columnist Joe Conason thinks it’s unfair that photos of Bill Clinton’s coffee meetings were forced into the open, whereas photos of Bush with Abramoff are unreleased so far, while the media yawn. Some complain that the press took arguments for Clinton’s impeachment seriously but not arguments for Bush’s impeachment today.

So, fair enough.

I think the problem isn't liberal media commentary or conservative media commentary, but rather dumb media commentary. Dumb media commentary insists on a uniformity among thousands of reporters and editors and journalists that doesn't seem to exist. All reporters are working for the other side. There is no difference between the RNC and a reporter for CNN (unless of course the reporter says something that supports a liberal point of view (in this example)).

The purpose of dumb media mommentary isn't to improve the media. It's to give the dumb media critic (and his audience) an out when presented with information that contradicts his or her world view. Rather than considering the accuracy of this new information, and seeing how it fits within your current beliefs, the dumb media critic simply says "Damn Conservative Media Bias" and ignores this new information. It does make life easier I suppose.

I do want to point out that there is plenty of smart media criticism, particularly from the left (in contrast, premiere conservative media critic Brent Bozell and his organization are clearly in the dumb media critic camp).