Duck Season

Would you say that any of the following is an indication of media bias to the left?

1. A poll in 1992 of media people showed that 90% voted for Clinton.

2. Using words like "ultra-conservatives" or "hard-right conservatives" or "hard liner" to describe those on the right while rarely describing those on the left as "liberal".

3. Whenever describing organizations, classifiying left-wing organizations like People for the American Way as simply "activist groups" while always denoting similar organizations from the right as "conservative".

4. The classic homeless issue conservatives always complain about whereby stories about this problem is prominent during Republican administrations and disappear during Democratic ones, despite no evidence that homelessness was down during those years.

5. Hundreds of stories of the "illegal" things Key Lay did; one story buried in page 22 of the New York Times that showed he did nothing illegal or unethical at all.

6. In news stories, quoting three or more sources that support the liberal view before acknowleging that some hold the conservative view, and not even describing what the conservative view actually is.

7. Taking pictures of John Ashcroft in such an angle so that the naked breast of a statue is always right next to Ashcroft's mouth, and when Ashcroft ordered the statue to be draped, calling him a prude and a censor and not reporting why Ashcroft had ordered such an action.

8. Describing left-wing dictators as "president" and terrorist organizations as "rebels" or "activists".

9. Reporting press releases from left-wing groups as news while not doing the same of press releases from right-wing groups.

10. NPR sharing their donor lists with the Democratic Party.

11. Michael Savage gets fired for wishing someone get AIDS and die; Nina Totenberg does not for wishing Clarence Thomas's wife to feed him fat foods so he'd die of heart disease like other black people.

12. Then there's this classic from Dan Rather: "The new Republican majority in Congress took a big step today on its legislative agenda to demolish or damage government aid programs, many of them designed to help children and the poor."

13. Misreporting polls, examples:
1) headline "Public Supports Bush, Not Tax Cuts" for a poll where 51% support the tax cuts,
2) poll question where every possible answer reflects badly on Bush: "Which concerns you more: that the Bush administration (might move too quickly) to take military action against Iraq, or the Bush Administration (might not move quickly enough)?"
3) Mixing "majority" and "plurality" in a way that !coincidentally! makes the Republicans look worse off.

(To be fair, most media people are math idiots and i've seen some examples of misreporting polls in favor of conservatives too.)

I could go on and on, but if one is not convinced by now one never will.

As for Amy, let me quote Jonah Goldberg on this:

Look, it's hardly surprising that Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, Susan Sontag, Stanley Fish, and the rest of that crowd think the liberal media is too conservative. After all, they think avowed liberals are too conservative. If you consider Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Doris Kearns Goodwin, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, The New Republic, or any other liberal icons to be too conservative (or racist, misogynist, whatever), why wouldn't you think the journalists who worship these people to be too conservative too?