Media Bias?

I believe that there is bias in the media. Bias towards sensationalism, bias towards scandal, and partisan bias too. In the last case, such bias is not intentional, but rather a natural byproduct of the journalist's own views. If I were a journalist, I'd naturally approach issues from a conservative POV, so I don't see this bias as something underhanded, but rather something that should be taken into consideration when reading the news.

From time to time, I'll spot examples of such "stealth bias" in my local newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Today's main story is a good example. Spread across five columns is a headline that reads "Researchers feel heat from right," and the sub-headline reads "Responding to conservatives, federal agency looks at projects on AIDS and sexual practices." The federal agency in question is the National Institute of Health, and the "conservatives" are the Traditional Values Coalition.

I'm not sure I've ever seen an interest group identified as the "left" in a headline before. Consider the controversy over the Ten Commandments monument in Alabama, which drew a lot of criticism from the ACLU. Can you imagine a headline that read "Justices feel heat from left: Responding to liberals, the court looks at..." ? I can't.

Remember. Conservative interest groups are "the right." Liberal interest groups are just interest groups.