Eric Alterman’s latest book, What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News adequately makes the case that the very idea of an American mainstream “liberal media” is nothing more than a mythical totem around which the conservative faithful gathers. If you don’t believe Alterman’s carefully researched assessment (the eye-opening end notes run 40 pages for a 267-page text), consider a paper published last month by the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
The paper, “Whispers and Screams: The Partisan Natures of Editorial Pages” was written by Michael Tomasky who will become executive editor of The American Prospect next month. Tomasky systematically reviewed the U.S.‘s four leading conservative (The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times) and liberal (The New York Times and The Washington Post) editorial pages and found that “conservative editorial pages are far less willing to criticize a Republican administration than liberal pages are willing to take issue with a Democratic administration.”
As Jay Walljasper, Utne‘s editorial director, pointed out in a meeting yesterday afternoon, the problem with mainstream media isn’t how it covers the stories it covers. Rather, the problem can be found in the stories it chooses not to cover.
Tomasky’s paper is nonetheless highly recommended because sometimes it helps to know the mainstream score.
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