The gold standard of 'fair and balanced' is fools gold

The major media does have a huge problem, but that problem is definitely not liberal bias. CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN do not show favoritism for liberals, much less have it in for conservatives.

Add to that, you have Fox News with it's slogans "Fair and Balanced", "We Report, You Decide". This is problematic in two ways. Not only is Fox News not fair and balanced - just look up Media Matters on any given day and you'll see this clearly - the very premises behind these slogans are seriously flawed.

Sometimes it's just as telling what is not said as what is said. And it's telling to me that Fox does not allude to accuracy or being accurate in any of its advertising. Good journalism demands, first and foremost, accuracy, and sometimes, that means not being balanced. It means not constantly bending over backwards to make sure some of those you report on don't cry "Unfair! You're biased!" Does this mean I'm advocating that journalists do nothing but 'hit pieces' on people they don't like? Of course not. I am saying that too often media, in its zeal to be 'objective', 'neutral' and 'unbiased', sacrifices real objectivity, and, as a result, accuracy is the first casualty.

Just displaying everything that anybody can possibly say about a subject, then telling your audience "You decide" is not good journalism. It's stenography. Please stop with this notion that on any given issue, each side has equally or similarly compelling cases to make. The truth does not always lie somewhere in the middle. Sometimes one party is right and the other is wrong. Sometimes one side has facts, and ample anecdotal evidence to back up its case, while the other relies on spin, distortions, and half-truths to make its case. Good journalism will point this out. It will not play the phony neutrality game.

If John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann and others got together to hold a press conference asking "How do you know the earth isn't flat?", would 'fair and balanced' reporting require a headline such as "Earth's shape in question" with the first sentence above the fold reading "Experts for years claimed it to be an irregular sphere, but this theory now has many critics"? Absolutely not! The shape of the earth is not a matter of opinion, but scientific fact. Anyone who denies this is grossly ignorant and/or a crackpot. But, in the parallel universe that demands 'fair and balanced' on everything, the assertions of flat earthers must be seen as equally compelling to the consensus of scientists who devote their lives to studying the topic. And no written or broadcast material is ever to refer to flat earthers as "crackpots" because that is 'unfair', 'unbalanced' and, of course BIASED!

Well, of course it is. Good journalism has a bias. A bias for accuracy and truth. The flat earth example is obviously not something that has happened in the media, but this is where I'm using an absurd example to make a larger point. Many of the big-time media outlets handle issues of great importance this way. And the problem isn't limited to Fox and right-wing AM radio - though they poison the information environment in their own ways.  Just watch any Sunday morning interview/roundtable show, and you'll see, time and time again, conservatives make outlandish assertions without being challenged. It's more than that, though. To put the lie to the idea of 'dominant liberal media bias' - on the issue of health care reform, when was the last time you heard an advocate of single payer national health insurance on a major news outlet? When was the last time you heard a serious critic of our nation's militaristic foreign policy? Not just question a particular aspect of our adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, but question our military presence in practically every nook and cranny of the globe? When was the last time you heard a call for a return to protectionist trade policies?

The answer is that those who advocate for such things are almost completely sidelined on the Sunday morning shows, and other major outlets. Liberal bias, my ass! The bias is towards misinfo-opinio-tainment (yes, I made that one up). The large media is owned by six large corporations. Do you seriously think that media personalities in their employ are going to challenge corporate power? They'll allow liberalism on their shows, but only a 'respectable' kind - one that doesn't talk back to power. Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow are well-known and given prime time slots on MSNBC, but those shows won't ever have the gravitas of Meet the Press, This Week, or Face the Nation. And it will be a cold day in hell before independent progressives like Amy Goodman, Thom Hartmann, Laura Flanders, Marc Steiner, David Sirota, and the like are given a platform on the outlets deemed 'important'.

So, if you want to actually be informed, Olbermann and Maddow are nice, but that's because they rely on sources that actually do the business of journalism. If you want real news, independent outlets, whether on TV (Free Speech TV and Link TV are a couple of examples) on the web, or in print, are highly recommended. You won't get it from the 'bubble headed bleach blond that comes on at 5' as the Don Henley song "Dirty Laundry" put it.