In my view, and in my professional experience, the media is about money and the acquisition of same, rather than any perceived liberal or conservative bent.

This is not to say that there are not individual liberals or conservatives of power in the media who put their own slant on their product, but the bottom line is always, ALWAYS ALWAYS, money.

I've heard of FOX News. I've also heard of CNN, MTV, 60 Minutes, Headline News, Hardball, The CBS Evening News, Air America, PBS, Oprah Winfrey, and a few others. I don't know what that has to do with anything as this is obviously directed at prime time entertainment shows, not news or commentary shows. This goes back several years, probably starting with All in the Family. It was a great show, but ultimately what was it about? The Liberals are the good guys who are just trying to be fair, the Conservatives are the racist pigs who aren't all that bright. There have been variations as political correctness took over. With shows like Family Ties and Head of the Class, the Conservative was just the greedy one that stood by smirking as the Liberals tried to save the world. Often, the Conservative would be forced into the Gee, I guess they are right position. Now, it has been watered down to subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) references that try to bash the right. Yeah, I know, Clinton got some of this back in the 90s, but only after he became a caricature of himself with the womanizing. Even then, there were still jabs at the right. When is the last time you heard a shot taken at Dick Durbin or Ted Kennedy? Compare that to the last time a shot was taken at Tom Delay or Karl Rove.

Haven't you ever heard of Fox News?

The liberal media again. . .you haven't been watching a lot TV- The media has gotten down on its cowardly knees and has laid prone since this war began. . .no one cares about poor kids dying over a lie about phantom weapons or 'terrorists' that are really somewhere else. The little-box-that-lies hasn't even touched the real issue of thousands of civilian deaths. If TV and News execs had their kids in the desert it would be different. The media is the best friend dubya ever had. . .

Guys, guys, guys, it's an item about a perceived liberal slant on certain, specific TV SHOWS. Can you stay on topic? Here's my slant: if Dick Wolf interjects a political bias in the creative product (the show he produces), that's a chance he gets to take. Remember the Dixie Chicks? If it's so offensive, change the channel. Better yet, point it out to your children when you notice it. You'll be surprised how positively cynical they become. If you really don't see this (even though Wolf is resoundingly criticized quite often for this within the industry) you're probably a staunch liberal, like Canadasucks or Wid71, not that there's anything wrong with that. But, if you find yourself nodding as you read Pat Riot's post, you're a paranoid, left-wing conspiracy nut and it's gonna take a long time to get you back to mainstream political discourse. I hope I haven't been delphied.

I don't justify it but for decades I have watched the conservative point of view ridiculed and looked down upon by the mainstream media as if their ideas were beneath contempt, not worthy of discussion. There are those who argue that there are plenty of conservatives in the media including Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, William Saphire, Peggy Noonan, etc. The difference is that they all admit they are conservative. They don't pretend to be non partisan or neutral like the mainstream media does. If you listen to someone like Rush, you know the information you're getting is from the conservative point of view and he does not pretend to be otherwise. Those who are convinced that liberals make up a disproportionate share of newsroom workers have frequently relied on Pew Research Center surveys to confirm this view. The latest Pew results show that at national organizations, which includes print, TV, and radio, the numbers break down as 34% liberal, 7% conservative. At local outlets it is 23% liberal and 12% conservative. At web sites, 27% call themselves liberals and 13% conservatives. This is in contrast with the self assessment of the general public, 20% liberal and 33% conservative. An Annenberg Public Policy Center poll found a similar ideological breakdown. A total of 31% of polled journalists described themselves as very liberal or liberal compared to 9% who identified themselves as very conservative or conservative. ABC has George Stephanopoulos, a former advisor to President Clinton as the host of a Sunday morning talking head program. Michael Kinsely, who for six years was the liberal moderator of CNN's Crossfire is the editorial and opinion editor of the Los Angeles Times. Does anyone believe that these two individuals are fair and balanced? If so, then I would ask if the same consideration would be given to their Republican counterparts, Karl Rove and Robert Novak, if they were in those same media positions? The answer, at least to me, is as obvious as the agenda of the New York Times. As of May 27 2004, the NY Times had the Iraqi prison scandal on their front page for 28 days in a row. They did over 50 front page articles on this story alone. While the treatment of Iraqi prisoners was clearly wrong and those involved will be punished, the story does not deserve 50 front page articles in the NY Times. Yet, on May 26 2004, when the Justice Department announced an increased risk of terrorist strikes in the US and asked for help from the media in their attempt to capture 7 suspected al Qaeda members in the US, the NY Times put the article on page 16 although they had room to put their 50th story about the prison scandal on the front page. Whenever anything is said by conservatives it is almost always described as mean spirited from the Republican attack machine or divisive, a word used to describe conservatives but rarely used to describe liberals. In the eyes of the media elite, liberals are not divisive, there doesn't seem to be any mean spirited Democrats and there is no Democratic attack machine. Liberals in the media have also taken it upon themselves to decide which hate crime is worthy of being reported. In the fall of 1998, the Associated Press made a murder victim in Laramie, Wyoming a household name by turning the hideous killing of homosexual Matthew Shepherd into a media circus for countless editorials, books, plays, and docudramas. Yet a year later AP avoided national coverage of the murder of 13 year old Jesse Dirkhising who died from suffocation after being bound, gagged with underwear in his mouth, blindfolded, taped to the bed and sodomized by one gay man while another gay man watched. As for Fox News, they employ at least a half dozen liberals who express that point of view either as hosts of their own program or as guests on opinion oriented shows. CNN, with all of it's financial strength and resources has only 2 conservatives to represent that point of view. Fox News gives both sides of the story and for this they are branded as being conservatively biased. I guess that when you're used to doling out a constant barrage of liberally biased news, anything that is actually fair is seen by liberals as being on the conservative side. If there never has been any left wing bias in the media as some claim, why did conservatives start AM talk radio formats to have their views accurately represented?

HeyKate, let me guess... You're a FOX News fan, right? We all know how fair they are. I'm willing to bet you jumped on the bandwagon to crucify Newsweek for their Quran abuse story. Funny how a week later the FBI backed up Newsweeks statements. I guess the FBI is Liberal as well. Oh my God, it's a conspiracy!