The following letter to the editor appeared in today's Star Tribune:
Columnist Katherine Kersten and Bernard Goldberg are right ("Goldberg's revelations about media bias should come as no surprise," March 6). Liberals dominate the media.
Somehow, word must be gotten to Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Brit Hume, Wes Pruden, Tony Snow, John McLaughlin, Chris Matthews, G. Gordon Liddy, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Schlessinger, Michael Medved, Ollie North, Robert Novak, Michael Kelly, Paul Weyrich, Don Imus, Suzanne Fields, Marvin Olasky, Rich Tucker, R. Emmett Tyrell, Lawrence Kudlow, David Horowitz, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Peggy Noonan, William Safire, Andrew Sullivan, Michelle Malkin, David Limbaugh, Linda Bowles, Jonah Goldberg, Kathleen Parker, Mona Charen, Linda Chavez, John Fund, Paul Gigot, Robert Bartley, Paul Greenberg, Jeff Jacoby, Dick Morris, Thomas Sowell, Michael Reagan, Cal Thomas, Walter Williams, Mort Zuckerman, Brent Bozell, William F. Buckley, Pat Robertson, George Will, Charles Kraut hammer, Phyllis Schlafly, Matt Drudge, Lucianne Goldberg, Jerry Falwell, Michael Barone, Lawrence Kudlow, Marlin Fitzwater, Pat Buchanan, Christopher Hitchens, Rich Lowry, Alan Keyes, Jason Lewis, Joe Soucheray, the oped staff at the Wall Street Journal and the entire broadcast news staff of Fox News. This imbalance is unseemly.
-- Mike Finley, St. Paul.
Here's my reply to it:
Mike Finley's letter to the editor published on Friday attempted to show that the assertions by Bernard Goldberg and Katherine Kersten about liberal media bias were groundless by rattling off a large list of conservatives in the media(some of them even named twice and others of dubious conservative background, Don Imus?). What Finley neglected to point out was that with the exception of Brit Hume and "the entire broadcast news staff at Fox News" every person he listed was either a columnist, a talk radio host, or some other form of political commentator. None of these individuals claims to be an impartial objective reporter of the news but rather openly acknowledge their role as offering opinions on matters of the day. Their columns appear on the editorial pages of the newspaper(although very few of those listed every grace the Star Tribune's pages) and are labeled as opinion pieces. Those who host talk radio shows make no effort to hide their conservative views and in fact are quite open about them.
Contrast that to the very real news media bias that Goldberg wrote about and Kersten commented on. Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, and to a lesser extent Tom Brokaw are all national news anchors who profess to be impartial while coloring the "news" that they report with their liberal political views. Most of the reporters for the three major networks hold the same views and allow them to distort their coverage as well. Despite the growth of Fox, CNN, and other cable news organizations the three major networks still have a significant audience for their news broadcasts and this is what Goldberg's book is most concerned with.
While we're making lists how about newspapers with a liberal slant? New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Minneapolis Star Tribune, just to name a few. Conservatives don't have a problem with liberals in the media as long as they are open about their views and as long as people understand that the "news" that they receive from liberal sources will have usually follow a template based on these liberal beliefs.
