Jon Stewart/Chris Wallace: My Thoughts

There's not a word Stewart spokes in that much-discussed conversation with Chris Wallace that I would disagree with, when it comes to bias in the media. Wallace, and really anyone else who tries to make the "Liberal Media Bias" argument, seems desperate in pointing to a Diane Sawyer lead-in to a controversial story, or some request to go through Palin's emails. Really?

To be fair, if you gave him all day, Wallace could probably come up with 100 decent examples, and then he would argue that, together, they paint an overall picture that supports his thesis. But that still wouldn't fly. It's a high burden to prove that every major media outlet is biased in one direction, across the board, nearly all the time. And, the evidence against this position is significant and substantial. So much so that Wallace's best 5,000 examples still wouldn't put the preponderence of the evidence on his side.

We know the media isn't biased toward liberalism because we saw the coverage in the lead up to the War in Iraq, we watched the glossing over of Bush's illegal spying program, we saw the supposedly liberal media swallow whole on newly-minted, orwellianian lingo to describe what had always plainly been known as torture to protect the legacy of a conservative President committing rather un-liberal acts. Interestingly, the penultimate "liberal rag" the New York Times was centrally involved in all of those instances and was a huge help to Bush and Cheney. Those are arguably the most significant news stories of the decade (the War in Iraq and torture will surely be included in any and every history book 50-100 years from now, with footnotes about the abject media failure in each case) and should be weighted as such in this argument. But, even Stewart pulls a good example out of the salacious tabloid pile in pointing to Anthony Weiner.

Doubtless, had the media taken the high road and not put this story front and center for one week citing "more pressing issues" (or whatever), Wallace would complain that this was a conspiracy to let Weiner off the hook. Weiner is a bona fide liberal, after all. Of course, the media was relentless and ruthless towards Weiner, and the story seemed to have a life and energy that was greater than stories involving Republican legislators actually having sex with other not-their-wife people.

The media is sensational, and very lazy, and this makes them inaccurate, misleading and highly prone to over-simplification. They are anything but consistent. On the whole, the media is devastatingly shitty and it's a completely open question as to whether or not they even perform the proper function of a free press in a democratic society. All of this, as Stewart points out, is the true media bias. Any example of media shittiness that appears to help liberals and/or harm conservatives, can always - every single time - be explained, not as ideological bias, but as vapid, point-missing, sensationalistic incompetence.