At Lake Country blogs we have two bloggers, Amy and Jim, who've made it their mission to expose "liberal bias" in reporting. I can only imagine that like their conservative readers they must spend endless sleepless hours agonizing over "liberal bias" in the media. I hate to think if they also concentrated on other forms of bias in the media what it would do to their life if they were not so fixated on "liberalism" every waking hour.
In March '09, The American Conservative published a favoriable profile piece on Republican Governor Mark Sanford -- a man of high Christian morals, noting that:
"During Sanford’s first gubernatorial campaign in 2002, an 8-year-old African-American girl wandered onto a Sanford family property on Lady’s Island and drowned. A source close to the governor said she fell into a “retaining pond.” Her family’s lawyer, Manning Smith, called it a “pit.” Other sources claim that Sanford, who owned a hydraulic excavator at the time, digs holes on his property to unwind. According to a source involved in the settlement, the governor’s insurance company paid the girl’s family “around $300,000.” During Sanford’s second run, after rumors began to circulate, local newspapers and the AP looked into the incident, but haven’t reported it."
Wait. Sanford digs holes to relax?
If a conservative posits that a story, was just not "newsworthy enough" for the liberal media to report on, then what would these same conservatives think about a story, known to the AP, that was not reported on?
Using this conservative reasoning, we would have to conclude that the AP is demonstrating "conservative bias" by omission.
Of course, this proves nothing about bias in the media -- conservative or otherwise. The reason why both liberals and conservatives -- and conservatives in particular, will blow these omissions by the media into hysterical attacks about bias, because it seems to acknowledge a person's confirmation bias.
For conservatives, its a bit different though.
