"If you find yourself arguing that the major news media do not lean liberal, then you almost certainly have identified yourself as being to the left of the mainstream news media and well to the left of the rest of your fellow Americans. Which is fine."--Bob of Coffee With Rhoads.

That's a great observation. Of course, as Jonah Goldberg wrote in December of 2001:

Look, it's hardly surprising that Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, Susan Sontag, Stanley Fish, and the rest of that crowd think the liberal media is too conservative. After all, they think avowed liberals are too conservative. If you consider Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Doris Kearns Goodwin, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, The New Republic, or any other liberal icons to be too conservative (or racist, misogynist, whatever), why wouldn't you think the journalists who worship these people to be too conservative too?

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The simple fact is that everyone knows the big-league media leans to the left. Even liberals know it. A Lou Harris poll revealed that 70 percent of self-described liberals think the media tilts to the left. Meanwhile, a Freedom Forum survey found that 89 percent of journalists voted for Bill Clinton in 1992. Their professional heroes — Cronkite, Daniel Schorr, A. J. Liebling, and, most damning, I. F. Stone (see this for more on Izzy) — are uniformly liberal or left-wing.

If they'd admit they have a problem and move on, lots of conservatives would just give up on the topic. It's the infuriating denial that bugs many of us. It's like the friend who swears he didn't drink your last beer. You don't care about the beer, but you just can't stand him not admitting it. (You took my beer! Say it!! Say it!!!) By denying the obvious, so many pompous elite journalists drive us batty by acting as if we're imagining things.

While I doubt they're going to stop cataloging the media's most egregious examples of bias anytime soon, the Media Research Center's job is now much easier. Given the Times' role in setting the media's agenda, nobody can argue anymore that the mainstream media isn't liberal--except, as Bob and Jonah note, those on the extreme far left, who wish the media were even more biased in their direction.

Speaking of which, has anybody gotten Al Gore's take on Okrent's column?