Apple Pie, Baseball, And Bias Charges
According to the New York Post, "[t]wo British news organizations believe Americans are so hungry for unbiased coverage that they launched very similar ad campaigns touting their objectivity within days of each other."
The two are Reuters and BBC World News, both of whom have ads that offer two choices about what to make of a major news issue. Reuters, for example, uses an image of a chicken and gives the choices "Global epidemic" or "Global hysteria," presumably in reference to bird flu. (Is "Pointless oversimplification" an option? I guess not.)
"I don't think any skullduggery is involved," Guy Barnett, co-founder of the company that came up with the Reuters campaign, told the Post. "I think everyone recognized there is a group of influential people who are dissatisfied with the level of bias in the news."
Here's something else everyone recognizes, or at least should: Alleging media bias has become an American tradition in recent years, one from which no news organization is immune. Good luck keeping above the fray, guys.