Blinded By The Bias Debate?
Yesterday, however, conservative National Review columnist Rich Lowry argued that on this particular point, the "conservative campaign against the mainstream media" has led some astray. "In Iraq, the media's biases happen to fit the circumstances," writes Lowry, adding, "[m]ost of the pessimistic warnings from the mainstream media have turned out to be right — that the initial invasion would be the easy part, that seeming turning points (the capture of Saddam, the elections, the killing of Zarqawi) were illusory, that the country was dissolving into a civil war." As for the "good news" that many conservative critics have complained is conspicuously absent from the mainstream media's reporting, Lowry writes that such information "has generally been pretty weak. The Iraqi elections were indeed major accomplishments. But the opening of schools and hospitals is not particularly newsworthy, at least not compared with American casualties and with sectarian attacks meant to bring Iraq down around everyone's heads in a full-scale civil war."
Lowry highlights what complicates much of the bias debate: a predisposed assumption that bias always exists – on either side of the aisle – can often end up just obfuscating the actual truth. In that sense, the outlets that exist for the explicit purpose of rooting out bias – liberal or conservative -- don't necessarily help so much. Certainly, biases exist, and sometimes they are reflected inappropriately. But if you're looking hard enough for bias one way or the other, you'll probably find it – maybe even both ways.