John McCain and the Discovery Institute

Third possibility: McCain is sugggesting the Intelligent Design point of view should be presented in a philosophy class.In that case he's in agreement with the ACLU.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Oops. My bad. I should have re-read the OP before posting.I've long noticed that McCain enjoys sweetheart press coverage for a guy whose politics are so far right of center. His statements on gun control, for example, are vintage NRA, right down to the bogus interpretation of 'the right to bear arms.' But no one goes after it. NPR? All smiles.My guess is that they like McCain as long as he's making headaches for people named Bush. In a general election campaign against a Democrat they'd pounce.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Clarification requested.Your title refers to the 'liberal media' in the US as a 'myth.' But your closing sentence states that the 'media industry' is 'predominantly liberal and Democrat'--seeming to accept its 'liberal' leanings as fact.___

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Not confusion. Just awareness of the obvious.In this case, the obvious tension that exists in the idea that a 'predominantly liberal and Democratic media industry'--your words--'gives a pass' to 'Republicans and conservatives'--your words--while 'manufacturing controversies' to 'undermine' liberals and Democrats--your words.You have made no attempt to explain how this apparent self-contradiction can exist. It is reasonable for me to request that you do so if I am to find your statement at all credible.Please explain.

Thank you for the reply. Your hypothesis, though, introduces another contradiction.You said earlier that this 'personally liberal' press manufactures news. You say this practice is widespread and that it 'undermines' liberal politicians the press personally supports.Here it is again as you said it in Message 23 (boldface mine): You are proposing 'overcorrection' of a remarkable sort.Professional journalists, you suggest, are so eager to behave in an ethical manner that they 'unwittingly' violate, in mass, the most basic principle of their professional ethics.Question. What keeps this extremely conscientious, personally liberal press from noticing its own egregious violation of its ethical standards as it manufactures controversies to sabotage Democrats? A curious phenomenon, I agree.I'm testing a hypothesis. So far the evidence supports it. I'll let you know more after seeing if the results can be replicated.___Edited by Archer Opterix, : added quote.Edited by Archer Opterix, : typo.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

A made-up story... like the one CBS aired about George W Bush a few weeks before the 2004 election that was based on forged documents? The one that was exposed by bloggers who did the fact-checking CBS staffers were supposed to do and didn't?Plenty of people all across the political spectrum share your feelings about the existence of substandard work in the press. But that's neither here nor there.Your thesis was not that the press is sloppy. Your thesis was that the press is biased. Different thing.You asserted a 'systematic bias' (your words) against liberal Democrats on the part of journalists who are, you say, liberal Democrats 'personally' (your word).In the absence of any explanation as to how this can be so, the assertion appears to be self-contradicting and thus irrational. It is thus fair to ask you, as I have done, to show how it is not.I'm sure you can produce more anecdotes. But, as we all know, the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data.'Data would be more persuasive. Can you support your statement with any statistical analyses of news stories and their slants? Or were you just offering a subjective opinion?

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

A bias in favor of incumbency is not the same thing as a bias in favor of a partisan viewpoint.Which kind of favoritism is being asserted here?

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Your unorthodox understanding of the CBS issue is certainly interesting, Crash. But what's even more interesting is that your reply focused exclusively on that story.I warned you specifically about the invalidity of trading anecdotes. And then you wasted an entire post doing nothing but that.Your reply ignored the question. I asked you for data to support your assertion. I was very clear about this.You asserted that a press consisting mostly of liberal Democrats is guilty of 'systemic bias' against liberal Democrats.In the absence of any data to support this belief, it appears to be self-contradictory and likely irrational. I'm sure you prefer that your readers think better of your ideas. It would therefore stand to reason that you will seize the opportunity you have to show that the liberal-against-liberal bias you see, strange though it may seem, really exists.Data, please.__Edited by Archer Opterix, : typo.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Because I asked for data. Where is it? I asked you for any data at all. If that sets an impossible standard of proof, so be it.Your unlikely assertion is that liberal journalists are systemically biased against the liberal politicians they personally support. On the face of it this assertion appears to be self-refuting and thus irrational. You have been given the opportunity to present any sort of data to show the idea has merit, but you have produced nothing.I will not bother you with a fifth request for data. It's obvious by now that you have none.Your assertion is only a subjective opinion whose true nature as an opinion you refuse to acknowledge._

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

That's true for print media, yes. The last data I saw showed that in electronic media (TV, radio, etc.) news execs skewed leftward in about the same proportions as journalists. And these formats reach a larger audience than print media.The picture is increasingly complicated, of course, with the introduction and merging of traditional electronic media with Internet news sources. There are the corporate mergers to consider. Certainly the mainstream media (MSM) have a much smaller market share than they did a generation ago.__

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

What kind of data would not be merely anecdotal and one person's subjective opinion?___

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ArcherAll species are transitional.