John McCain and the Discovery Institute

I don't know how we would judge "favorableness" to one side or another. Or how we could control for the possibility that Republicans, for instance, simply do more things that make them look bad. I mean, if one Democrat is involved in a bribery scandal involving $100,000 found in his freezer - but 20 Republicans are involved in a bribery scandal involving multiple millions of dollars shaken down from Indian casinos, and the media reports on both stories with equal time and interest - is that fair and balanced? Or is that false balance, slanted against Democrats?I'd say it's the latter, because the Republican scandal is a fundamentally larger and more important one. So increased media coverage of the Republican scandal would be warranted in my view, but one could easily make the argument "bribery is bribery; the greater focus on Republicans doing it is proof that the media is biased against Republicans." Additionally, I don't know how we would judge whether or not a source was biased. I mean, if the media really is slanting the news in favor of conservatives and Republicans, any source that pointed that out would fall under your classification of a "biased source." If we're going to reject as biased every source that comes to a conclusion other than "the media is balanced", then you're simply choosing your conclusion at the outset.I'm not trying to weasel out of providing data. I'm simply trying to explain why the only polling done on this issue is usually about how journalists vote - that's a really simple kind of poll to do. The fundamentally false idea is that this translates into some kind of indication of pervasive media bias.

Well, doubtless this is true, but since I didn't do that and no one has suggested doing that, it's irrelevant. I gave reasons for the source I rejected as biased, and the bias was obvious. It didn't take keen insight to find it. It's not fundamentally false. If it's true that the journalists' bosses lean right, then that would speak against such a bias. However, without such mitigating factors, if most journalists lean one direction, and especially if they lean hard to that direction, it's reasonable to expect bias, consciously or unconsciously. I don't know. Maybe we can't. In which case, we're stuck with just everyone's opinions about what they see or feel when they watch or read the media, and that's not worth much. We really can't even determine who does the most things wrong, because our knowledge of that is at least somewhat dependent on the media as well.

What reasons were those? I guess I missed them. Which source are we talking about, specifically?

answer tomorrow, going home, have guests, won't be back on till tomorrow.

The source was Media Matters for America.My comments on why they are biased are in message 71.

I don't find your reasons compelling, I guess.

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

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm asking you.Since we're clear on the question, now, do you think you could answer it?