The article at Alternet deals with efforts by congressmen to address media bias, however the comment on the issue goes to the heart of the matter.
"While it is good to see that there is more discussion about the media in general and PBS in particular, Democrats and progressives are letting the Republican right wing frame the debate once again.
The real issue is not whether there are too many :"liberal" points of view in the media, or whether the conservative right wing is taking over the media, it is about whether the media is giving people the truth or ideological spin.
If the facts favor one point of view or the other, it doesn't matter - as long as that point of view is backed by the truth.
For example, before going to war in Iraq, it was the media's place to look deeply into whether there was credible reason to believe that Iraq had WMDs, whether there was a connection to the terrorist attack of 9/11, etc. The truth was that neither of those claims were based on any known facts. Does that mean that if the media had aired these facts that they were showing a liberal bias? Similarly, since Social Security is not "in crisis," does publicizing the actual numbers show a liberal bias?
Telling the truth should be the basis of discussion, not the issue. If, knowing that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and was not connected to the 9/11 attack, Republicans still believed that we should invade that country, their point of view should have been heard - as should the opposite view. Unfortunately, the media has become an arena in which any two opposing points of view are presented without having the facts play any role. If Dr. Frist states that AIDs can be transmitted throught sweat and tears, and known scientific fact can prove that it is not, should his opinion be given equal play in the interests of "fairness?" Unfortunately, this is not fairness, it is misrepresentation.
So, let's begin to frame the issue as being between providing known truth and ideological statements, not between liberal and conservative bias."
The Real Issue
Posted by: chitijdth on May 10, 2005 4:36 AM
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/21971/
(Please excuse that I have written a diary which is a quote. I have done this because the quality of the arguement is so sound that I didn't feel the need to water it down. But I did feel the need to widen the audience, hence the diary.)