An interesting plea in today's Salon, challenging loudmouth Bill O'Reilly to an email interview about a piece by fellow loudmouth Gary Kamiya. Now, I didn't read Kamiya's piece, because I dislike him a little more than I dislike Bill O'Reilly, but what I found fascinating is this brief passage:

Salon is not a doctrinaire or party-line publication. We have run antiwar pieces and pro-war pieces; we have lauded the antiwar movement and critiqued it, too. We seek the full, free exchange of ideas that is the hallmark of liberal discourse. And we believe that there is still room for, even hunger for, honesty and nuance in political debate.

Now that's an interesting way to look at Salon. Not party-line, giving equal time, and all that nonsense. Now I'm not saying that I don't sometimes enjoy reading Salon, but "not a doctinaire or party-line publication"? That's just laughable. Even more amazing, here's the paragraph immediately preceding the one quoted above:

Of course, the real agenda of conservative media's overbearing pundits -- despite their lip service to the marketplace of ideas -- is to drive everyone who disagrees with them out of the public arena. They're not interested in open debate; their goal is to intimidate and silence. If you dare oppose the war, if you dare even admit any ambivalence about it, then you should be gagged and expatriated. In the current climate of mind control, you can't even admit to having entertained thoughts that are not "appropriate," even if you end up rejecting them.

'Nuff said, I think.
Also, been catching a lot of reviews of Eric Alterman's book lately, and I wanted to take issue with one of his points (sorry, I can't remember where I read this particular thing, so no link). In his diatribe against the idea of a liberal media bias, he at one point lists a slew of conservative commentators as if to say, "Look at all the conservative journalists! What bias??"
He lists folks ( the so-called "punditocracy") such as Bill Kristol, Fred Barnes, Charles Krauthammer, Jonah Goldberg, Sean Hannity, William F. Buckley, Brit Hume, the WSJ editorial board, and so on (and on, and on). OK, fair enough -- these guys and others ARE indeed conservative. Maybe even arch-conservative, I don't know. But the point is, with the possible exception of Brit Hume, all the the guys he lists are commentators. You're supposed to know their bias, because they give their opinions!
To me, the argument misses the point. The real insidious media bias comes from those who are just supposed to be reporting the news, not giving their opinions. People like Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite (back in the day, anyway) Tom Brokaw, John Burns, Serge Schememan...all the way down to little ol' me, writing for my weekly paper -- you're NOT supposed to know our bias, because we're just supposed to be reporting the facts. And here's a fact -- not everyone does a good job of hiding their biases when writing news peices. In fact, many reporters don't even try to hide it. Hence, the idea of a liberal media bias -- reporters, many of whom are liberal, slanting their supposedly objective news stories to the left.
I mean, holding commentators to the same standard as reporters? That's just ridiculous. It completely misses the point.