Serious journalists should stick to being as economical as possible with the news. As the famous line goes, "just the facts, ma'm, just the facts." Of course, there is value in context and analysis and other inherently biased writing in journalism. The objective should be for the Journalist to limit such instincts to try and "educate" their readers. So, it's basically a lot more humility.

Journalists, if they are good and feel they deserve to be heard as individuals, can always try to blog or write books and compete in the world of ideas. But as purveyors of information, they should really trust their readers to either have the necessary background to appreciate a story, or simply get used to the idea that their one story is really not that earth-shattering in the big scheme of things.

The older I get, the more I realize that all news stories are basically repeats of similar stories. Just change the names, places and dates, and it's the same story, over and over and over again.

So, if news is really just entertainment at the end of the day, then there really is no hope.

There should eventually be a split in the print media (TV media are already lost) between news and analysis. There is nothing beyond habit and news organization culture that currently conflates the two.

(I'll leave aside for now the whole notion that news analysis is actually an important concensus building insitution in modern society. That the New York Times, for example is not only an aggregator of news, but of the ideas, of views and of opinion that help build the consensus that is so crucial to good democracy.)

You give a good description of the problem. For every example I give of liberal bias a reader could give an example of conservative bias.

Consider the set of all statements made by, say, the New York Times. Some of those statements will generally support a liberal point of view and others will support a conservative point of view. The set of all statements would form some kind of distribution on a liberal/conservative scale. If the distribution is "normal" and "centered" then the times is unbiased. If the distribution is skewed one way or another then bias exists.

There is a second problem though. Statements made by the Times should not only be compared to liberal and conservative philosophy they also need to be compared to objective truth. If it is not true that liberal judges are trying to stamp out religion in this country then it is not bias to report that fact.

So you cannot establish any case for bias with anecdotal evidence, which is what everybody seems to want to do. You have to look at a large number of articles and evaluate them in a painstaking way. The proof must be statistical in nature.

Convince people with numbers. Show them how all of the commentators on TV and Radio are overwhelmingly conservative. I think someone has already done this in the case of the war on Iraq. In this case there was next to zero guests or commentators who were opposed to the war who were invited on TV and radio. The war is the clearest example of how the bushies beat the war drums and the media went along with it. Then, afterwards the Times and the Post say "opps! we should have listened to more anti-war points of view. Our bad. too bad about all those dead people!"

Call me naive, but isn't journalism about facts and the truth? Isn't liberal or conservative interpretation the domain of the editorial and opinion staff?

Oh, silly me, when the so called main stream media is actually a state sponsored propaganda apparatus the truth and fact become irrelevant.

It's not a moment you're asking for - a very complex little assignment - The only thing I can suggest is an aphorism - Follow the money, or rather encourage the readership to follow the money as an exercise to better understand the interests of the media itself - i.e. who are the bastards who control the media (ownership)? - what are their interests? investments? Which politicians receive the most money from these people? What bills do they favour - sponsor or advocate in editorials?

I would second Archibald Tuttle's response.

Lay out the money train.
Who owns the news media.
What legislative agenda does the parent company have.
How does the reporting compare to the agenda (is it consistently biased towards the parent companies position?)
In the case of print media, does the editorial section advocate that agenda, and is there a correlation between the editorial pages, and the hard news pages?

Looking at FNC as a blatant example, does the reporting of a story favor one side over the other?
Are facts of a dubious nature weighted equally to hard facts, or are they identified as dubious?
When reporting on a story about the corporate parent, is the relationship between the reporter, and their employer noted in the story, so the viewer/reader can make an informed judgement about the tone of the story?

Facts?

We don't need no stinkin facts!

Try writing a news article sans adjectives. Adjectives are nothing if not vainly perjorative. Adjectives are desperately seeking emotional responses. Adjectives are furiously burning with invective.

Simple... if the media is liberal, why did it sit silently while Kerry was slammed by the Swift Boat Liars last August, when it (the MSM) knew the charges were false? If the media was liberal, it would have defended Kerry immediately, by publishing the truth.

Speaking of which, more facts, less editorializing, and less trying to be unreasonably balanced would be good. (ie comparing a small lie to a big one as if they were equal in harm).

I wrote: "If the media was liberal, it would have defended Kerry immediately, by publishing the truth."

Let's put it another way: If the media was COMPETENT (ie doing its job), it would have defended Kerry immediately, by publishing the truth.

Show how stories were reported in the days of consensus (50's and 60's), and how they're reported now. For example, the news that American wages dropped in real terms over the last year -- in the 50's and early 60's, that would have been reported as bad news, and explanations sought for why the American Dream of a better tomorrow is threatened. Now, that news isn't considered very important; its causes tend to be presented as inevitable (can't stop that globalization!) or as the fault of the workers (they just have to understand that they have to get more training, and they have to figure out for what currently non-existent job) or even as positive (American corporations have kept down labor costs!).

Comparing a couple of similar stories across time should show how the media has moved towards the right and should show how assumptions and point of view shape the selection and presentation of fact.

Hannah wrote: " If the media was COMPETENT (ie doing its job), it would have defended Kerry immediately, by publishing the truth."

I think that if the media was COMPETENT, they would just publish the facts. As jounalists they didn't need to DEFEND Kerry at all. But to be jounalists they needed to publish the truth. Most couldn't or wouldn't differentiate between truth and lie. Therefore, they are not jounalists.

On second thought, the media should have DEFENDED the truth. It was not their job to necessarily defend Kerry. They did neither.

A journalist working for any big corporation Media will not report the truth because if the news is not in line with the corporation, the editor will fire him and probably destroy his career. That is why we do not have any real news anymore. The neocons when something is not to their liking are quick to call them Liberal but this is just a ploy. This is not news, more in line of the media owner. It started during Reagan and accelerated under bush senior, (CIA). When corporations bought out television stations and newspapers, they took control of all our information. Unless there is a reverse in monopoly law, we can kiss goodbye to real news. The Washington Post, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein would not have been able to uncover the Watergate’s scandal if it had happen today. Check who own the paper, forget about the truth.
As for my news I go to outside US paper, and found Free speech TV.

See why our corporate media are silent. (Free speech.org)
Fear and Favor in the Newsroom
The crooks are in power.

Overall here's my feeling... I don't give a @#$% about bias any more. I care about competency and truth. So what if The Nation is a liberal journal, if I refer to an article of theirs the only objection should be if they've got the facts wrong... the same as with Fox News, who does have a history of playing fast and loose with the truth.

The LA Times using a verb with a slightly-negative connotation in a headline about Nixon is bumpkiss compared to, say, rearranging something Rosevelt said to claim that he would've supported your position.

Here's a possible tactic... challenge the conservative guy to compare primary sources on several topics. Challenge him to look at the data behind the talking point and see if he can continue to stand behind it.

Someone once said that "it is not the job of the media to be fair and balance, but it is their job to be truthful."

(For Karl Rove)

No short haired, yellow bellied son of tricky dickey
Gonna mother Hubbard the wool over the eyes of me
Just give me the truth
All I want is some truth.

Hannah,

What is the truth? How do you know its the truth? Did you read it in the Nation becuase they only write the truth. What makes you an expert on what happend in the four months of service by J.K. What makes the Swift Boat Vets liars?

Why did Kerry not release all his military files? So come on their truth queen and tell us the truth.