Media Bias 101

I came across this article over the weekend and thought it was a great example of lib-left media bias. Lets take a look.

Blogs changing political discourse, shaping media coverage

Pat Flannery
The Arizona Republic
May. 14, 2006 12:00 AM

Unless you're a political junkie or an Internet geek, a pair of political uproars in the blogosphere probably flew under your radar this past spring.

Ben Domenech, a former Bush administration intern who launched the conservative RedState.com, was dumped in late March as a blogger at Washingtonpost.com after liberal rivals unearthed plagiarism in his work, triggering a flurry of Internet commentary, known as a "swarm."

Then late last month, the Los Angeles Times suspended columnist Michael Hiltzik's blog after a conservative critic exposed Hiltzik's practice of using pseudonyms to post provocative comments on other blogs.

Note how the author conveniently omits the fact that Hiltzik is a card carrying MoonBat while stressing that Domenech is a conservative with ties to the Bush admin.

The frays are instructive to those unfamiliar with blogging because they signal how and where a growing share of political discourse is taking place these days. It is a more personalized, polarized and contentious dialogue in which the public's business and a broad array of private opinions are blended in an edgy, fast-moving political medium.

It has become part of the political landscape, with Democrat Howard Dean setting the early standard by using blogs to raise money, spread his message and build a grass-roots network in the 2004 presidential race.

Howard Dean gets portrayed as a hero. Nice.

[...]

What's different now is the ubiquity of blogs. Recent episodes dramatize how swiftly and powerfully they may react, sometimes rivaling mainstream media in their ability to track events and connect the dots in real time, and influencing traditional news coverage. Consider:

• Blogs applied the pressure that led to Trent Lott's 2002 resignation from the U.S. Senate after making what some construed as racist remarks.

• It was a blogger dubbed "Buckhead" who in 2004 exposed forged documents used by CBS News and Dan Rather in stories about President Bush's National Guard service.

• Former Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., was unseated two years ago after conservative bloggers attacked him and forced the state's largest newspaper to modify its coverage of the race.

Right, conservative bloggers "attack" where as liberal bloggers participate in "flurry of Internet commentary, known as a "swarm.""

• Blogs raised early questions about the Bush administration's handling of the Hurricane Katrina crisis. A study by Loyola University Chicago sociologist Lauren Langman concludes that the blogs forced critical mainstream news coverage that weakened support for the president.

• Last year's U.S. Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers was withdrawn after conservative blogs derided her qualifications. Bush took the unprecedented step of holding a conference call with the bloggers in an unsuccessful attempt to quell criticism.

Of those 5 bullet points, only 2 were conservative victories. The first, in regards to Trent Lott, seems to be inaccurate. If I remember it correctly, Lott didn't resign his senate seat. He simply steped down as the house majority leader. He still sits in the senat as indicated by his website [click].

As their numbers and influence grow, it is clear that blogs are not just a national medium.

More than a dozen independent Arizona political blogs now exist along with those of media outlets and campaigns. Readership is minuscule compared with many national blogs, but they sometimes scoop local media and influence their coverage.

But it gets even better:

[...]

What's not clear is precisely who is reading all these blogs.

Daily Kos, a liberal national blog launched in 2002, has nearly 500,000 visitors a day. Instapundit.com, appealing to libertarians and conservatives, gets close to 150,000.

Another popularity measure is how many other sites link to a blog. According to Technorati, 35,000 link to Huffington Post, a national site created by pundit Arianna Huffington that features an array of opinions. Among political blogs, it is second only to Daily Kos in the number of links to it.

Locally, the story is quite different. Patterson said his averages about 300 hits a day, with about 350 readers on a weekly distribution list. Wactivist.com, another Arizona blog, averages fewer than 100 visits a day, according to its site meter.

So Kos (lib-left) and the Huffington Post (lib-left) are the heavy hitters in the blogosphere? And Instapundent (conservative) gets an honorable mention? Wow. Lets see what the TTLB says about it:

Higher Beings
1.Instapundit.com (4480) details
2.Michelle Malkin (3951) details
3.Daily Kos: State of the Nation (3181) details
4.Power Line (2859) details
5.lgf: now, nobody dance! (2829) details
6.Captain's Quarters (2829) details
7.CyberStones-A Lutheran Blog (2627) details
8.Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall (2189) details
9.Hugh Hewitt (2094) details
10.Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things (2076) details

4 of the top 5 are conservative blogs. How is it that the author missed Malkin, Powerline and LGF? That's easy. Our new friend Pat Flannery picked and displayed only facts that fit within his MoonBat reality.

It's called lib-left media bias.