The media are interested in making money and that creates time pressures that often reduce the quality of the reporting and writing. The media is more likely to be sloppy and superficial than ideological. It doesn’t make profit sense otherwise. Why deliberately alienate a portion of your potential customer base if you are in the BROADcast industry?

The reason liberals are currently so upset with the media is that we have an administration that is particularly adept as manipulating the weaknesses of the media. The Bush Administration and their Republican allies recognize that they only have to muddy the water enough so that an issue sneaks past the blinkered radars of the media. Then they can define the issue in their terms. Given the advantages that the Republicans have reaped from this strategy, they have little to complain about. Democrats, on the other hand, have not mastered the art of media manipulation to the same degree.

It’s not a pretty situation and the truth is usually the victim. However, blame the system and its reliance on the profit motive rather than ascribing it to any clear ideological bias (unless, as in the case of FOX, that bias makes money – remember, however, that FOX also shows “The Simpsons” and Rupert Murdoch is Michael Moore’s book publisher).