Media Bias - Covering the Scandals, Or Not

We hear a lot about the "Fairness" Doctrine, or similar limitations wrapped differently. The liberal complaint is that talk radio is dominated by conservatives. That's probably true as far as my observations can tell. But it's not a plot or monopolistic practices. For whatever reason, talk radio has been more successful among conservative audiences. The liberals tried hard to make Air America work. It had some heavy hitters, such as the newest Senator from Minnesota, Al Franken. But the shows did not do well, despite infusion of cash from liberal donors.

Of course, focusing on the talk radio realm ignores the fact that newspapers and the major networks are dominated by liberal thoughts. Look back at previous posts on this blog for more background, especially of the donation and voting tendencies of the press corps. So does the mainstream media have an agenda? It certainly appears so. And it shows a consistent hard lean to the left.

Consider the latest political scandal, which involves a Republican. It is getting tediously frequent coverage on the major networks. Similarly interesting scandals involving Democrats have been almost ignored. I have documented some of these below, thanks to data provided by Newsbusters (linked below also). The politicians are Rep. Charles Rangel (D), Rep. John Murtha (D), Rep. Pete Visclosky (D), Rep. James Moran (D), Ex.Rep. William Jefferson (D), and Gov. Mark Sanford (R). The graph below shows the number of segments the major TV networks devoted to each. The picture finishes my narration nicely.




Newsbusters: Heavy Coverage of Sanford’s Woes, But Where Are Democratic Scandals?