Johnston: Breeding bias
It is pretty hard to deny a leftward bias in the news media these days. On the one hand, the National Enquirer reported that the former vice-presidential nominee of the Democratic Party had an affair, and the media studiously ignored the story for months, even through his second presidential campaign. When he finally admitted to the affair, the story was briefly mentioned, then left behind.
Three days after the introduction of the Republican vice-presidential nominee, the media began to report an elaborate story, sourced from the lefty netroots, that she had lied in claiming to...
I second what #1 said. In addition, have you heard of separation of church and state? That might be just one reason that people are disturbed by Palin. Also, if you seem to agree with Palin that unwanted pregnancies are blessings, not burdens. Maybe you should try telling that to a rape or incest victim.
Peter, I attend an evangelical church, take advice from pastors on how to follow God's will in my career, think the Bible is the Word of God, and consider all babies to be blessings from God. And I think Sarah Palin is an absolutely awful vice presidential candidate. She has no national or foreign policy experience, and she does not even seem to be knowledgeable about these policies. The news media need not drag Palin's daughter through the mud, but they are doing their job by reporting everything that they can find out about this unknown that McCain has recklessly nominated.
This is a really poor argument for liberal bias. The author doesn't cite any legitimate (non-blog) news sources that actually covered the Bristol Palin pregnancy (or conspiracy theory) before Palin announced it herself. The New York Times, like most newspapers, didn't cover the Edwards story until it moved out of the rumor stage. Likewise, they didn't cover the Palin pregnancy story until it moved out of the rumor stage. The one example cited doesn't pass. As far as scandal-making goes, you could look at the Clinton scandal for a good example of conservative bias.
In general, I feel that while the mainstream media may be made up of many liberals, in its eagerness to appease conservatives it demonstrates a conservative bias--it is especially easy to argue this of all television media. For a handful of examples of the media's conservative bias, see this article (http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/09/08/msnbc/index.html), or Eric Alterman's book "What Liberal Bias."
That's a poor, anecdotal argument for a 'leftward bias in the news media,' given that looking at something like newspaper and television network ownership gives you the exact opposite sense of where the media bias is in this country.