Attempting to define or prove Media Bias often end up being like trying to explain the color blue to someone born blind, its darn near impossible in an age where people seem to be immutably tied to their perspective and blind to all others.  The debate will rage all over and if one has a really good example to prove liberal bias in the media it usually just ends up with the liberal party to the debate saying something like "what is bias anyway, is there any such such thing as the ‘truth’, if there is the media are there solidly in the middle as professional journalists and you just don’t like the truth, you’re problem is that it is you who is biased and its you who have the problem" etc. ad nauseum.

The argument breaks down because to the liberal it is obvious that what the media is reporting is the truth, the real workings of the world, because they share that way of seeing the world and they get back from the news evidence that confirms their beliefs.  Charges from the right of bias just prove to liberals that they are on the correct side because obviously the conservative is wrong about everything and if the conservative opposes the media why then the media must be doing a bang up job.  Life in the self perpetuating bubble goes on.

Its enough to really make one wonder if there is any point in using reason or logic.  That’s still open to question, but Michael Barone’s ability to do both isn’t.  He just published on his blog perhaps the clearest example of pure absolutely blind bias one could imagine (emphasis added):

The evidence suggests that editors at the NYT and the Post have found it natural to recruit from the liberal magazines but that it does not seem to have crossed their minds to recruit from the conservative magazines. Why not?

Here’s my guess. I once had a conversation with an executive at one of the three broadcast network news organizations that went about like this. "Don’t you think the fact that 90 percent of your people are Democrats affects your work product?" "No, it doesn’t affect our work product at all, because we have professional standards of objectivity," etc., etc. "Then what you’re saying is that your work product would be the same if 90 percent of your people were Republicans?" "No, then it would be biased."

In other words, only liberals can see the world objectively. Conservatives are inherently biased. If that’s your mind-set, it makes sense to recruit people from the New Republic and the American Prospect, and it makes no sense to recruit people from National Review, the Weekly Standard and the American Spectator.

Maybe that’s not the real explanation, but it seems to fit the facts of the case.

The reported conversation is telling.  I’m not sure it is possible to beat such a real world explicit example of the ideologically blind liberal bubble thinking that is exactly what we on the right complain about.  Its amazing that this executive couldn’t recognize the blatantly obvious logical contradictions in his own statement even when he was questioned about it.  But there is the thought process behind the whole mess and why it isn’t going to change as long as the professional news types have anything to say about it.

I ‘ve been lucky to engage in converstion and debate with some extremely smart people in my time, people who actually did use logic and would engage in honest debate.  They were mostly somewhat lonely intellectual professors in college though, people who’s profession was their pride in their honest intellect.  And while intellectual honesty is extremely rare in the real world outside of campus it does exist.  Just not in any position of power in the mainstream media.