July 13^th

Cal Thomas is bellyaching about the biased press. He reports that only 24 percent think the news media try to report the news without bias. Democrats are more likely to think the media try to be unbiased than do Republicans. Thomas claims that Brian Williams inflating the danger in his assignments and George Stephanopoulos’s gift to the Clinton Foundation have helped to reduce the trust in the media. Isn’t it interesting that Cal Thomas says not a word about his friend Bill O’Reilly’s tall stories describing his days as a “war correspondent” covering the Falkland’s war? I guess Cal Thomas doesn’t see anything emanating from Fox News as biased…and that’s the point!

The first question to be resolved is whether or not the news is biased and if it is which source is guilty. Thomas believes that CNBC, NPR and CNN are perceived to be biased and that Fox News and talk radio such as Limbaugh and others exist as an antidote to this perceived bias. Liberals, of course, see these news sources as biased in the opposite direction. Except for “Factcheck,” and similar groups that attempt to expose lies and exaggerations, there is not really any source of reliable information. Even “Factcheck” is seen as biased by the right wing when it exposes right wing exaggerations and lies.

 I watched some of “Outnumbered,” an early afternoon talk program on the Fox network. The program involves having one man on a low couch with two women seated on either side of him, thus “Outnumbered.” Today we had Lou Dobbs, a staunch conservative, seated in the middle of the expanded couch with two very short-skirted women seated on either side. (This program routinely presents seated young women exposing at least a foot of leg above the knee. The leg exposure may be a necessary and possibly a sufficient condition for appearing on “Outnumbered.”) The topic today was the body image of overweight adolescent girls. Research shows that they do not see themselves as overweight and this false body image makes it very difficult to change their unhealthy eating habits. One of the discussants finally said that Michelle Obama deserved “some credit” for publicizing this topic, but she quickly added that she didn’t like the way Mrs. Obama had done it. No specifics were provided about Mrs. Obama’s shortcomings publicizing the issue of course but her job with Fox was now secure.

As the electorate has become more and more polarized they have become more and more distrustful of any information source not completely synchronized with their bias. Information sources not equally biased  are ipso facto biased against their position.