The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released a new study that should put an end to the media fiction that liberals are some sort of fringe group that are out of touch with mainstream America. It should put an end to that, but will it?

The report reveals that the public has been growing more concerned about social programs, income inequality, and militaristic national security policies, and less interested in the so-called traditional social values promoted by conservatives. That values divide corresponds with a shift in political affiliation as well:

“In 2002, the country was equally divided along partisan lines: 43% identified with the Republican Party or leaned to the GOP, while an identical proportion said they were Democrats. Today, half of the public (50%) either identifies as a Democrat or says they lean to the Democratic Party, compared with 35% who align with the GOP.”

That’s a 15% divergence in 5 years. Following the Democratic electoral victories last November and the consistently low approval ratings of the Bush administration, one might think that the press would start to approach issues in a manner that reflects this reality. Instead, they persist in characterizing liberals as peaceniks and welfare moms. Partisans like Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity can’t say the word “Left” without appending “ultra-far” to the front of it. Even if they are talking about confirmed moderates like John Murtha.

Whether it’s the anti-troops leftists seeking a sane foreign policy, or the radical liberals who scotched the Fox News attempt to sabotage the debate in Nevada, or the mockery of Al Gore’s congressional testimony on global warming, or the loony netroots activists that have taken over the Democratic Party, the subtle, and sometimes obvious, defamation ought to be wearing thin. It’s the stenographers and spokesmodels who pass for the “mainstream” media who are out of touch. In poll after poll it has been shown that more Americans agree with the positions of liberals on almost every issue. That includes the economy, healthcare, the environment, civil rights, and most notably, the war. But the media continues to force their utterly misrepresentative narrative on a public that knows better.

This seems like a good time to remind and encourage people to let the press know that we know that they are being dishonest. If ABC News makes disparaging comments about “left-wing special interests,” call their newsroom. If USA Today belittles progressive congresspersons as not being aligned with their constituents, fire off an email. Do this every time you witness their bad behavior and point them to this Pew study. If we hit them over the head with the truth enough times, they might finally start to get it.

We can only hope.

A couple of weeks ago the Los Angeles Times announced that they were going to invite guests to edit their opinion section, Current. My initial response was that it was a terrible idea that trivialized the tradition of commentary in journalism. That impression was affirmed when they revealed that film producer Brian Grazer would be the inaugural guest editor. I have nothing against Grazer, but this is a newspaper (ostensibly) and its opinion pages should take that mission more seriously. If they had Bill Moyers or Peter Ueberroth launch the program, and held Grazer for a later edition, it would have given it more gravitas.

Well now the scheme has produced some Hollywood melodrama of its own. Apparently the Times’ Editorial Page Editor Andres Martinez, who selected Grazer, was romantically involved with a publicist who works with Grazer. That appearance of a conflict of interest led publisher David Hiller to scrap this week’s Current (albeit belatedly, and after denying any conflict existed). That, in turn, led Martinez to resign.

I really couldn’t care less about the management crowd at the Times who I believe to be journalistically challenged and beholden to their Chicago bosses and shareholders instead of their readers. But in a statement about his resignation, Martinez wrote the following:

“I will not be lectured on ethics by some ostensibly objective news reporters and editors who lobby for editorials to be written on certain subjects, or who have suggested that our editorial page coordinate more closely with the newsroom’s agenda.”

Martinez’ observation about the Times’ reporters, and his revelation regarding the incestuous relationship between the news division and the opinion pages, is a more scandalous affair than the one between Martinez and Mullins. But the real problem with the Times was eloquently stated by Jeff McMahon in a posted response to Martinez:

“It’s truly amazing that David Hiller has suddenly discovered the conflict of interest provisions of journalism’s codes of ethics. After all, the Tribune Company’s strategy has been to exploit situations in which interests are inherently conflicted – such as owning newspapers, television stations, radio stations, and in one truly unfortunate city, even a baseball team, in the same city, and then creating advertorial synergies between them. It’s a bit hard to believe anyone spawned by the Tribune Company headquarters is so concerned about ethics. So what’s really going on here?”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Update: This scandal may have more endurance than anyone currently anticipates. Bill Boyarsky, former city editor at the Times, thinks a full investigation should be conducted to ascertain whether any other conflicts may have occurred.

The Washington Post thinks it’s time to “take stock” of America’s involvement in the war in Iraq. With tomorrow as the four year anniversary of the invasion, some might think that it’s long past time. Nevertheless, the Post is offering their ruminations in an editorial called, Lessons of War. It doesn’t take long for them to prove that they haven’t learned very much. They begin by soft-peddling the Bush administration’s culpability for the worst foreign policy in this country’s history:

“The easy way out is to blame President Bush, Vice President Cheney or former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld: The decision was right, the execution wrong. There’s no question that the execution was disastrous. Having rolled the dice on what everyone understood to be an enormous gamble, Mr. Bush and his team followed up with breathtaking and infuriating arrogance, ignorance and insouciance.”

The decision was “right?” Can they really still believe that in light of the fact that all of the reasons that led to the decision were shown to be false? There was no imminent threat, there were no weapons of mass destruction, there was no connection to Al Qaeda or 9/11. It’s nice see the Post acknowledge the failure of the execution, but they have learned nothing if they think that the decision was right. And their assertion that everyone understood the “enormous gamble,” of the undertaking conveniently ignores all of the reassurances that the invasion would be a cakewalk and that Americans would be greeted as liberators.

Yet despite all of this and BushCo’s “infuriating arrogance, ignorance and insouciance,” the Post wants us to be careful about taking the “easy way out” by holding the President and his team accountable. They even suggest that the chaos and misery may have been inevitable:

“But the war might have spun out of control even under wiser leadership.”

Of course, under wiser leadership, we would not have gone to war in the first place. One must wonder what the Post considers wise leadership. They also appear to have a decidedly different view of comfort than would most folks:

“It would almost be comforting if Mr. Bush had ‘lied the nation into war,’ as is frequently charged. The best postwar journalism instead suggests that the president and his administration exaggerated, cherry-picked and simplified but fundamentally believed — as did the CIA — the catastrophically wrong case that then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell presented to the United Nations.”

I can’t think of anyone who would gain comfort from having the President lie to them. But if they would, they got their wish, because exaggeration, cherry-picking and simplification is the equivalent of lying if the intent is to mislead a nation into an unjustified war of aggression. And if stories reporting that the administration “fundamentally believed” the case with which Secretary Powell was saddled represent the best of postwar journalism, that’s more an indictment of journalism than a defense of the President.

The Post editorial concludes with an admission that they have been poor students:

“Unfortunately, none of this provides bright guidelines to make the next decisions easier.”

Then why did they print a headline above the column that says, “Lessons of War?” There is much to learn from the past four years of disastrous mistakes and dishonesty. Although the Post may not have learned anything, the people, who are overwhelmingly opposed to, and disgusted by, this war, have graduated ahead of the media class. And there is nothing in the curriculum that supports the Post’s conclusion that…

“A patient, sustained U.S. commitment, with gradually diminishing military forces, could still help Iraq to move in the right direction.”

The American people have run out of patience. What patience remains does not deserve to be wasted on a president and a policy that has been so wrong and so costly in both lives and resources. The Post, for its part, may want to consider enrolling in a remedial studies class, because the lessons of this war seemed to have been entirely lost to them

Howard Kurtz is weighing in on the chaos at the Justice Department where eight U. S. Attorneys were dismissed under suspiciously political circumstances. The controversy extends to various shifting explanations from Alberto Gonzales and connections that reach into the White House. Kurtz begins by conceding that the matter was “badly botched,” calling it a “fiasco,” “disturbing,” and saying that it “raises questions about the Justice Department’s credibility.” That said, according to Kurtz, it still “doesn’t seem like a career-ender.” Kurtz must be holding out for a dead intern in Gonzales’ trunk.

The reasons for his leniency are that the scandal is not overheating the water-cooler circuit and that the only relevant decider is The Decider™. It’s too bad that Kurtz’ criteria has nothing to do with whether or not the Attorney General’s job performance is either competent or lawful.

Most of the rest of the comments regarding GonzoGate include excerpts from other columnists that seem to be uniformly advocating ditching the AG. And this is not just from progressives like Josh Marshall…

“Who wants to guess how many days remain before Gonzales decides his presence at Justice is becoming an obstacle to the fulfillment of President Bush’s important law enforcement policy objectives?”

…but also from the far right National Review…

“The administration’s supporters should consider whether the price of keeping Gonzales in office will be the surrender of important policies in order to try to appease his critics.”

But still, Howie doesn’t think there are enough gossips driving the story to merit serious discussion of Gonzales’ departure. Perhaps he needs to invent more typical bloggers that will back up his biases.

Media Matters has published a report that documents the conservative bias of some of the most prominent political programs on television. Their extensive research shows that…

“During the 109th Congress (2005 and 2006), Republicans and conservatives held the advantage on every show, in every category measured. All four shows interviewed more Republicans and conservatives than Democrats and progressives overall, interviewed more Republican elected and administration officials than Democratic officials, hosted more conservative journalists than progressive journalists, held more panels that tilted right than tilted left, and gave more solo interviews to Republicans and conservatives.”

This report comes at a time when conservatives are still complaining that the media is unabashedly liberal. Bruce Bartlett at the National Review concedes that, while there is still an overall liberal slant, the press is becoming more neutral:

“In my view, the media did have a strong left-wing tilt for many years. But over the last 20 years or so, I think that has mostly disappeared. Major newspapers like the Post and New York Times are now fairly evenhanded in their news coverage. Their editorial pages are still pretty liberal, of course, but the Post in particular is far less liberal in its editorial positions than it was in the 1970s.” […and…] “If, as I believe, the major media tilted left and have moved toward the center, then this means they moved to the right. It is this movement that the left has picked up on and is complaining about. But the idea that the media now tilt toward conservatives is absurd.”

It makes for an interesting contrast to juxtapose Bartlett’s personal recollections with Media Matters’ scholarly documentation. The Media Matters project clearly demonstrates that the press has been deferential to conservatives for some time. If, as Bartlett believes, the media has moved to the right of late, then that would just compound the imbalance. It is also interesting to compare their conclusions:

Bartlett: “I would advise my liberal friends to stop whining about media bias. You had a free ride for a long time, and now it’s over. Get used to it, and learn how to use the media.”

Media Matters: “As ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox make decisions about their coverage of political affairs in the coming days, they should consider how they could better serve their viewers and the public.”

Bartlett takes the more cynical view that the press is just there to be exploited and spun. Media Matters hopes to nudge the press and its subjects to aspire to higher journalistic ethics and integrity. Which conclusion sounds better to you?