NPR has really been pissing me off lately. You may have noticed it too – an overcompensation borne of decades of being accused by the conservative movement of being harbingers of a non-existent media bias. And it’s not just NPR – it’s every major mainstream media outlet.
Eric Boehlert of Media Matters nails it – using this past weekend’s tea party festivities as a example – in his essay on the “media double standard that favors Republicans over Democrats.”
And Karl Frisch, a Senior Fellow at Media Matters and Liberadio(!) media correspondent, said on our show on Monday that the responsibility for correcting this, er, “overcorrection,” rests solely in our hands:
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“For 40 years, the right has been pushing the idea of liberal media bias, and since Palin is one of the most popular people on the right, the press – because of the pressure they get from every level of the conservative movement from the lowliest volunteer to the presidential candidate – they get immense pressure to bend-over backwards and be “fair.” And by “fair” I mean not correct the public record. The left has only come into its own in terms of coming after the media to get things correct for about 5 or 6 years now in any kind of organized fashion. And even then it’s still not from the lowliest of campaign activists to the tip-tops of the presidential candidates.
It was surely something when the White House started becoming critical of Fox News because we had not seen that before from the left. But this is something that has to be ingrained in the psyche of the progressive movement that you must challenge the media when they get something wrong. Because then, at least, we can bring the press back to a natural center where they’re bending over backwards perhaps for both sides but in the end we’re getting a better news product.
As it stand right now, everybody on the Right complains about the media. Every day. On every issue. That doesn’t happen on the left. And that’s why Joe Biden ends up being charicatured in the way that he’s charicatured but since the campaign nobody has said – I hesitate to say nobody – but, by and large, for all the gaffes Sarah Palin has had, since exiting the campaign trail, she’s certainly not held to the standard that other politicians would be if they were quite as dumb as Palin on the stump.”
I’ve been around progressive organizations a while now and the talk prior to any organized event is always, “how can we make it as affordable as possible so that as many people as possible from all socioeconomic backgrounds can participate?”
Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly 
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