Media Bias, Then And Now

As I’ve written before, the mass media of the latter half of the 20th century invariably went out of their way to pooh-pooh any claims of bias. (Dan Rather, naturally enough, was a past master at this technique.) But for an assortment of reasons, basically a confluence of alternative media such as blogs, talk radio and Fox News, mixed with a overdose of BDS from the media themselves, that all began to change after 9/11. Or as media professor Steve Boriss writes on his Future of News blog:

The problems began when those on the right started to complain about liberal media bias. They were labeled as angry, mean-spirited, paranoid kooks. Then, conservative talk radio and Fox News Channel emerged. Their audiences were labeled as misfits who were not only angry, but also too closed-minded to face the truth as presented by the objective mainstream media. Eventually, with help from Bernard Goldberg