http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002464944

For quite some time, I’ve felt like MSM was biased toward the left. To some extent, I still do. And at the same time, I sympathize with those who claim “factors beyond their control” contribute to their poor ethical image. I suspect that if I were an honest hard-working journalist, I’d feel the same way.

Now, I should also say that I tend to distrust polls as well. There is so much room for error creep, given the sensitivity of the results to the selection process, the phrasing of the questions, the order in which they are asked, the choice of answers presented, the interpretation of the results, and the reporting of the interpretation.

When I apply this same metric to the journalism process, I find the same potential for error creep in the steps of research, corroboration, fact-checking, analysis, phrasing, timeliness, editing, and headline writing. I feel I wouldn’t be surprised to find that most journalists are just doing the best job they can, and the result merely looks left-leaning due to a sequence of small filters, each innocuous when considered alone.

It’s another reason why I like weblogs. Particularly when it’s just one writer, whose name is clearly displayed. All the steps are still there, but mostly executed by a single person rather than many, and moreover, you tend to go in to blog reading -knowing- to take your grain of salt, and not forgetting to in the way you might when reading WaPo or NYT.