There’s nothing wrong with being a liberal in modern American society, except for the fact that it’s easy. A political ideology is handed to you on a silver platter through network news, printed press and universities nationwide. I have no problem with one’s political ideology, but, according to Katy Rowe’s most recent opinion article, entitled “Liberally biased news,” denial has unfortunately become a habitual expression.

The article is a tough read, but it’s not the “tough” that one associates with either verbose diction or an overcooked steak. It’s tough because of how much muck there is to sift through; it’s flooded with sarcasm and erroneous comments. The only accomplishment the column achieves is failure. Such an evasive technique of writing allowed the author to illegitimately respond to Mr. Shepard’s article, “Liberal media bias,” which briefly discussed an absurd op-ed by Ms. Hernandez in The Dallas Morning News.

Before I begin qualifying Mr. Shepard’s assertion, which is undeniably true, it seems necessary to address some of Ms. Rowe’s silver-platter gibberish.

Referring to Bill Bennett as evidence of hypocrisy in the Republican Party towards racism is not the strongest argument. Rowe paraphrases a foolish comment made by Bennett, but doesn’t tell the whole story. It’s undoubtedly idiotic for any American to generalize about any race of people, but Bennett continued to call his comment “an impossibly ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do.” He and his wife are also involved in a charity that helps inner city African-Americans.

The op-ed progresses to state the assumption that a growing Republican advantage means increasing presidential approval ratings. This assumption is wrong. The advantage that Republicans currently have is threefold: they control the House, Senate and most governorships. As for the growing advantage, which has absolutely nothing to do with accusations toward a political party, consider John Roberts, for starters.

The entertaining article is topped off with some humor. An invalid assertion of the Bush administration lying to the American public is compared with an understatement about Clinton’s perjury regarding oral sex. Bush did not lie about motivations for invading Iraq, as proven in the president’s address to the American people on March 17, 2003, which laid out the who, what, when, where and, most importantly, “why” the invasion was necessary.

This all becomes seemingly irrelevant when you glance at both Rowe’s and Shepard’s article titles, both of which scream out the obvious: There is, in fact, a liberal media bias. Don’t believe me?

Applying a novel approach based on frequently used ratings of the liberal or conservative leaning of politicians, a researcher at the University of Missouri-Columbia discovered that most mainstream media outlets do exhibit a strong liberal bias. Bias, for clarification, is “an unfair act stemming from prejudice.”

Jeff Milyo, MU associate professor of economics and public affairs, said they “found that most of the mainstream media view events through a ‘lens’ that is very similar to that used by Democrats in Congress.” Jeff went on to say that “most major media outlets and Democrats cite similar sources of expertise, such as particular think tanks and advocacy groups. This suggests that popular complaints about a liberal bias in the media are well-founded.”

̢۬In order to determine liberal bias of media sources and outlets, political science professors at UCLA set out to use the Americans for Democratic Action scoring system, a system widely used to determine whether members in congress lean left or right based on their ideology.


Interestingly enough, the scores found that The New York Times and CBS were given the most liberal scores. CNN, MSNBC and ABC were given the next-highest liberal scores. USA Today was given a “moderately liberal” score. Fox News was given a “moderately conservative score.” Ironically enough, Fox News had the most moderate score out of all major networks news channels.

If this doesn’t Rowe your liberal boat, then perhaps some of these examples will do the trick.


The Baltimore Sun, CNN and The New York Times all praised Cindy Sheehan, but all three news publications failed to mention that Mrs. Sheehan is a blogger on Michael Moore’s Web site and that Bush has already met with her in the past on a personal basis. They also don’t mention that the Sheehan family did “not agree with the political motivations and publicity tactics of Cindy.”


Amidst an Iraq War, an Iran Nuclear commencement strategy, John Bolton and John Robert’s case, Natalee Holloway and London terrorist attack, a segment was dedicated to the sole purpose for bashing Bush on his vacation time on MSNBC.


The New York Times released nine negative articles about the “anti-Hillary” book recently published, compared to the 0 negative articles released about the “anti-Bush” book written by Kiddy Kelly. There’s also Dan Rather’s Microsoft Word-created “Bush War Records.” The New York Times and The Washington Post both pleaded with lawyers to release Supreme Court Justice John Robert’s children adoption files.

We can debate the administration’s policies, the war in Iraq or the economy any day of the week, but an attempt to refute the indisputable claim that the media tilts left will be a waste of time. Sensible Democrats have wised up to this fact. It amazes me that the Republican Party is still able to prosper over such unfair distortions in the media.

What was the number? Oh, yeah, 3.5 million.

Brian Wellman is a freshman business marketing major. He can be reached at [email protected]