I'm pretty much in agreement with Mike over at The Politburo when in comes to Eric Alterman.

Hey! Jeffery Dworkin, NPR's first line of defense, just gave an interview in the Pioneer Press of Twin Cities. "But my own view is that NPR has been quite careful to present voices from both sides of issues. If anything," he says, "we may have put more conservatives on in recent months."

Yes, and Bob Edwards gave a diatribe at the University of Kentucky in April, candidly expressing his leftie views denouncing US policy. And he expects us to respect him in the morning when he poses as the oh-so-professional news anchor?

I'm not sure if Alterman makes the following point, but in the opinion of this center-left Democrat, it is the relevant one:
Reporters, anchors and news organizations who may in fact be liberal are so cowed by the accusation of their partisanship that they bend over backwards to prove they are being objective. Conservative media people, on the other hand, wear their partisanship as a badge of honor (although they are not honorable enough to dispense with such Orwellianisms as "fair and balanced" and "we report, you decide." Case in point: compare the sympathetic questioning and fat rhetorical pitches that Tony Snow and Brit Hume dish out to at Republicans on Fox News Sunday with the grilling and scepticism that Democrats must endure from Stephanoupoulous and Russert.

The other relevant fact is that the so-called liberal media rigorously provides a forum for all views -- just look at the Washington Post or New York Times oped pages, which print the likes of Krauthammer, Will, Safire and Rosenthal as well as a lot of moderates like Richard Cohen and Maureen Dowd who love to criticize Democrats. Conservative media however pays little serious attention to liberal arguments. The liberal foils on Fox remind me of the Washington Generals, the team that plays the Harlem Globetrotters at their shows.

An objective analysis would probably end up characterizing the conservative media is being reliably conservative, the so-called "liberal media" establishment as being moderate or middle of the road. The real liberal or leftist media is limited to outlets like Pacifica and Amy Goodman's Democracy Now syndicated show, and the rather marginalized Robert Scheers and Bill Moyers of the world.

Markus Rose:

Uh, when was the last time you read the op-ed page of the NYT?

Abe Rosenthal hasn't written there in YEARS. The only person you can claim is conservative is Safire.

And saying that Richard Cohen is a moderate, as opposed to liberal, is about as accurate as saying that George Will is moderate, since Will's been known to take a shot or two at Republicans as well. Maureen Dowd is simply embarrassing.

But, I suppose, if your definition of liberal is Pacifica Radio, then, yes, the media is overwhelmingly conservative, since they're not in support of nationalization of industries and confiscatory tax policies.

You are right about Rosenthal. Cohen supported the Iraq war (as did I), and both Cohen and Dowd wrote a bunch of columns in '99 and 2000 about how much of a weenie Al Gore supposedly was. Howell Raines hated Clinton. Will to his credit does occasionally take a shot at Republicans. In addition, the NYT and Washington Post Op-Ed page contains lots of guest columns written from a conservative perspective: today, Rudy Giuliani weighs in.

I'll stand by everything else I said in the first post. Honest Republican polemicists and conservative movement organizers such as Bill Kristol and Grover Norquist admit that the accusation of "liberal bias" is just a tactic of "working the refs"

By the way, kudos to Mr. Sharkansky for reading Alterman's book. Your interest in arguments put forward by those you are likely to disagree with stands in sharp contrast to that of most conservative ideologues, who are generally completely disinterested in the viewpoints of the "wrong-wing." (And yes, far left ideologues are the same way.)

Those called in the U.S. `liberals' are properly `socialists'.

The `liberals' do not `bend over backwards' to be objective let alone `prove it'.
And the liberals are not confined to a few outlets.
I have a a very high stack of evidence before me which shows to the contrary, unambiguously demonstrates, socialists, we shall drop the misnomer of `liberals', impose what is nothing but censorship, that they repeatedly deliberately misconstrue or outright omit facts which conflict with their socialist beliefs, and will also not report on events which cannot be slanted to their beliefs.
The journos whom Rose cited are very good example of such communard liars.

Uh, dude, you're mostly right, but Newsday hasn't been independent for years and there ain't no truly top-level journalists working for McClatchy (not that it's a bad chain or that their journalists are unskillled) or Hollinger or a number of the other outlets you mentioned. The top papers in the country in terms of quality/influence are probably the NYT, WashPost, LATimes, WallStJournal, USA Today and ... well, that's pretty much it.

I think your right actually. So that means we have about 16 companies controling the flow of informaition. . . Oh such. . . diversity. . .

This site is...VERY interesting.

I'm even more interested to know where this information is obtained seeing as American media sources are so biased and untrustworthy. And I hope that you extremely well-read, well-informed RIGHTIES do have "high stacks of evidence" to support your allegations, because I am relatively certain that you did not acquire your factual information from ANY legitimate media source CONSERVATIVE, LIBERAL, or OTHERWISE! Just because you masturbate to the cover of SLANDER(as we all have-but only neo-conservatives do it more than once)does not mean you have brain one to indulge in such debate. You may have the RIGHT (complete with line dancing and handguns) but not the chops. Just keep surfing the net, dudes. Maybe Bill Kristol will discover you when he's GOOGLE-ING for new material.

Only six media companies is accurate. That laundry list is ridiculous. Just a hint for future babbling-ALTHOUGH SPRITE HAS LEBRON JAMES DOING COMMERCIALS, COCA-COLA STILL COUNTS AS ONE COMPANY. Get it? Sorry. Keep trying though, dudes. By the way, LeBron James was the Rookie of the Year in the NBA this past season. Ya know, just in case Bull Riding was on ESPN2 that night. It's okay, Bush will probably be able to deny voting rights to enough Black people to steal Florida again this year. Oh. You're right! That's a fabrication, too. The liberal media just jumped all over that one, didn't it?
WHAT LIBERAL MEDIA?? The one that couldn't find a single company to distribute Michael Moore's new film? Yes. You're right. It must have been THAT one. Just one question remains: What do you suppose Jesus would do in response to this comment?

What a ridiculous article. Simply listing media sources does not make them "liberal". Clear Channel! Are you serious with that one? That monolith is so far to the right it makes Coulter and Limbaugh look like reasonable centrists by comparison (not to mention classy and drug-free, respectively).