METHINKS LIBERAL MEDIA DOTH PROTESTETH TOO MUCH

The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz raises, then essentially answers in the negative, the question "Are the Media Tilting to Gore?" Listen to some of his proof:

"Never mind that George W. Bush enjoyed a solid year of largely favorable press coverage while Gore was depicted as a bumbling, wardrobe-changing stiff." When did that "solid year" begin and end, Howie? Was it before or after The New York Times' Adam Clymer earned his pejorative nickname for doing a hit piece on Bush's Texas record, among other things?

How "largely favorable" was press coverage that skewered Bush for invoking Christ in a debate? That did everything it could to lionize his principal primary challenger, John McCain? That portrayed his counterattack against Senator McCain as a ruthlessly unfair offensive?

I don't need to waste words citing the well-known statistics documenting the major media's overwhelmingly liberal worldview. It's an objective fact that they have admitted. What they refuse to acknowledge is that their ideology colors their reporting. The only thing more offensive to a liberal journalist than being called conservative which isn't going to happen is to be called biased. Generally, their attitude is not unlike that of actor Andrew Shue, who, recently, on a Fox News talk show was shaking his head in derision at a conservative guest and extolling Gore's virtues, while professing his own political neutrality. "I consider myself in the middle," he said. "But Gore's positions are just common sense. And Bush would recklessly spend all of the surplus."

Correspondent Cokie Roberts on ABC's "This Week" demonstrated the subtle technique of injecting the liberal bias when interviewing vice-presidential candidate Dick Cheney. Roberts, for the umpteenth time, asked Cheney about his conflict of interest in owning stock in Haliburton Co.. As Cheney explained on that very show a few weeks before, his interests in the oil company are irrelevant because he has arranged to completely divest himself of them prior to taking office.

When Cheney pointed out Gore's conflict of interest during his entire term in office as the sole beneficiary of his mother's trust, which owns a significant interest in Occidental Petroleum, Cokie objected that Gore had no present interest in his mother's trust. Surely you don't have to be a lawyer to understand that as sole beneficiary Gore's conflict is just as real. Why are reporters like Cokie exercised about Cheney's non-conflict and indifferent regarding Gore's actual conflict? Liberal blinders, perhaps?

But you'll never convince the liberal media of their bias which goes a long way toward making my point.

~David Limbaugh of Cape Girardeau is a nationally syndicated columnist.