I would be among the first to acknowledge complexity at any level of my own analysis of the media.

However, despite Glenn's dislike of 'overarching' approaches to media performance, and the fact that there is actually journalism practiced occasionally, notice something significant.

Like recent problems with voting machines, notice that when there are huge, glaring, dangerous problems with mainstream media reporting of issues -- and ESPECIALLY with regard to foreign policy -- these problems always favor the right.

And those giant errors favor the right even at those very moments that the right feels beset upon.

If any of us see systematic problems going on for at least the last century of US news coverage, it isn't because we are unable to intellectually grasp complexity as well. It is precisely because we are able to understand that systemic realities can reveal themselves even through complexity & chaos.

Very few people such as myself are 'surprised' or hard-pressed to recall that real journalism has revealed all sorts of facts which are inconvenient for or damaging to the right wing autocratic movements.

In fact, we are the first to insist upon it and the first to point out how many such voices are marginalized, forgotten, or silenced, particularly in how many newspapers' editors and columnists harp on views and incorrect facts directly contradicted by their own reporters.

Any time someone throws up 'complexity' to dispute the tendency of US news media to systematically favor the right wing and authoritarian policies of politicians, why don't we see similar errors veering toward the left?

You know, incidents where all the media were dismissing the hawkish talking points when hard-working analysts like Glenn were so easily able to find the available facts and contexts to show how such overwrought liberalism was in error?

Isn't that what you expect if you dispute views that the MSM systematically favor elite & right wing policies? Equal swings in errors to both the right & the left?

If media simply follow swings and random fluctuations for complex reasons, why do we never see these random swings to the left, and even to the left extreme? Why, like the electronic voting machine errors, does it seem that such widespread, nation-wide, major news media performance errors always swing to the right.

Yes, there are lots of arguments that I know and respect (though I do not find them sufficiently explanatory) that the major news media have neither a liberal nor a right wing bias, but a ______ bias. (Insert phrase -- scandal, flashy storry, gossipy...)

But, if there's no systematic pattern of the news media favoring the politics of the general elite & right wing (you know, the opposite at least of old-fashioned definitions of 'the left'), let's see those counter-examples.

Let's see those huge, major examples of the news media coverage which following their not-conservative but ______ bias demonstrated in huge coverage errors or wrong analysis & punditry which ended up backing a liberal or leftist perspective.

Where are they?

Surely if there are not-conservative problems of ______ bias, there should be equal numbers of troubling coverage which favored liberal or leftist principles as they have conservative principles.

Maybe I just forgot them.

Maybe there are lots of examples where the news media overwhelmingly followed an unjustified story line and all ended up opposing some proposed US hawkish foreign policy, and I forgot it. Or where they all stampeded together using hacked up data and statistics to endorse greater equity in tax or assistance policies for poor and working folk. Or where the news media all mindlessly repeated union talking points unsupported by facts to oppose some proposed international trade agreement.

I could just have a bad memory. I know that there are some people who interpret this solely as a question of favoring Republicans or Democrats, but that's certainly not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for evidence of when these giant news media mistakes we're complaining about happened to favor actual liberal or leftist causes.

A random error falls in different directions with equal probability.

All my life I've watched the major news media overwhelmingly side with the strong, the wealthy, the hawkish (especially in foreign policy), with occasional and admirable examples where the good journalists in their midst were actually highlighted.

Or so I think. Maybe I forget all the examples where those stampeding herd media mentalities favored the weak, the ordinary working folks, the doves...

I read the press from other countries. There are conservative papers, there are socialist party papers, there are anti-government papers, there are pro-government papers; the readers and population understand this.

The readers seem pretty clear that the different sources have different perspectives & emphases, and few people miss the fact that there can be both great and awful journalism in any of those. But then, in other countries the idea that news media might have noticeable (though non-simplistic) differences in outlook based on their owners & controllers is not seen as some sort of failure of sophisticated analysis. It's a simple reality.