97.1 (mike valenti) reporting that the ground has been laid to let RR go if michigan gets blown out...

The author isn't going into the story thinking "how can I spin this to help my cause." Journalists' "lenses" (one word we use for it) can color coverage, but it's an accident. A good journalist is like a good football player -- the ability to identify your own biases and keep them out of your work is as essential to a journalist as running routes is to a receiver, or accuracy is to a quarterback. It's a talent that's necessary for the job. Still, not every receiver runs a perfect route every play. Not every quarterback throws every ball D.O. Likewise, inadvertent bias seeps through coverage, despite the journalist's best efforts, the editor's best eye, and the ombudsman's penetrating patrol. Mediocre journalists, like those employed by CNN, are probably worse at this than good journalists. Nobody's impervious, but the lower the quality of reporting ability, the more biases I'm sure you will notice. It works both ways -- there are journalists with conservative leanings (my editor is a good example) whose biases come out in their reporting. But for the most part, I would agree that if you polled every journalist working for national media outlets, more would fall toward what in this country we currently identify as liberal. I think the reason for this is that it takes a certain kind of personality to want to find information and disseminate it, and this personality type identifies with some liberal politics. Plus, most live in urban or suburban environments, and are highly educated, and very "tuned in," and socially conscious, and are probably in a low tax bracket -- these are all markers that in recent years have trended Democratic. It's a lot more complicated than that -- political positions are hardly as black and white as two-party electoral politics make them out to be. Journalists were generally much more Republican than the country at large from the 1860s up until basically FDR, and trended that way for much of the Reagan years. Anyway, that's why I think a lot of Americans today see a liberal bias in national media. It has as much and probably more to do with readers' biases than journalists' biases. Peoples' opinions don't change as easily as you think. With CNN, the biggest problem I think is that they're bombastic, not slanted. That's a trait shared by pretty much every TV News program. They are out to get viewers, and viewers want 'splosions and helicopter chase scenes and footage of cops standing around outside some crummy neighborhood the viewer would never venture into. If everyone clamored for unbiased, considered news, you'd get Good Night, and Good Luck. You'd probably be bored to tears. Anyway, that's my problem with CNN. For the record I don't watch it -- I'm hardly a paragon; I get my news mostly on Yahoo and from co-workers and friends' blogs, and what Misopogal e-mails me and stuff. With FoxNews, in particular, they don't have the same approach. They realized there's a big market for people who actually WANT slanted news (remember: it's harder to change peoples' minds than you think). They're an overt spin machine, a shill. This in itself is fine. Brian's, in some ways, an overt shill for Michigan, and so am I. What gets my goat about FoxNews is the pretense that they're not shilling, or the suggestion that they're only shilling because "those other guys are, too." Brian's raison d'etre is to provide better Michigan coverage from a Michigan fan because a Michigan fan cares more. Bias is a necessary side effect, but a side effect nonetheless. His homerism is identified, part of the schtick. It's not "because the other local media hate us and this makes up for it." Think of people you know who have taken it upon themselves to "even things up" or "make things square." Human beings have a long and well-established track record of being very bad at actually identifying what's "fair," especially when they have a stake in things. We have ways of dealing with this. The worst way -- you should have realized by now -- is to have some guy go rogue, dealing out injustices until he deems justice has been served. That's basically what you're getting with the "FoxNews makes up for the media's liberal bias" argument. Their coverage is purposefully bent to certain political views. They invent talking points and plan out long-term coverage narratives because that's what they're really peddling. Contrast that with CNN, whose coverage is purposefully bent toward titillating audiences. Their talking points are always reactionary, any coverage narratives complete accidents, because they're peddling "you never know wat SHOCKING thing will happen next, so TUNE IN!" Any political bent is, for the most part, coincidental, a reflection of a person's natural biases and their mistake of letting those biases shade the journalist's coverage. I think the whole picture becomes a lot easier to understand if you can divorce yourself from this silly idea that all politics are either red or blue. Neither political party has squelched dischord in its ranks, or has everybody on board one single platform. You also have to get rid of the idea that "MSM" or whatever is a sentient entity -- each medium is pretty much independent of another, and when assessing the coverage of each, you have to actually look at the audience they're playing to: Michigan Daily: (pseudo?)-Intellectual college students who love Michigan sports and whose mean political identity is kind of scarily close to Ralph Nader. Result: preachy but generally high-minded news and Wolverine-biased sports coverage. New York Times: Urbanite intellectuals, particularly East Coasters. Highly educated (often post-graduate), generally white collar. Result: Incredibly, incredibly, pretentious, with biases inadvertently but far-too-often pouring through coverage thanks to an enterprise (and readership)-wide holier-than-thou complex Fox News: Republicans and conservative-leaning moderates who are particularly sensitive to lapses in journalistic judgment from national news media Result: Republican shill Detroit Free Press: Dwindling population of Detroit and Metro-Detroit, most of whom don't have time for subtleties, mostly Michigan State fans (who often seem to care more about what's going on at Michigan than their own team) Result: News and editorial sections that are knee-jerk protector's of Detroit's reputation, sports section that plays up whichever team is winning, hypes up MSU, and hates on Michigan. MGoBlog: Michigan fans with media standards WAAAYYY above those of mere mortals Result: Circle-jerk of douchey high-standard Michigan fans with massive paranoia of trolls and low-quality media I know I am, and I'm guessing you too are a douchey, high-standard Michigan fan with massive paranoia of trolls and a low-quality media. Which demographic above fits us best, then?

I find yelling only makes me angrier. Not that I don't do it. I'm good with this as an accord.