Hold Your Phone: New York Times Publishes MRC Letter to the Editor On Bias
MRC's Christian Robey suggested a letter to the editor on Monday for David Carr's strange column attacking MRC's letter attacking the media for rigging this presidential election by hounding Romney and protecting Obama. Carr wrote Brent Bozell assembled "conservative royalty" to attack "ostensibly tendentious coverage."
Some of us were skeptical that a liberal newspaper would deign to publish a letter from an organization that critiques the media on a daily basis. Every blog post here is a bit of a letter to the editor (or executive producer). But with this advice, Brent Bozell allowed me to draft a letter and we sent it along, and we received notification that they were interested in publishing it. It appears near the bottom of the editorial page Thursday on page A26. The headline is simply "Bias In The Media":
TO THE EDITOR:
Re “Tired Cries of Bias Don’t Help Romney,” by David Carr (The Media Equation column, Oct. 1):
Any conservative American would be pleased that in his attempt to dismiss the overwhelming pro-Obama bias in the national media, David Carr would allow the notion, “It’s not as if everyone who believes there is a liberal bias needs to be fitted for a tinfoil helmet.”
But Mr. Carr made no serious attempt to suggest that the “legacy media” have been fair and balanced in political coverage. He argued only that they no longer have a “death grip” on public opinion. After all, he would be taking on the previous public editor of The Times, who found that a liberal “worldview virtually bleeds through the fabric of The Times.” Instead, Mr. Carr tries to claim that since the competition at The Wall Street Journal has a larger circulation, there is somehow no liberal bias to protest.
Mr. Carr seems to be drawing a vicious circle around this “legacy media.” Their obnoxious level of bias drives away readers and viewers by the thousands. Then when conservatives call them out for this aggressive tilt to the left, journalists use their increasing unpopularity to claim that there’s no bias worth mentioning. That’s an impressive tap dance, but media consumers are not persuaded.
TIM GRAHAM
Director of Media Analysis
Media Research Center
Alexandria, Va., Oct. 2, 2012
