...or are you sick of being told that all traditional media has a liberal bias.

At what point did we come to the conclusion that most of the news, broadcast or print, should be given less credence because of the presumed political bias of the source.

During the Vietnam War, broadcast outlets were roundly criticized for bringing graphic images of the carnage in Southeast Asia into the living rooms of America. These newsreels were credited (or blamed) for unifying Americans against the war. It was one thing to read about 55,000 dead over nine years but quite another to see the bloody bodies night after night served up with your evening meal. Still I can't recall Walter Cronkite being blamed for America's loss of heart in Asia.

The Washington Post came in for a ton of abuse during Watergate but, between the general dislike of Richard Nixon and the preponderance of evidence uncovered, only the most radical neocons could logically blame Ben Bradlee and The Washington Post for Nixon's resignation.

At some point, possibly during the Reagan years, it became fashionable among conservatives to deflect criticism or minimize the effect of bad news by impeaching the source of the story. This insidious cynicism isn't just wrong it's dangerous. It's easy to blame Rush Limbaugh and his crowd but that would be giving these blowhards more credit than they deserve. I suspect that many working class people just didn't want to hear anything bad about good old Ronnie.

The New York Times was the first and easiest target. Located in New York, a hot bed of liberalism, and owned and operated by Jews,(what do you expect?) The Times is routinely singled out as biased and unreliable on all matters political. No Times news story, regardless of how many facts it contains, can be taken at face value. If it's in The Times, it's biased.

It should be noted that it was The New York Times that stayed in Arkansas to root out the Whitewater story after everybody else went home Also, only The Times pays an editor to produce a weekly column, evaluating how the Times is covering the news; but why confuse the issue with facts.

This idea of impugning the source of stories that you don't like is damn convenient. Republicans never have to explain or deny any deceit or questionable practice; they just blame the messenger. If the Bush administration illegally taps phones, blame The Times for printing the story. If a Planned Parenthood facility is bombed, blame The Washington Post for putting the story on the front page instead of in regional news.

This blatant misdirection has now become an indictment of all mainstream media. This would be funny if it weren't so tragic. News networks and most print publications twisted themselves into knots supporting George Bush and his invasion of Iraq. Embedded reporters filed story after story about our men and women in the field. Scenes of toppled statues and liberated Iraqis were everywhere. Jessica Lynch (a soldier with more integrity than the entire Bush administration) was covered like a rock star.

It was only about the time of Abu Grab that news sources began to run afoul of the administration and its supporters. A conservative friend once told me that The Washington Post ran 28 consecutive front page stories on Abu Grab. He never mentioned if he thought they were true or newsworthy. I guess it didn't matter.

This even works in reverse. Newspapers are criticize for not printing the "good news" on Iraq. Instead they only show the dead and dying. Where are the stories of the thousands of ink-stained fingers after the Iraqi elections? Where's the coverage of the free people of Afghanistan. The "good news" is, of course, harder to cover because there's so little of it. With hundreds of Iraqis dying each day and the zone of safety getting smaller every week reporters can be forgiven for focusing on the carnage. It is, after all, everywhere they look.

But how about the news coverage of hurricane Katrina? American journalists are to be forgiven for not showing the twelve people who were actually rescued. They were a little hard to find amid the 1,300 dead. Good news is tough to find when its buried under twelve feet of Lake Ponchartrain.

Naturally, no discourse on media would be complete without mention of FOXNews. Fox began with a general indictment of all existing broadcast media. Because mainstream media is already liberally biased, Fox would broadcast "fair and balanced" news. Translation... in order for my network to broadcast truly slanted information I must first paint your news as slanted. And you thought Nixon was tricky?

Still you have to hand it to Rupert Murdoch. He uncovered a sizable audience of Americans that didn't want to hear the truth if it conflicted with their political vision. Fox provides "shaded news". All the facts are there, (you can't hide almost 3,000 dead Americans in Iraq) but Fox uses commentators and analysts to soften the nasty bits and give their fans talking points for dealing with "liberal" viewers of NBC, ABC, etc. Let's see Fox spin Mark Foley.

We have reached a point in our media-saturated culture when, tonnage and credibility are running in an inverse relationship. The more we hear or see the less we believe. The advent of 24/7 news on TV, radio and the internet should be keeping us better informed. Instead the effect is to make us more cynical. That is the dangerous part.

News people are, almost without exception, working to get the story right. Editors try to balance what readers need to know against what they want to know. Regrettably, a news story's position in the paper will sometimes be determined by how good the accompanying photo is. The process isn't perfect but it has worked very well up to now. No amount of perceived liberal bias on TV or in print kept Americans from voting for George Bush...twice. I firmly believe that newspapers and broadcast news programs are as accurate as can be expected. If readers and viewers dismiss inconvenient coverage as bias, they do themselves, the news media and the country a disservice.

It's good to be skeptical...it's foolish to be cynical.