Liberals hate free speech and nudity???
The liberal media. We see blatant examples every day, like this one from the far-left … Virginian-Pilot????
How do we know the Pilot is so far-left? Because it refused to honor two high school artists because they painted or sculpted nudes, and posters in the paper’s forums pointed out this obvious liberal bias. Now, you ask, in what conceivable way is this an indication of liberal bias? I don’t know, and apparently the people who said it don’t either, or at least didn’t bother to explain.
The paper has a mixed history of endorsements. Bush in 2000, Kerry in 2004. An expose of Blackwater that doesn’t make the Republicans look good (the facts do have a liberal bias, as Stephen Colbert pointed out) but which ultimately was pro-military. Not far-right, but certainly not far-left.
But like all papers, it hears a constant drumbeat of “you’re too liberal, you’re too liberal!” Ironically, the same publishers who turn a deaf ear to most reader and advertiser concerns listen intently to this baseless line of criticism, consistently adding more conservative opinion to their already conservative pages.
Publishers should listen to legitimate concerns of bias. But this constant, inane drumbeat of “liberal! liberal! liberal!” is no reason to change anything. This is just one of the more egregious examples of the hollowness of this cry, but it’s not at all uncommon.
There’s a corollary on the technology front. Editors remain reluctant to drop stock listings and other raw data better accessed online. The audience for stock tables is even smaller than the hard-core of liberal-bashing conservatives, but they have the ear of publishers and editors in ways that those who call for more-reasonable ad and subscription rates, more interactivity and other issues.
The reason, I propose, is that cries of liberalism and support for traditional content fit neatly into their own conservative world view.
