For decades, nobody with the slightest interest in politics has been able to avoid the right’s ranting about “liberal bias.” Conservatives complain so habitually and so monotonously about their exclusion that usually nobody notices the relative scarcity of liberal voices. It’s more than a bit paradoxical that so many conservatives appear in so many publications and on so many broadcasts—all insisting that their point of view isn’t heard in the media.

To sustain this palpably ridiculous argument, the right-wingers deny reality with great vehemence.

For more than three years, influential figures in the press shaped a story line about Gore as an insincere, dissembling caricature of a politician. Facts that didn’t support this narrative disappeared from the “liberal media’s” stream of consciousness, just as falsehoods that did were maintained in circulation long after they had been exposed.

Before HarperCollins dumped Coulter, the censorious management of the National Review had already seized the opportunity to smother her. America’s leading conservative magazine dropped her column from its online edition after she made an infamous recommendation for dealing with Islamist terror: “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.” Comporting herself after her dismissal with characteristic dignity and intellectual rigor, Coulter responded by taunting National Review editors Rich Lowry and Jonah Goldberg as “girly boys.” (It’s a tough playground at Ronald Reagan Junior High.) In Slander, Coulter doesn’t mention the National Review episode.

Credibility isn’t what the Ailes acolytes are seeking. Fox anchor Brit Hume, a former contributor to the American Spectator magazine, is so comfortable with his network’s notorious bias that he joked about it with Don Imus shortly after the Republican victory in the November 2002 midterm elections. “It was because of our coverage that it all happened,” Hume wisecracked. “We’ve become so influential now that people watch us and they take their electoral cues from us. No one should doubt the influence of Fox News in these matters.”

Both AIM and the Media Research Center openly support Republican and conservative campaigns and causes, while Lichter’s nominally nonpartisan outfit pursues similar goals with a greater degree of subtlety. All three have received millions of dollars in grants and subsidies over the years from the four major conservative foundations listed above.

Some topics in this essay:
Research Center, Bill Clinton, George Bush, American Prospect, National Review, Al Gore, Gore Tuesday’s, Don Imus, Rush Limbaugh, Gary Cohen, white house, media research center, research center, media research, conservative media, liberal bias, national review, liberal media, al gore, rush limbaugh, “liberal media”, center media public, media public affairs, william buckley jr, republican national committee,