From my view, one of the biggest problem with MSM bias is that it’s going to lead to calls for legislation. Tigerhawk suggests, though I’m not sure how serious, that the press should be held as accountable to their product as the press holds all other companies to their products. The press has been irresponsible in the cost and damage it has done over the years by presenting many simple corporate mistakes as something more serious. Debatable regulation and reform leads to additional unnecessary cost to products all because the some in the media wanted to perform some ’social Justice’ by sticking it to evil corporations. I must admit the irony of forcing regulation and laws onto news companies when they make mistakes in their coverage is very tempting. But its seems obvious that such laws would lead to first amendment violations. Nevertheless, the more blatant the bias, the stronger the calls for legislation. Hopefully the new media will assuage enough outrage that their is never enough political will to implement regulation of news coverage.

If it was possible one regulation I would like to see is that the news corporation must pay a portion of the cost their coverage incurs on corporations or government agencies it ‘exposes’. It costs news organization nothing to give bad coverage to a corporation while that coverage can cost the corporation or agency, and in turn, the consumer or taxpayer, lots of money. This is similar to the environmental argument demaninding that polluting compaines be charged for the damage they by releasing waste into the river. For me, news coverage biased by those looking for ’social justice’ are creating all sorts of pollution when they attempt to teach corporations lessons.

While in principle I would support legislation forcing news organization to pay a portion of the cost of their pollution I would in practice gladly vote down any actual attempts at regulation. Unlike the environmentalist, I’m fully aware of how such regulation can be easily abused for political ends.

Ann Althouse notes about the NYtimes coverage of the conviction of Jose Padilla.

“The Qaeda training camp form had six of Mr. Padilla’s fingerprints.”
That’s a fact I learn reading paragraph 20, on page 2 of the NYT article about Jose Padilla. Here’s paragraph 3:

The government’s chief evidence was a faded application form that prosecutors said Mr. Padilla, 36, filled out to attend a Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in 2000.

Both of them are facts. However where in the story you put those facts is purely a subjective call. Burying the fact that makes it obvious this guy filled out the Al Qaeda application while placing the fact that this was the only evidence the state had in the front of the story was purely an editorial decision. Those people most interested in seeing how the state might be abusing its power to unfairly convict citizen as terrorist would want facts that show a flimsy case for the prosecution closer to the beginning of the story. They would want to downplay facts that might contradict this narrative. In this case clear intent that Padilla signed off on being a terrorist justified the states intention to convict him as a terrorist.

Pay very close attention to how facts are arranged in a story. This and other editorial decision is where the vast majority of the bias exists in press coverage.

Came across a talk Karl Rove gave about six weeks ago. I highly recommend watching it. He goes over the major policies of they day but does so in such way that you get a really good understanding of the issue and the administration’s position. Later on he talks about global warming and he gives data showing that we have reduced our carbon output much more than most European countries. How you ask? Turns out its more cost effective to be energy efficient and thus the markets in this country have forced efficiency that have reduced carbon output.

Huh, imagine that, free markets have done more for the environment then the environmentalist who are hyper critical of the free markets. No big surprise there.

Towards the end he has some great things to say about education.

Link here. Once you get to the page you need to click on the link that begins with Karl Rove

As I’m cleaning my new apartment i got to thinking about cleanliness standards in restaurants. Obviously this is one aspect of the business that is heavily regulated by the state. For this reason, a restaurant’s cleanliness is virtually guaranteed. I wondered how much state mandated cleanliness increases the cost of the food.

Certainly by any government standards on a restaurant’s cleanliness i don’t keep a very clean kitchen. And yet my own kitchen has never made me sick. This made me wonder how much extra my food costs to keep a restaurant’s kitchen cleaner than what is necessary to serve food that won’t make me sick.

If there were no cleanliness standards in restaurants prepared food would be cheaper. More importantly, restaurants could use cleanliness as a way to markets their restaurant. Some restaurants could emphasize cleanliness as a benefit to their establishment.

I can guarantee y’all are going to be up in arms with this one. Have at it.

My favorite blogger, Instapundit brags about his traffic yesterday:

I just noticed that yesterday’s traffic broke 275,000 pageviews.

Piff. That ain’t nothing. Enableate had 225 page views. How do you like me now?

The most important metric is unique visitors. Sorry Glen it don’t count if you have a bot hitting refresh 275,000 times. I had 9 unique visitors. Thats how I roll.

The unbiased AP has decided to defend Obama’s silly remarks on the war in Afghanistan. Captain’s Quarters has the details:

Besides, Obama and his campaign didn’t just say that civilians had been killed in Afghanistan. He claimed that it was Bush policy to kill civilians and that his strategy consisted “solely of air raids and bombing of civilians.” What’s the best way to fact-check that statement?

How about seeing whether ground forces have been deployed in Afghanistan? That seems to be a rather good indicator as to whether the strategy solely relies on dropping bombs indiscriminately on civilians — and as it turns out, the data is easy to find. The Congressional Research Office did a breakout of deployed American forces in Afghanistan. It shows that of the roughly 22,000 American troops in the country, only 3100 come from the Air Force. Over 17,000 come from the Army. You know — ground troops.

LOL

Tigherhawk makes a good point:

My question: Why doesn’t the media examine the obvious money ties between the industry of academia and appropriations for that industry’s benefit with a fraction of the diligence that it publicizes “corporate welfare” of one sort or another?

With great pride do the ‘educated’ like to tell you that they vote to the left. Implying that the left is somehow more intelligent than the right. Yet what they all fail to note is that in voting for the left they are supporting the political party that favors making the taxpayer give more money to the academia. I guess, in a way this is intelligent, electing those that will pass laws paying you more.

A couple of posts ago I mentioned an interview show with Tony Snow as the guest. They have posted the transcripts. I wanted to post one thing that I found interesting in the interview and its in regards to Tony Snow talking about George Bush.

AMB: What surprised you up close?

SNOW: Again, it’s something I had suspected, but I’ll you, he’s got one of the most interesting analytical minds I’ve ever seen. I described it like watching these chess masters who will go and play 40 boards at once. He can keep a lot of moves in his head, and especially when he talks about geopolitics.

He will lay out a scenario that deals with a whole series of countries, he thinks and recount their national interests. Then he’ll start talking about their leaders and how the leaders might react and interact, and how they may be affected by different conditions.

And as he talks about framing up issues and framing up policies, it makes a whole lot of sense, because he really has thought it through. It’s not simply sort of - he does not think in a linear method - I go from here to here, I’ve achieved my objective. There’s no way, because this move is going to have ramifications on both sides. And, you know, he’s just great at thinking it through and explaining it to people.

I point it out because Bush is regarded, particularly among liberals, as not very intelligent. I think this helps highlight that Bush is not nearly as dumb as his detractors would have you believe.

Its up for the week. Check it out.

Several posts back I mentioned the left leaning media, ie MSM, black out on NASA revising its temperatures for the US. I came across a story that I think it does a fine job of being neutral in covering the story. Someone needs to get the author Danielle Day a liberal education her unbiased coverage of a politically loaded story is unheard of in modern journalism.