Just another day in the "news" room

Media bias is a subject near and dear to my heart, in part because I used to be a denier.

When I worked as a reporter, and conservatives would complain about media bias, I would smile and shake my head and say something like, "Oh, some reporters lean Democrat, but we all work very hard to report things straight and fair," because that's what I did.

But after a few years, it became fairly obvious to me that I was wrong. I watched fellow editors and reporters go out of their way to include their political slants in what were supposed to be "news" stories. As I got older it became obvious that I was in a business where 90% or more of my colleagues had liberal biases, and weren't afraid to show it.

And it's gotten worse over the years. A once-great news organization like NBC News is tangled up with MSNBC, an electronic version of a children's playground, where pseudo-journalists like Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews are free to voice their personal bigotry under the guise of "reporting." And on and on it goes across CBS and ABC, the New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, etc., etc...Liberal "reporters" bending and slanting the news in an effort to create a narrative favorable to liberals.

Today it may have bottomed out when the former Political Director of ABC News and head of Yahoo News David Chalian made a tasteless, racist joke about Mitt and Ann Romney. Not realizing there was a live microphone nearby, Chalian watched video of the Romneys waving and smiling and - in an apparent reference to Hurricane Isaac - said the Romneys are "happy to have a party with black people drowning."

(You can hear the audio here.)

Once Chalian was identified, Yahoo quickly fired him. But what's important to remember about this incident is that if it hadn't been on tape, nothing would have happened. In the background you can hear others in the room laughing at his joke. Without the tape, it's just another day at the office for these folks, calling Republicans racist and laughing about it.

Over the years, I've been in enough newsrooms and hung with enough reporters for this to all sound so, so familiar. The news you hear every day comes through the same filter, one of bigotry and prejudice against conservatives and their ideas.

There's no doubt in my mind that David Chalian and his colleagues aren't disappointed with his "joke," they're just disappointed that he got caught.