by Edward Penn

Created on: May 25, 2008   Last Updated: November 10, 2008

There exists, within the media, a strict code of ethics which is designed to preserve journalistic integrity, and two of the most primal tenets of that code are objectivity and impartiality. The only problem is that the people who work in media are human and it's almost impossible to completely ignore human nature. While most Journalists aim to be objective and impartial, they can't help but to sometimes let their bias bleed through into their work. This, however, would not be an issue if there were equal numbers of conservatives to liberals working in the media.

There have been numerous polls and surveys conducted detailing the political make-up of the media, and the results seem to always indicate that liberals and people who vote Democrat out number conservatives and people who vote Republican, sometimes as much as twelve to one. Rarely would a Journalist knowingly compromise their journalistic integrity, but with such huge percentages of liberals and Democrats those subtle instances of bias may give an overall impression of media bias.

So far, in the media's 2008 Presidential election coverage, there have been many claims of media bias. Perhaps most notable is Democratic presidential hopeful, Hillary Clinton's charge that NBC is in the tank for Barack Obama. Clinton blasted MSNBC, which is part of NBC, for declaring Obama the nominee and suggesting she drop out of the race. The only problem with Clinton's claim of bias is that the comments she is referring to were made during opinion based programing, by paid contributors who's expressed purpose is to give their opinion. That being said, there is a legitimate gripe concerning the usage of openly liberal and Democratic supporter, Keith Olbermann in MSNBC's Presidential debate and election night coverage.

One of the most egregious examples of political bias in the media is of course the now famous Rather Gate, in which Dan Rather went on the air with a negative story about George W. Bush, who was running for re-election in the 2004 Presidential campaign. It was later found that the story was false, and if Rather had done some basic fact checking he would have known that. The issue was such an embarrassment for CBS, that they forced Rather to resign after having been with the network for 44 years, which just goes to show the seriousness of real bias.

While there are occasional instances of blatant media bias, most of the allegations are probably only perceived due to the hyper-partisan nature of the American society today; however, The fact that liberals and Democrats are such a huge majority within the media, is very real. The question then becomes why is there such a disproportionate ratio of liberals to conservatives in the media, why does it not reflect the ratio in society?

We may never know the answer to that question, but if there is blame to be attached, it should be placed at the feet of the top executives, because they are the ones who make the major decisions, such as hiring practices. If the top media executives were to strive for more ideological equality in the newsroom, then, at the very least, the perception of bias would largely disappear. Although, in theory, as long as every journalist continues to honor the sanctity of their journalistic integrity and the code of journalistic ethics, ideology is irrelevant.

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