While Art Betke wants to be staunchly among conservatives, I, as an unapologetic progressive, have to say that the gentleman is consistently liberal... with the facts.
His latest letter (Media clearly left leaning, Citizen, Jan. 9) regarding liberal bias in the press follows on the blizzard of earlier correspondence largely twisting and bending to the breaking point the overwhelming evidence for human-caused climate change. The latest letter affects incredulity at an early correspondent's suggestion that the media is conservatively biased. In what I hope is feigned disbelief Mr. Betke asks in " on what planet?" He then goes on with an ineffectual exercise in cherry-picking, presenting -- as we have seen so often in denialist discussions of global warming -- carefully chosen and distorted "facts" to make his case.
The lead datum is the allegedly absent response of the media to a poll released last July on America's "worst presidents" in which Obama was deemed worst by a plurality (33%) of the approximately 1400 respondents . According to Mr. Betke this startling revelation was given short shrift of 21 seconds at CBS but ignored by "the rest of the mainstream media". It is not clear precisely how Mr. Betke gathered this information but the poll was indeed covered on the day of its release (July 2) by CNN, Time Magazine, ABC, NBC, Reuters, USA Today and even demonically liberal outlets such as MSNBC and the Washington Post.
This is not even to mention the likes of Fox and Sun whom, I will bet, revelled at great length in such results, ones that, not coincidentally, have been the general pattern for recent previous presidents - Clinton was worst in a 1998 poll, Bush, the absolute pits in 2006 -- in other words, the guy in the hot seat generally takes a beating in public opinion, especially in the sixth year of two term presidencies according to one of the pollsters himself.
As to overall liberal or conservative bias, citing Mr. Goldberg's book hardly amounts to a final deadly blow in this difficult argument. I could reply with suggested reading of Eric Alderman's "What Liberal media?" or McChesney and Nichols' "Our Media Not Theirs". But I will freely admit that I do have a sense that an overall majority of journalists disdain NeoCon perspectives. And I have my own no doubt biased explanation for why that is so: these media professionals tend to read a lot and they hold themselves and others to a higher standard of proof and truth. That tends to land them over on what Mr. Betke calls the "liberal side" of such issues as climate change which is another way of saying these misguided pinkos tend to believe in science and facts.
For shame!
Norman Dale
Prince George
