Is the Media That Powerful and That Leftist-Biased?

Someone wrote a comment on a previous post, which I rejected but shouldn't have. It basically asked, "If the mainstream (liberal) media is so powerful, how did John Kerry and Al Gore not get elected?"

The reason is that since the 2004 Bush win, the media has increasingly decided that it will allow itself to be as biased as necessary to get results it wants.

You protest, "But there is no one media." In fact, there is. Most people enter the field of journalism because they "want to make a difference" (as defined in liberals' terms), but in journalism school were taught that they need to hide their biases. However, at recent journalist conventions, online discussion groups, and even in bellwether journalism schools such as U.C. Berkeley, journalists are increasingly told they can be biased, invoking flimsy (to me, frightening) rationales such as "bias is inevitable so stop trying to hide it" or "Liberal views are the righteous ones, so it's ethical to express your biases."

Thus, ever more journalists feel justified in doing what they originally wanted to do: Instead of reporting all sides of an issue fairly, to manipulate the public into believing what they believe. So now, with people like Keith Obermann on MSNBC and most commentators and writers in the New York Times and CNN leading the way, the media's coverage of the 2008 presidential election has been and will ever more be Leftist propaganda.

As a member of the media, I get to hear it all--my colleagues privately brag about the 1,000 subtle ways they attempt to manipulate so subtly as to be undetectable by an unsuspecting public. For example, whenever a Republican makes an assertion, the media describes it as "an attack," "a salvo," etc. Yet if a Democrat makes an assertion, it's "an idea," a 'response," etc.

So, yes, I am convinced that the mainstream media indeed has a huge Leftist bias and will do what it takes to manipulate the public into believing, for example, that a liberal should be president, illegals should be given amnesty, national health care should be enacted no matter what toll it takes on now-insured people, and even more resources should be redistributed to women and minorities, without regard to merit.