interesting take on media bias

This is the first time that I've heard someone propose an explanation as to why both the left and the right tend to impugn the media. It's long, so here's the interesting part:

Brian Dominick: There is no objective "bad" or "good." The problem with bias in media is not that it exists, since it is inherent. A bias that can be called “good” to one reader will be “bad” to another. Maybe I want a pro-corporate bias in the news, because I am a stockholder or an executive. Why shouldn’t I have news with that bias? At the same time, a blue collar worker might wish to see another bias in the news. If I am a Christian conservative, I will probably want to see a conservative, Christian bias in the news. Why shouldn’t I? As for those who don’t already have biases, where are these people?

The problem with bias, instead, is that it is not stated. News media should be up front about their bias, but they almost never are. All news media outlets should list their influences, be they ideological or institutional. It is probably the case that both the Leftist and Rightist critics of news media are right -- and they are saying almost entirely different things. (Mind you, when I say Left I mean left of liberal. You'll almost never hear liberals complaining about the news media because, frankly, it's just about right for them much of the time, with the exceptions of Fox News, The New York post and AM talk radio, which pretty much no one contends are "leftist"or even liberal.)

The Left says there are institutional pressures--mostly having to do with corporate ownership and sponsorship, plus affluent audience bases in order to sell advertisements at higher premiums, etc.--that inexorably push all media in rightward direction. Leftists say the pressure is on corporate media outlets to be pro-capitalism, pro-markets and pro-profits, as well as tailored toward upper middle income brackets and above, or extremely massive popular markets below those brackets. How could they not be?

Reliant as it is on wealthy stockholders, sponsors and underwriters and their markets, how could the media be anything but generally favorable to those interests? Corporations and the government would not sponsor news media hostile to their interests -- they would fire any producers or editors who did not toe a pro-corporate line in the newsroom.

Meanwhile, the Right points out that most journalists are liberals, at least socially, and that is almost certainly true. They keep much media coverage to the left of conservatism, but even if they were so inclined, their owners and sponsors keep them from pushing anywhere to the left of liberalism, which has historically proven unsafe territory for the status quo of any society. That's why on so many stories that have only a modest effect on the corporate bottom line, such as gay rights and abortion, there is often a discernible liberal bias in the mainstream. If these stories aren't threatening to profits and market share, let the reporters have some leeway. Throw them a bone.

This all generally maintains a liberal bias at many institutions -- a bias that can be mislabeled as "leftist" and decried by the far Right -- which just so happens to perfectly serve elite interests. While the media are cow-towing to corporations (largely by being corporations themselves, remember!), conservatives are making largely convincing cases to the public (and using extraordinary funding to do this), that the media are something those critics call "leftist." By proving that the media are in fact largely liberal--as if liberal equals leftist--they convince a great many Americans that the media are too liberal, even fringe. Any leftist who stops to think about the matter would probably agree: the media are too liberal, indeed! Oddly, about half the recognized political spectrum lies to the left of liberal.

What is really strange is how this debate always boils down to the bias of journalists, which puts even decent journalists on the defensive, instead of about the bias of institutions. Corporate conglomerates, unprecedented in their massiveness and social power, are behind the news we consume every day. Yet somehow we manage to get distracted into this debate about whether the journalists themselves are biased?

There's an 800 pound gorilla in the room with the reporter, but we focus on the reporter. Is it really conceivable that these giant corporations are leaving their public interface--their power to influence the public and write history--in the hands of the reporters at the very bottom of the hierarchy? Are we really so naive as to think corporations wouldn't in any way take advantage of the opportunity to use such power in their own interests?

Here we go

Let the world love fest begin.

Oddly funny links

These have been going around the office and are pretty funny in a mesmerizing sort of way:

http://www.cryingwhileeating.com/

http://dailydancer.com/

another good book

A good companion piece to the Jeffrey Sachs book that I plugged a while back is Samantha Power's pullitzer prize winning book A Problem from Hell: America in the age of Genocide. It charts both the many cases of genocide in the twentieth century and the evolution of American foreign policy vis a vis genocide, which has essentially been to complain a lot.
The End of Poverty and A Problem from Hell combine to do a pretty good job of showing how incredibly fucked up human beings are. I am pretty much unequivocally in the Pax Americana camp at this point. For all those parents of soldiers who would flip out if we sent their kids to, god forbid, stop a genocide, I say Get OVER IT! That's the job they signed up for, and I'm sure the soldiers would rather risk their lives for a noble cause than to secure the pocketbooks of CEO's.
The Armenians, the Jews, the Tutsis AND the Hutus (they alternately slaughtered each other), the Cambodians, the Kurds, the Bosnians.....sorry bout ya, can't piss off Mr. and Mrs. Apple-pie. They might vote for the other guy next time.

Academic open-mindedness

CUNY’s school of education has actually codified the institutionalized ideological discrimination that now pervades academia:

The School of Education at the CUNY campus initiated last fall a new method of judging teacher candidates based on their "dispositions," a vogue in teacher training across the country that focuses on evaluating teachers' values, apart from their classroom performance.
Critics of the assessment policy warned that aspiring teachers are being judged on how closely their political views are aligned with their instructor's. Ultimately, they said, teacher candidates could be ousted from the School of Education if they are found to have the wrong dispositions.
"All of these buzz words don't seem to mean anything until you look and see how they're being implemented," a prominent history professor at Brooklyn College, Robert David Johnson, said. "Dispositions is an empty vessel that could be filled with any agenda you want," he said.
Critics such as Mr. Johnson say the dangers of the assessment policy became immediately apparent in the fall semester when several students filed complaints against an instructor who they said discriminated against them because of their political beliefs and "denounced white people as the oppressors."

Speaking of Jesus

For whatever reason, Joe’s last post reminded me of an experience I once had that I hadn’t thought of for a while. Several years ago I became friends with a newly converted Christian. She had several friends who were also Christian, though more forcefully than herself. And, at the time, she was dating someone who was also a very devout Christian.

Given the Christian theme among my new friends I decided to attend church with them on a semi-regular basis just to see what the experience was like. Overall, my church experience was a mixture of boring ceremonial procedures, insightful commentary on humanity, not so insightful commentary on humanity, deeply moving music (sound more than lyrics) and an invigorating sense of connection among people.

But what I remember most vividly was the end of church, wherein we were told to hold hands with our neighbor and simultaneously recite 5 things to each other at the cue of the pastor. I only remember one of the lines, which was, “I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord Savior,” or something close to that. I always held their hands, but never spoke the lines. I couldn’t because I didn’t believe them, much less understand what they meant specifically. The expression on some of my partners’ faces was one of shock as I looked them in the eye and remained silent after each of the cues, leaving them the sole participant in a one-way interaction. After the recitations they almost always drew me closer to them, usually putting an arm around me, and would ask in a concerned tone, “Why weren’t you speaking?”. Then came the hard part. I had to be honest, so I told them, somewhat timidly, that I don’t believe that Jesus is my savior and that I don’t really understand Christianity. Then their jaws would drop, they’d pull me even closer to a full-on hug, and would tell me in a very consoling tone that it was okay not to understand. My belief will come in time and that they’ll be praying for me. One woman even cried.

I went to church for a majority of the Sundays that summer. Looking back, they were a strangely intense set of experiences through which I learned more about the emotional effect of ideological isolation than about how to be a good person.

evangelicals saving the day

In contemplating what I want to spend the majority of my life doing, I've sort of settled on trying to improve the lives of people whose lives are really hard. The only way that's going to happen in a sustainable way in this century is if the U.S. government starts giving away more money. And the only way that is going to happen is if politicans' constituents allow them or force them to open up the governments coffers a little wider. Like many people who have read the Bible and have taken to heart the teachings of Jesus, I have long been dissappointed by the fact that evangelicals have chosen to focus on issues of sexuality and reproduction for a poltical agenda rather than concern for the poor and the oppressed. But, in contemplating specific career paths, in the back of my mind I wondered if I couldn't find a way to try to steer the evangelical agenda toward a more economic focus, one that still had a clear Biblical and spiritual grounding. If that could be done, global development would have a real chance of becoming a high priority for the U.S. government.

If David Brooks (conservative columnist for the NYT) is right, this might actually be happening. At the risk of hyperbole, this could be one of the most important political shifts in history.

Sad Day for Europhiles

For years numerous experts on various NPR programs such as MarketPlace have preached the inevitability of Euro dominination. "Sky high" trade and fiscal deficits and general animosity towards the US was supposed to perminantly put the greenback back behind the Euro where it belongs. Sorry, doesn't look like it's going to happen because the Euopean Union constitution is going down.

MP3 Playaz

My job is pretty sweet, because I have around 2 hours everyday to read while the kid I work with takes a nap. Unfortunately, these potentially tranquil and intellectually stimulating hours are consistently filled with the incessant harping of my gossip hungry co-workers. I would like to shut out their innane banter with some music, so I have decided to purchase some sort of MP3 player. I'm probably going to buy the 4 gig Ipod mini, but I heard that they don't have a random option. Is that true? Some of the non-apple ones I looked at had an FM tuner, so I could listen to the radio as well as my tunes. Does the ipod have that option?

I thought about the shuffle, but I figure I might as well get something a little more tweeked out. At the same time, I don't really feel the need for something that can hold a million songs.

I guess I'm wondering if there are non-itunes mp3 players that would give a better bang for the buck. Any advice?

Bias

An understandable misconception from my previous comments is that I think bias in the media is inherently wrong. In actuality I think bias is a natural and inescapable part of having beliefs. Any journalist with half a brain and an education better than Dan Rather’s will have a healthy load of biases by the time they get a real audience. My problem with bias in the media is where it manifests itself in news sources which portray themselves as “objective”. Too much news is opinion masquerading as fact. While the inherent conflicts of interest within the 4 or 5 major MSM conglomerates and simple laziness can be blamed for a lot of MSM inaccuracies, the fact that the lion share seem to favor one side of the political spectrum demonstrates that the problem goes beyond random error.

Several previous posts on the issue of media bias suggested that since everyone is somewhat biased that the measure of bias is hopelessly subjective and not empirically identifiable. Fortunately we’re not dealing with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle here. In the dark old days under the fairness doctrine conservative groups, in an effort to demonstrate empirically that news stories were not being reported fairly, began to simply count the number of times individuals were identified as conservative vs. liberal. While it’s easy for MSM news source to dismiss such studies as “unscientific” and ideologically motivated rather than address the actual validity of the charges, there have actually been a few studies within the hostile realm of academia. “A Measure of Media Bias” by two political science professors from UCLA and the University of Missouri found that the overwhelming majority of MSM news sources show a “strong liberal bias”.

Well I suppose that even the data in empirical studies can be skewed to suit the author, so lets move on to more specific examples:

Here’s an example of a story from Reuters detailing the outcome of the investigation of the Italian Journalist who was shot at by American solders that was modified by the LA Times to shift blame onto the US. Central to establishing culpability in the issue was the speed at which the Italian vehicle was traveling. The Italians attested that they were traveling at a “normal speed”, 25-30mph while US soldiers testified the vehicle was driving in excess of 50mph. The LA Times left the Reuters article intact minus this slightly important sentence:

CBS news has reported that a U.S. satellite had filmed the shooting and that it had been established the car carrying Calipari was traveling at more than 60 mph per hour [sic] as it approached the U.S. checkpoint in Baghdad.

The net result is that instead of revealing that Giuliana Sgrena is a lying commie, the article presents the outcome as far more negative to the US military than it really was.

ABC News’ Terry Moran had this admission of Bias in explanation for Newsweek’s Koran flush story error:

There is, Hugh, I agree with you, a deep anti-military bias in the media. One that begins from the premise that the military must be lying, and that American projection of power around the world must be wrong. I think that that is a hangover from Vietnam, and I think it's very dangerous. That's different from the media doing it's job of challenging the exercise of power without fear or favor.

I’m sure the whole Koran – sorry “Holy Qu’ran” since we’re talking about Newseek – thing doesn’t need rehashing but it is worth nothing that the pressures of the intensely competitive news market which is always cited as the cause for blunder such as this one didn’t seem to be a factor when Clinton was in the White House. The same editor responsible for pushing a highly damaging story to the Bush administration with little regard for the consequences and facts showed complete restraint when presented with the Isikoff piece which first revealed the existence of Clinton’s relationship with Lewinsky -- "there were huge stakes if it was wrong." After letting Newsweek get scooped by Drudge he still didn’t learn his lesson and also spiked a story on Katherine Willey that allowed Newsweek to be scooped by 60mins. Embarrassing a self-destructive, hedonistic relic of the 60’s is “huge stakes” while causing the deaths of 16 people and further damaging the image of the US abroad can’t be anticipated or avoided?

I’m sorry but anyone who’s not Dan Rather could have asked and answered the blindingly obvious questionL

“Why is it news worthy that the “Holy Qu’ran” is flushed down the toilet as opposed to an issue of our shitty magazine?”

Answer: Because a lot of people with a shockingly low regard for human life who we’re trying to get to chill out consider it sacred.

I find it fantastically unbelievable that a man with an Oxford education with intelligence described by his peers as “laser-like” wasn’t completely aware of this reality. Instead I think it was a half hearted attempt to tear open the wound of Abu Ghraib as a means of discrediting the current non-democratic administration.

To reiterate, I don’t believe there is anything wrong with ideology in the media, it just needs to be acknowledged. The increasingly transparent attempts to insert an agenda into the news has caused overall trust in the veracity of the news media to fall from 72 to 49 percent in the last 17 years. MSM is ailing and will not recover until it acknowledges that it is no longer an accurate reflection of reality. It must do this by either acknowledging it’s institutional bias so consumers can apply the correct filters or by truly seeking editorial and journalistic diversity.

Goodbye 31

One of the great heroes of my life played his last game tonight as the Pacers lost their series against the Pistons. Reggie Miller is now retired, and I have no more reason to watch basketball.

interesting documentary

I recently saw a documentary called The Weather Underground about the 60's leftist militant organization called the Weathermen. It was very well-done, if a bit too sympathetic to the weathermen.

It raises a lot of good questions, though, about what constitutes ethical behavior in a world where large forces effect large numbers of lives, sometimes in very negative ways. It also raises good questions about the ethics and the strategic effectiveness and ineffectiveness of violence.

As someone who believes that situations can potentially arise where the most ethical response involves violence (i.e., as someone who isn't a pacifist), I was forced to confront very tricky questions about the concepts of ethical vs. unethical applications of violence. It seems to me that if one adopts a utilitarian ethic, which governments essentially do when they conduct war, then it is difficult from a purely moral standpoint to condemn those who adopt a similar ethic in oppostion to war, as the weathermen did. In other words, if you support the Vietnam War, in which hundreds of thousands if not millions of innocent people were killed, then you can't very well stand in righteous indignation and shock when a terrorist group blows up a building in opposition to the war.

You can condemn the goal, you can condemn the effectiveness, you can condemn the ideology, but it is difficult to qualitatively condemn the technique of terrorism as immoral while simultaneously supporting the ethical permissability of other forms of violence. Some might argue that conventional military powers don't target civilians directly (at least not according to official policy), but does that really make state sanctioned violence more ethical than terrorism? Is it really worse to intentionally kill 3 people than to unintentionally kill 50,000? Was it immoral for German theologian Dietrich Bonhoefer to attempt to assasinate Hitler?

In a similar vein, I think the film very effectively portrayed the level of dedication that some of these people possessed. Regardless of one's opinion of their goals or their techniques, it is difficult to deny that they were the real deal. One got a real sense of "we're not in Kansas anymore," that these people were willing to change their whole way of life for their cause. I'm not trying to laud them, but only to contrast that palpable sense of dedication with the condition of the modern left--- the oppostion to the Iraq War, for example.

I in no way support what the Weathemen did (although I should note that they only destroyed property; they never killed anybody). At the end of the day, I think that if you make moral allowances for terrorists because you sympathize with their cause, then you can't very well complain when someone from the opposite cause adopts the same technique. I also think they were foolish for abandoning conventional politics and non-violent dissent (as George Will said of interest groups, they want the all the power of political office without having to be bothered with inconveniences like running for office). They were also extremely foolhardy, in that their techniques were not only completely ineffectual, but they were also extremely counterproductive. They, and the rest of the 60's far left, caused such a knee jerk political reaction in main stream America that the Left is still paying the price today.

I was continually reminded throughout the film of the Earlham pie thrower, Josh Medlin. His justifications for his actions were eerily similar to those of the weathermen. As the length of this post suggests, all of these people really get to me, in infuriating, haunting, and humiliating ways. I am at once impressed by their dedication and shamed by my own complacency. They make me wonder what I could really do if I got off my duff and got organized, got radical. At the same time, though, I'm frightened by their extremism, because I know that there but by the grace of God go I. The line between admirable dedication and contemptable extremism is disturbingly blurry.

Intelligent Design

My roommates and I had an interesting discussion yesterday about intelligent design. Ben mentioned an article he’d read in which the author argued that many scientists have failed to realize the growing distinction between ID and Creationism. Apparently ID is far more sophisticated and evidence-based than early Creationism, thus making it more plausible and more science-like.

While I agree that ID may be more plausible than Creationism, I still don’t buy the argument that the complexity of the natural world is evidence of an intelligent creator. Sure it sounds nice, but compared to what? There aren’t any other universes out there we can point to and say, “Now there’s a universe that was created by random chance. See how crude and disorganized it is. Our universe is far too elegant to have been created that way.” Complexity is relative, and with only one universe to study, there is nothing to compare that complexity (or simplicity) to. That’s where the argument falls apart for me.

I’m also interested in the dispute about whether or not ID should be considered a science. Personally I think it shouldn’t since it makes certain claims that the rules of science can’t verify. But that only speaks to where it belongs categorically, not its validity. And the fact that ID advocates push so hard to become a science suggests to me that they aren’t making that distinction and are confusing classification with rank. It’s as if being denied the title of science somehow makes it less compelling and is, in a way, saying that it is a sophomoric form of inquiry. On the contrary, I think that the incompatibility between science and ID is as much a sign of the poverty of science as it is that of ID.

I guess I just think it’s strange that ID advocates stress so much over making ID a science. I would expect them to find strength in the fact that their aim is to discover truths so ultimate that even almighty science can’t bear the whole burden.

Interest-group Conservatives

Slate editor Jacob Wiesberg has an informative summation of the Republican's transition from being haters of "big government" to being "interest-group conservatives". Money quote:

A recent Cato Institute study points out that for the 101 biggest programs that the Contract With America Republicans proposed to eliminate as unnecessary in 1995, spending has now risen 27 percent under a continuously Republican Congress. Likewise, the conservative notion of deregulation has been supplanted by a demand for moralistic regulation, while the demand for judicial restraint has been replaced by pressure for right-wing judicial activism.

Public Broadcasting experiment

Here's an article from the New York Times on the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (who is a Republican) and his "aggressively pressing public television to correct what he and other conservatives consider liberal bias." Just for the hell of it, I thought I'd ask, when considering your own definition of bias, is there anything about this article that stands out? In the end, I guess I'm less curious about this particular article than I am about how folks delineate bias.

Fearless Freaks

I saw the Flaming Lips Documentary "Fearless Freaks" yesterday, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I believe it's a good movie regardless of whether or not you have prior experience with the Lips, but try this on for size; the first eight minutes of the movie. This seems like a smart move from a "gettin your stuff out there" perspective, so kudos to director Bradley Beesley. I watched this clip just a few minutes ago and got sucked back into the story. Also check out Beesley’s other Okie-centric documentary, Okie Noodling. For the curious but un-initiated, noodling is hand-fishing for catfish, which sometimes weigh upwards of 40 pounds.

A haunting thought

Fareed Zakaria has a review of Tom Friedman's new book The World is Flat in the NY Times. Zakaria raises a good point, one that scares me enough that I try not to think about it. Namely, if countries across the world develop economically, eventually they're going to want some bombs, tanks, and guns. Will our economic interdependence keep us from World War III? That's the standard optimists argument, but Zakaria isn't so sanguine. Here's a quote:

"The largest political factor is, of course, the structure of global politics. The flat economic world has been created by an extremely unflat political world. The United States dominates the globe like no country since ancient Rome. It has been at the forefront, pushing for open markets, open trade and open politics. But the consequence of these policies will be to create a more nearly equal world, economically and politically. If China grows economically, at some point it will also gain political ambitions. If Brazil continues to surge, it will want to have a larger voice on the international stage. If India gains economic muscle, history suggests that it will also want the security of a stronger military. Friedman tells us that the economic relations between states will be a powerful deterrent to war, which is true if nations act sensibly. But as we have seen over the last three years, pride, honor and rage play a large part in global politics.

The ultimate challenge for America -- and for Americans -- is whether we are prepared for this flat world, economic and political. While hierarchies are being eroded and playing fields leveled as other countries and people rise in importance and ambition, are we conducting ourselves in a way that will succeed in this new atmosphere? Or will it turn out that, having globalized the world, the United States had forgotten to globalize itself?"

Did he really say that?

I just saw Pat Robertson (700 club guy and Christian fundamentalist) on George Stephanopoulos's show on ABC. It was delicious. He actually said that Muslims and Hindus are not fit for public office. I was amazed.
I think this is a brilliant approach to the rise of Christian fundamentalism. Bring it out into the open, into the public square, into the main stream media, and let the public see its real beliefs. This is a good idea for two reasons. First, fundamentalism emerged, and has thrived, as a counter-cultural movement. This is true of most religious movements. If you allow it into the mainstream, one of its primary fuels (the moral fervor that comes from being an oppressed movement) will wither. Second, you force people to defend their theologically based public policy agendas with rational argument.....which won't work out well, as Rev. Robertson demonstrated.

on the off chance

I doubt that anybody else besides Andrew and I cares much about the Whitewater debate (my side=whitewater was a desperate but clever right-wing attack on what republicans then saw as a dangerously popular and effective Democratic president. The plan was orchestrated by Newt Gingrich and implemented by Ken Starr, whose primary technique was to leverage Clinton's friends and associates with the threat of prosecution to get them to testify against Clinton, regardless of the truth or falsity of their testimony. And when Clinton came out clean from these approaches (only after many lives lay in ruins), Starr cynically exploited Clinton's sex-life to embarass him, again for obviously political purposes, and these events, at least the sex part, were overcovered by the media). (His side=Whitewater was a legitimate investigation, occasioned by compelling evidence of wrongdoing, carried out in a fair and professional way by Ken Starr, who aggressively but dutifully did his job, who uncovered substantial evidence that Clinton was engaged in criminal behavior, and who prosecuted those crimes that he came across during his investigation. Finally, the media under-covered these events due to their liberal bias.)
If, on the off chance you do care, I found an interesting interview with Susan McDougal, whose husband went to prison and died there, and who herself was inprisoned for refusing to testify against Clinton. In the interest of finding multiple points of view, read her version and decide for yourself if you believe her.

Goodness

There's some lively discussion in the comments section of the "Rover on the Media" post that's worth browsing, if at least, to see what works and what doesn't. I threw the past two posts up with the intent of sparking something, and was pleasantly surprised to see those comments brew. Initially I thought the post full of Drezner links had more to run with, and I put Rove up there mostly because it seemed amusing that this political operator could sound so apolitical (i.e. reasonable).

Of course there's a good chance the quotes tone was entirely the point. As with so many of the administration sound bites, Karl's no doubt had a hand in, it seemed designed to put him just above the fray. Rove is no less shrewd than Clinton (in fact, I'd say he's more), and put into that context, his statment became more interesting. It felt like he was goading me (or you, but mostly the press) into giving that blurb some strained meaning. The actual topic of Media Bias drifted away and became irrelevant (though you probably found some in that very article).

Maybe that's just because I'm biased.

Blogs have drastically changed my outlook on the Mainstream Media (MSM). The tendencies of poorly written material, which poses as news but oozes it's author's opinion, to survive and thrive in certain markets is pretty appalling. When I started looking, I couldn't help but find it everywhere. I don't have any examples, so don't take my word for it. Read your newspapers with a healthy dose of skepticism, then follow up on it. Read stories on the same subject from other publications, take in some undisguised editorial opinion, and think about where you stand.

Blogs make it infinitely easier to do that. On a personal scale, bias has turned into an annoyance, though on a broad, societal scale its presence will always be troubling no matter which side it comes from. In the end, I rarely dwell on it anymore as it hardly seems worth my time. If I'm reading a shitty article, once I become aware of it's shitiness, I know it's time to move on.

This seems as good a point as any to give a question of Joe's some air, and let it breathe:

"It occurs to me that all of the newspapers that Andrew cited as liberal are from liberal areas (new york, chicago, washington). What about the Indianapolis Star, and all of the thousands of newspapers from smaller markets all over the country. The Star's editorial page is much more conservative than it is liberal, and I at least detect a slight conservative edge to its reporting. I wonder if other smaller market papers, particularly in the midwest, are similar?"

It doesn't have to do with bias, but hopefully this article by Andrew Sullivan on "the fundamentalist threat to the conservative coalition" will stir up more conversation. I found the article terribly well done, so please, don't be put off by registering at The New Republic (if you even have to register it will be free) or the article's length. It's worth the while.