Actually, if there was some bias, we might see the press pool bust out laughing with every utterance of these folks..on either side of the aisle. The only authentic media bias we’ve seen in the last several years is when that poor-aimed Iraqi roundhoused his shoes at the former President

Politics, like the media is mere entertainment, the most expensive burlesque since Busby Berkeley unleashed his terpsichorean Hollywood abandon on Depression era America. So, tell me now, the media is supposed to be balanced and sober about…ehhh…Washington? Its like asking Bugs Bunny to officiate solemnly about an Elmer Fudd Wabbit Hunt.

Still, the Office of the Executive of the United States of America whining like a child over some bully network?…Really now. The best response to any of these media sots has always been the art and humor of the raconteur and given the flabby lack of professionalism in Washington, where all hands get their automatic chance at the honey jar, the art of the raconteur just aint required anymore. Credulity is fungible.

As for your last comment, I make no claim to “objectivity” but I do make a claim to truth. Obviously for you those are the same claims, but that is a very modern claim; in fact, it is the claim of empiricism.

Further, my claim to know the truth is a humble claim, always alert to someone else’s evidence and critique. But this humility produces (paradoxically) a high degree of confidence, but not an absolute certainty, save in the case of revealed truth.

But then again I don’t think I should believe you when you say that “we are realists” since I suppose you are just expressing your subjective point of view with no claim to objectivity or truth in your claim :)

Tapper: It’s escaped none of our notice that the White House has decided in the last few weeks to declare one of our sister organizations “not a news organization” and to tell the rest of us not to treat them like a news organization. Can you explain why it’s appropriate for the White House to decide that a news organization is not one –

(Crosstalk)

Gibbs: Jake, we render, we render an opinion based on some of their coverage and the fairness that, the fairness of that coverage.

Tapper: But that’s a pretty sweeping declaration that they are “not a news organization.” How are they any different from, say –

Gibbs: ABC -

Tapper: ABC. MSNBC. Univision. I mean how are they any different?

Gibbs: You and I should watch sometime around 9 o’clock tonight. Or 5 o’clock this afternoon.

Tapper: I’m not talking about their opinion programming or issues you have with certain reports. I’m talking about saying thousands of individuals who work for a media organization, do not work for a “news organization” — why is that appropriate for the White House to say?

Gibbs: That’s our opinion.

And it is interesting to watch the reaction of other news outlets. While there is the expected smirking tone to the coverage, I also sense a current of unease. Journalists do not take lightly attacks by government on the press, even if the press in question happens to be reviled. The first amendment is holy writ to them, and if push comes to shove, they’ll toss this administration to the wolves just as quick as they tossed Nixon.

We are realists, not “objectivists.” Except, of course, for the Randians among us.

I thought we were realists, moral and otherwise, here!?

Yet I agree with Mr Mitchell that “one’s perspective will determine what, exactly, constitutes a fact worth reporting in the first place.” NPR is as guilty of this as FOX. These stations both do report both sides of an issue when they do a story, but it is what they consider to be a newsworthy story that the slant comes in. I think that the editorial boards on a station that claims to be objective just need to pay attention to the claims of bias that result from the left and right and not only show both sides of an issue in their stories, but be sure to show both sides of what the issues are in their story selection.

As for the charge of doing it for money, they all do that of course. But the charge most describes MSNBC. CNN had captured the avuncular “center” with Wolf Blitzer, and MSNBC could make no headway in the ratings against them. Fox had already captured the right, so that left the left as the only available market niche, which they colonized not on ideological grounds, but out of marketing necessity.

What you have is “politics as product” conveniently packaged and marketed to the voters, who now become political consumers, and audience with specific demographics that could be delivered to advertisers. In marketing terms it is nothing more than niche marketing, but in political and social terms it leads to tribalization. Thanks to the internet, voters can spend all their time within an information bubble and never hear a challenge to their own viewpoint, while every other view becomes strange and alien to them.

As a political matter, the democrats are within their rights to go after their ideological opponents, especially those who control powerful media outlets. The danger is that the political becomes the governmental all too easily.

I think the only organ of opinion more sinister than Fox is SRN, which claims openly to be Christian but hawks such merchandise as this and this.