You Think the Whining Has No Effect?

On the quality and depth of journalism? From Rush to O'Reilly to Hannity to Coulter to Malkin to Hewitt... the list of whiners complaining about the always present hard left wing bias inherent in every news article. (you can look the other way and hear complaints of right wing bias in Huffingtonpost and Media Matters, but the decible of their cries don't come close to the aforementioned whiners) Here's the result.

This is not to deny that the best newspapers run many first-rate stories, [Ken] Silverstein [LA Times investigative reporter] said, or that reporters working on long-term projects are often given leeway to "pile up evidence and demonstrate a case." During the last year, he has written articles on the ties between the CIA and the Sudanese intelligence service; on American oil companies' political and economic alliances with corrupt third-world regimes; and on conflicts of interest involving Pennsylvania Congressman John Murtha. When it comes to political coverage, though, Silverstein told me, newspapers are too often "afraid of being seen as having an opinion." They fear "provoking a reaction in which they'll be accused of bias, however unfounded the charge." The insistence on a "spurious balance," he says, is a widespread problem in how TV and print organizations cover news. "It's very stifling."

As Silverstein suggests, this fear of bias, and of appearing unbalanced acts as a powerful sedative on American journalists—one whose effect ha been magnified by the incessant attacks of conservative bloggers and radio talk-show hosts [3] One reason journalists performed so poorly in the months before the Iraq war was that there were few Democrats willing to criticize the Bush administration on the record; without such cover, journalists feared they would be branded as hostile to the President and labeled as "liberal" by conservative commentators.

..... lack of money and pressure from parent companies significantly effect the quality of news reporting, but that is for another day