Understanding 'Media Bias'

You hear it all the time, especially during election season. "The media is biased" -- a criticism leveled from both the Right and Left.

In fact, there's a cottage industry devoted to "exposing media bias," most of which has people in the news biz rolling their eyes. And for good reason: not that media criticism is unwarranted, it's just that most of it, to put it bluntly, is oversimplified nonsense that generates more heat than light.

Perhaps the weakest aspect of pop media criticism is its lack of clarity. People talk about the media as if it were a single entity.