Topic: NewsBusters
We've occasionally wondered whether conservatives recognize conservative media bias, let alone consider it equivalent to liberal media bias.
One answer confirming a negative answer to that question came from Mark Finkelstein, who expressed in a June 3 NewsBusters post on Fred Thompson's potential presidential candidacy that a conservative appeared unchallenged on NBC's "Today":
You would normally expect the guest in these situations to be Tim Russert or Chris Matthews. If ever a conservative were to be on, you could be virtually certain that he would be balanced by a liberal. But, lo and behold, there was Stephen Hayes, who has a major piece on Thompson in the Weekly Standard. And nary a James Carville or facsimile thereof in sight.
[...]
What made it remarkable was [host Campbell] Brown's willingness to play the straight woman, neither accentuating the negative nor saddling Hayes with a liberal sidekick.
Finkelstein spent the rest of his post pondering how "the MSM" will attack Fred Thompson without noting that the first major attack on Thompson following the announcement of his prospective candidacy -- as a lazy politician who supported the un-conservative idea of campaign finance reform -- came from a conservative, NewsMax's Ronald Kessler.
