Many liberals in the media honestly believe their views are middle-of-the-road or just plain common sense, not skewed to the left.
An interesting e-mail exchange I had with a Colorado newspaper editor earlier today illustrates that fact.
It all began with an email story tip from NewsBusters fan Shawn Loy, who sent along some correpondence he had had with Alex Miller, the editor of the Summit Daily News of Frisco, Colorado.
Loy had passed along to Miller an op-ed from Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) about ending federal funding of Planned Parenthood.
"I thought you might be interested....(includes quotes from former Planned Parenthood director Abby Johnson," Loy noted before pasting Pence's op-ed.
In reply, Miller wrote back to Loy:
Wow, what a bunch of BS! What you folks really need to do is focus on birth
control and better adoption policies and agencies in the US ...
Looking into this, I e-mailed Miller:
I received the following earlier from a NewsBusters tipster.
Care to comment about your response?
Miller quickly obliged:
Just that I think targeting abortion rights is an uphill and ultimately fruitless battle (even if it’s outlawed, which is highly unlikely, many will still seek abortions either out of the country or in a back alley) and that a much better use of time would be promoting birth control and giving women with unwanted pregnancies an easier path to offer children up for adoption. Not liberal bias, just common sense.
To which I kindly replied:
But can you see how a reader might take such a dismissive remark as evidence that you may be closed off to a full airing of all kinds of opinion on the Planned Parenthood funding debate? It may suggest to him that you are less inclined to run opinion pieces in your paper that carry a conservative view on removing federal funding of Planned Parenthood.
Miller's response?:
Perhaps, although mostly we focus on local opinion, not national e-blasts like that one — and we run plenty of opinion from both sides of the aisle. I generally never respond to them but was moved by what I thought was a ridiculous statement about ‘the abortion industry.’
