It’s half a joke (from Stephen Colbert), though I think it fits for certain assertions that many conservatives make without any reservation: lowering taxes always raises revenue; more guns and more open gun laws always means less crime; we’ve never executed an innocent person; global warming and evolution are made-up; and others. So when journalists report things contrary to some of these not-facts, some people seem to believe that it’s due to liberal bias, when it actually might be due to reality.
So it is something you heard a comedian say?
It was a sardonic reflection on the fact that right-wingers trade upon fantasies and live in a world where their truths are at odds with that which can be empirically identified.
For instance, nearly half of Republicans think Obama is a Muslim, and substantial proportions think he was born outside the US. Large proprotions believe the deficit and unemployment have gone up under him. Conservatives are more likely to reject science, including climate science and evolution.
It’s akin to what I said above. Conservatives see the world as fer vs agin. If it isn’t in complete accord with conservative beliefs, it has a liberal bias. The media, reality…
I’m a long-time Times reader, but not that long 
However, googling finds that you are absolutely correct:
Having said that, I don’t think editorial page editors dictate the rest of the paper. This is particularly clear in the case of the Wall Street Journal, but I suspect the same is true at the Washington Post and New York Times.
Complaining about bias in the Washington Post and New York Times seems to me mostly of matter of playing the ump.
[snip]
I do not need to believe it, only when the issue is the opinion of a group is that then their opinion is data.
When media bias is the subject one should bother to check what the liberals or leftists do think about the news, and in cases like this it is the only time that I do check places like the Democratic underground for example.
When one takes a look at their views on the mainstream media the usual is to complain about how the corporate media is usually misrepresenting or not informing the people of what they think is important.
The thread titles can give one an idea of what they think:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=forum&id=1174
Besides the traditional FOX bashing there is also a lot of take downs on CNN, PBS and others, here is a recent example regarding the Sanders campaign:
The point is that many conservatives just ignore that, so as to keep their broken balance regarding how the media is seen by the left. And it is also the conservative media that does tell their viewers and readers that idea about the mainstream being liberal. In reality the MSM could not afford to do that, too many subjects that would upset the money people.
And no, I do not go the Democratic Underground, I only look at them in discussions like this one, even I do know that I would not like to drink from that biased well of information and to constantly look at their attempts at getting things perfect.
OTOH as I pointed before, a lot of subjects (some that even include science) currently are being pushed by Republicans and conservatives that are coming from sources that are misleading the American people right now. And then the Mainstream media (with a notable exception from CBS) is falling for the false equivalence fallacy when reporting some very important issues like human induced climate change.
Is this any different than the percentage of Democrats that believe that Republicans hate women, the poor, minorities etc?
Ever since (Mr. 47% percent) Romney spilled the beans there is good evidence. 
The evidence for the belief that Obama was not an American was and remains a total invention and really: there is a lot of hatred for minorities involved on the propaganda machine that is feeding that kind of misleading information among conservatives.
There is objective proof regarding Obama’s place of birth and his religion. What objective proof can you offer that Republicans do not hate women, the poor, minorities, etc.?
What proof can you even offer in support of your premise? Specifically, what polls query your specific assertion of “hate” for women, the poor, minorities, etc.? (Note: Individual people making statements is not sufficient to support your assertion.)
This seems like an asinine counter argument to me, but I await your evidence nonetheless.
Let’s suppose that 1000 random Republicans were polled and asked the question, “Do you hate women?” What do you believe the results would be? Maybe 10% would say that they hate women? (I would guess less). Would you accept that as evidence that Republicans don’t hate women? Presumably not. If you wouldn’t, then we have to look elsewhere. The left has taken policy disagreements concerning reproductive rights between the right and left and equated it with hate and a “war on women” when neither actually exist.
Wait a sec, you just made up a poll, made up the results of that poll, and then made up your opponent’s reaction to that result.
That’s only a couple of steps better than “If we suppose that I’m right, then you’ll find that I am, in fact, right.”
So there are some issues where there’s a clear difference between the liberal and conservative position, would you agree? Abortion, gun rights, environmental issues, gay marriage, minimum wage, to name a few.
If I were to read the editorial page of the New York Times or Washington Post every day, would I see equal representation of editorials arguing for both sides? Would I, for instance, see an equal number of pro-life and pro-choice viewpoints represented in editorials that deal with abortion? An equal number making the argument for and against raising minimum wage?
Having read those editorial pages on a great many days (though not every day) I feel fairly certain the answer is no. The liberal side gets way, way, way more space then the conservative side on those issues. That’s plain whether I agree with one side or not. I am pro-gay marriage, for instance, but though on that issue I agree with the media, I don’t pretend they’re giving the other side equal time to express opposing viewpoints.
At risk of stating the obvious, this is wrong. “Conservatives are a part of the established power structure”. What do you mean by that? What exactly is the established power structure? If we accept that there is an established power structure, I think it’s fairly safe to say that the President of the United States is part of it. Since the current President is not a conservative, that pretty much wipes out your argument. Plainly conservatives don’t control all established sources of power in the USA to any greater extent than liberals do. The Republican Party holds a majority in Congress now, but not so long ago it was the Democrats.
Also wrong. “Non-whites have been locked out of society for years”. What is that even supposed to mean? “Society” is defined as the group of all human beings. If non-whites existed during the unspecified “years” that you’re referring to, then they were part of society, by definition.
Affirmative action is harmful to everyone regardless of race. The group that’s most likely to be denied college admission or a job because of affirmative action is Asian Americans. Affirmative action is also harmful to Blacks and Hispanics, the group which it supposedly exists to help. After the voters of California abolished racial preferences in state universities, the percent of Black students who graduated went up. Therefore to say that people who oppose affirmative action do so because they dislike non-whites or want to preserve power among whites is obviously not true.
At the NY Times, it’s not just the editorial page and the opinions that are liberal. It’s also their choice of facts…i.e choosing which news items to place on the front page.
For an example look at today’s paper at www.nytimes.com.*
As soon as page loads, you see the largest, most prominent photo (out of a dozen other photos on the same web page, all smaller in size), located in the center of the page where it grabs your attention.
The photo (of a gravestone, with flowers) illustrates a news article about gun control. Specifically, about the father of a victim of the “massacre” at Virginia Tech University, who is now leading a “crusade” advocating tougher gun control laws. (words in quotes are from the nytimes)
It’s a perfectly legitimate news story. But it’s not the one you’ll see on the front page at Fox News.
And the choice of language is also legitimate (massacre, crusade). But it’s not the vocabulary you’ll see at conservative news sites.
All news reporting is flavored by the views of the reporter and the corporation he works for.And as long as everybody recognizes that, then we can all read intelligently , and filter our news for ourselves.
But it is legitimate to point out that much of the mainstream media is liberal, and unfortunate that they try to deny it.
(this link will change by tomorrow, of course, but the article I am linking to should still be visible here
I can’t help but see this as an example of the very thing I’m talking about. I refer to real poll results, and in response, you imagine made up numbers that fit the reality you would prefer.
Such anecdotal evidence couldn’t begin to prove bias. But your citation of the words “massacre” and “crusade” don’t provide even that.
The word crusade is not a compliment among liberals. The word implies extremism. I’m not saying the reporter used a word liberals associate with medieval intolerance to bash a gun control advocate. But, if it means anything at all, it means the reporter was putting some distance between her reportorial stance and that of the, may I say, crusading Mr. Read. So it’s evidence for the opposite of what you suggest.
As for massacre, doesn’t everyone – observers, surviving victims, and even perpetrators – see these incidents that way? This is something that the Times, and FoxNews, agree on:
Because what you asked for is a poll that shows that Republicans don’t hate women. Despite my pleas to Gallup, they won’t ask thousands of Republicans if they hate women. There are however, definable policy differences regarding reproductive issues between Republicans and Democrats. This is where the “liberal media” (I use quotes because I don’t believe that it’s very liberal) comes in. The phrases “War on women” and “Republicans hate women” are repeated by politicians and editorial writers with frequency but they never get called on it. The media was not so generous (nor should they have been) when the made up “War on Christmas” and “War on Christians” were contrived.
The reality quotes likely originated with an attitude that was floating around during the height of the Bush years - I believe Colbert was riffing off of that, and off of conservatives’ own use of “reality-based community”.
[QUOTE=Unnamed GOP aide circa 2004]
The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” … “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
[/QUOTE]
That poster is using a known liberal phrase–“check your privilege”–in an attempt to wittily make a point.
Rather as someone might say they are “genderqueer” & then spout the MRA party line…
(I don’t know about “the media” but Conservative Satirists are thin on the ground.)
I totally forgot about that! Thanks for the reminder.
Are you seriously suggesting that California voters repealed race-based admissions in order to improve black students’ graduation rates? :dubious: