OK, if there was ever a doubt about liberal bias in network news media, I think we can safely say CBS erased it with its document debacle.

I wish I could find unvarnished news. It would be refreshing.

Fox is kind of like a GOP cheerleading network. Their motto should be, "We report, you decide how good the Republicans are doing."

I guess I don't see Fox as fair and balanced.

But then there are the CBS, NBC, ABC and CNN crews who lean the other way. They're not fair and balanced either.

I see CNN every day. It's fun - sometimes - to listen to Jack Cafferty belittle the president of the United States.

The media have come a long way. Remember when Walter Cronkite was polled the most trusted man in America? Those days are long gone.

Now, journalists rate right up there with politicians and snake oil salesmen on the scale of trustworthiness.

I know there is no such thing as bias-free news.

I ask my reporters to fight their urge to editorialize all the time.

I understand that everyone has an opinion. The reporter who covers the city council has an opinion about the city council.

But it is her job to ignore her opinion - whatever it is - and give our readers the unvarnished facts.

Cover the meeting. ChronicleÊthe events accurately and factually and let the readers formulate their own opinion about the relative efficiency of the city council.

Now, if the reporter would like to foist an opinion on you, I have no problem with that as long as it's clearly labeled as such.

Then a reader knows. This is an opinion. It's what the writer thinks about this particular issue. It's not both sides. It's biased.

I would venture to say our news stories are mostly devoid of opinion and editorializing.

Problem with the national media is that the bias and opinion seem to slop over into the news.

And sometimes it's not even so much the opinion. It's the way the news is covered.

Surely, Fox News paints a much rosier picture of Iraq than does CNN.

On CNN, pretty much all you see is the bad stuff.

Fox tends to show more good stuff and less bad stuff. It would seem to me, dumb Hoosier that I am, that a network could give viewers an accurate picture of Iraq.

A picture that shows that while progress is being made, there is a rather small but quite significant number of really bad actors over there.

A few years back, a former CBS news correspondent, Bernie Goldberg, wrote a book called "Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News."

One of my colleagues bought me the book and I read it. It pointed out bias in ways I never even really thought about it before.

I mean, it was like I just was so used to the news being covered that way, I never thought of it as bias. It was just routine.

Goldberg's observations were quite eye-opening for me.

Here are some examples.

Homelessness was highlighted under Reagan, conveniently disappeared when Clinton was sworn in, but has now re-emerged since a Republican took office.

The sympathetic media accepts wildly inflated statistics from advocacy groups as the gospel truth.

So-called "news magazines" have degraded into entertainment and skewed their stories toward their audience demographics in a shameless play for higher ratings and more advertising revenue.

The biggest story of our time - parental absence from the home and its devastating effect on children - has gone unreported for fear of offending feminists and the working mothers that compose much of their television audience.

He notes that networks consider Catharine MacKinnon (who says all sexual intercourse is rape) a "noted law professor" while Phyllis Schlafly is a "conservative spokeswoman."

He notes that networks find it necessary to identify which politicians are conservative, ultraconservative, right, hard right or religious right but never bothers to label a single politician as liberal.

Goldberg also points out this isn't necessarily done intentionally.

"The reason we don't identify NOW as a liberal group or Laurence Tribe as a liberal professor or Tom Daschle as a liberal Democrat is that, by and large, the media elites don't see them that way. It may be hard to believe, but liberals in the newsroom, pretty much, see NOW and Tribe and even left-wing Democrats as middle of the road. Not coincidentally, just as they see themselves. When you get right down to it, liberals in the newsroom see liberal views as just plain ... reasonable."

Of course, when Goldberg's book came out, he was pooh-poohed as being a whiner, exaggerator, disgruntled former employee, liar, etc., by the left.

More thoughtful people, I think, probably gained some insight from the book.

But make no mistake, the recent CBS nonsense confirms Goldberg's observations.

Think about this. A known W hater comes to CBS News with these long-lost documents purported to show that W didn't fulfill his National Guard duty.

(OK, this 30-year-old story has been done to death every time W has run forÊany office and W has signed the waiver to release any and all of his National Guard records, but never mind. That's another column.)

CBS takes the documents to have them authenticated by experts. A couple experts say, "Hey, these things look a little flaky. You better not go on the air with them."

CBS says, "Never mind," and goes on the air anyway.

It turns out the documents are fake. So obviously fake that Internet users who post Web logs (personal journals) were onto it in about an hour.

After a couple weeks of wailing and gnashing of teeth. CBS News and Dan Rather apologize and tell us they were misled.

No.

They weren't misled. The were told the documents were likely fake and made the conscious decision to go ahead with the story anyway.

That's not being misled. That's being biased. That's allowing your distaste for W to cloud your judgment.

Want more proof of bias?

Take CBS news senior producer Mary Mapes, who, according to Associated Press, is one of CBS' most highly regarded employees.

She calls Joe Lockhart, a John Kerry campaign adviser before the CBS piece airs.

She tells him about the guy who gave CBS the phony documents. Maybe she doesn't even think they're phony at this point.

She tells Lockhart that the phony document guy would like to talk to him.

Basically, she connects the Kerry campaign to a W-hater with a batch of phony documents concocted to make W look bad.

Now, why would she do that?

Simple. To help Kerry win the election.

No bias there, eh?

I wonder how many times a CBS news producer has tipped off the W campaign about a really hot Kerry item? [[In-content Ad]]