I get the sense that everybody in this business gets painted with a broad brush of bias, and that's troubling.

I don't think it's so much an issue with local news at small dailies like this one. I mean, it's hard to detect bias in coverage of the town council.

But I watch network and cable news. I listen to National Public Radio every day. I read stories on the Associated Press wire and the Scripps Howard News Service.

It is really easy for me to find examples of bias.

Some of my liberal colleagues think I'm crazy - except, of course, when it comes to Fox News Channel.

My liberal friends have no problem pointing out that Fox leans to the right.

And I agree with them. Fox does lean to the right.

But in the same breath they are able to say with great conviction - amid mountains of evidence to the contrary - that network news and CNN are completely fair and balanced.

What nonsense.

A Rasmussen survey shows that CNN viewers (63 to 26 percent) and NPR listeners (68 to 27 percent) favor John Kerry over George Bush. That's about the same margin that Fox viewers choose Bush over Kerry (65 to 28 percent).

This is what bothers me about the news business these days. National media outlets all lean somewhere.

This is a problem because it impugns the credibility of all news outlets. According to recent surveys, people are less likely to believe what they read or hear on the news, and that's troubling to me.

When it comes to news, it should be apolitical. But more often than not, and especially in an election year, news becomes a means to support or criticize the candidate of your choice.

You can make a candidate look good or bad at will based on how you write the news. And that's what the networks do, and that's a problem.

Here's a little factoid that might give you a hint as to political leanings of the people in the news business.

This came from polling cited by syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker.

In 1992, 89 percent of Washington journalists voted for Bill Clinton, and 90 percent of them said they believe in a woman's right to choose. At the same time, about 49 percent of Americans voted for Clinton and about half think abortion is wrong.

Seems most Washington journalists are far more liberal than the population at large. So what?

Well, if you are going to vote for John Kerry, you are not likely to write a lot of favorable news about W.

Here's a good example.

While the economy was recovering earlier this year, virtually every economic indicator except jobs was positive.

What economic indicator did the national media choose to showcase? Jobs.

Now that there have been a few months of strong job growth, jobs are no longer worth reporting about.

Or let's be specific.

Thanks to the Media Research Council, which tracks network and cable news broadcasts, we can dissect a recent issue - the 9/11 Commission's report on the link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida.

A staff report for the 9/11 Commission documented numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, but no proof Iraq joined in the 2001 attacks on America.

(The W administration never said that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11. One could make the argument that W's people tried to imply that, but no one in the W administration ever came out and accused Saddam of direct involvement in 9/11.)

According to the MRC, "All three networks twisted that finding into an utter rejection of the administration's case for war as reporters portrayed W as untrustworthy."

But you don't have to take MRC's word for it. They have the networks' words chronicled.

"CBS Evening News" reporter John Roberts charged Bush had a credibility gap: "One of President Bush's last surviving justifications for war in Iraq ... took a devastating hit when the 9/11 Commission declared there was no 'collaborative relationship' between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. ... The report is yet another blow to the president's credibility."

Over on "World News Tonight," ABC's Peter Jennings said the finding was unequivocal: "One of the Bush administration's most controversial assertions in its argument for war in Iraq was that Saddam Hussein had links to al-Qaida. Today the 9/11 Commission said, unequivocally, not so."

And on "NBC Nightly News," David Gregory seemed astonished that Bush was sticking to his story: "The White House isn't backing down tonight, insisting there always was an Iraq-al-Qaida link. But it's clear this report is a blow to the President's rationale for war."

OK, I don't really care which side of the aisle you're on. This is just fully wrong. The networks completely mischaracterized the 9/11 panel's findings to make W look bad.

So much so that former Democrat congressman Lee Hamilton, a commission member, scolded the media for its coverage.

And that's not even the sick part.

If ABC or any other media outlet wondered where in the world the W administration got the idea there was a link between Saddam and al-Qaida, all they had to do was look in their own archives.

MRC director L. Brent Bozell III - a conservative - tracked down all the info.

In a story aired in a prime time news magazine show on Thursday, Jan. 14, 1999, then-ABC News correspondent Sheila MacVicar reported how a few months after the embassy bombings in Africa and U.S. retaliation against Sudan, bin Laden "reached out to his friends in Iraq and Sudan." MacVicar trumpeted how "ABC News has learned that in December, an Iraqi intelligence chief, named Farouk Hijazi, now Iraq's ambassador to Turkey, made a secret trip to Afghanistan to meet with bin Laden. Three intelligence agencies tell ABC News they cannot be certain what was discussed, but almost certainly, they say, bin Laden has been told he would be welcome in Baghdad."

Bozell tracked down that ABC News story after seeing it referred to in an excerpt from a new book by Stephen Hayes, "The Connection: How al Qaida's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein has Endangered America," published in the June 7 Weekly Standard.

Bozell notes that Hayes cited similar news stories in Newsweek, the AP and NPR, in the 1998-99 range, which stated bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were cooperative.

Now remember, the 9/11 commission's report itself documented numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. (I repeated that for effect.)

Bottom line.

The networks knew there were well-documented links between Saddam and al-Qaida, yet they chose to report there weren't - just to make W look bad in an election year.

Is it any wonder people don't trust the media? [[In-content Ad]]