Some bias with a late night snack

Josh has taken issue with my having taken issue with his taking issue with, um, what was it again?

I bet that if we continue to link to each new salvo in this battle of wits and wisdom, we'll be in the top 40,000,000 or so results of a google search for "liberal media". We used to have these kind of exchanges via longform email, but now that we're bloggers, we offer to the internets on-loggers the opportunity to join in, too.

Since I don't want to get into this liberal media debate, I'll just finish by stating, for the record, that I agree with Josh's comment that it was appropriate for Rumsfeld to bring up a potentially valid historical episode when discussing current events. I also agree that, insofar as Rumsfeld's speech deserved a response at all, it deserved a reasoned response - for example, a response focusing on the differences between our current situation and that of the Allies-to-be prior to World War II. Instead, we got Barbara Boxer's faux outrage and Howard Dean's electoral prognostication.

I wrote above that "I don't want to get into this" half-seriously, because, on the one hand, I felt like giving a half-hearted shot at getting a rise out of Josh, and on the other, I believe that the debate over whether or not there is a liberal (or conservative) media bias is a statistical debate requiring careful, laborious consideration of, among other things, what constitutes bias in one direction or another, how many media outlets must exhibit bias, and how often they must do so to establish bias.

I will certainly concede that Josh believes that there is a liberal media bias (and I'll point out that Josh is not a lazy thinker - he comes by his beliefs the hard way), and I will concede that it's possible that there is, in fact, a liberal media bias. But I won't measure it.