In another blow to the critics of the term "Left-wing media bias", MSNBC is reporting that out of 144 journalists they identified, 125 contributed to Democratic or liberal causes in 2004. However, this is not the point of the story. The chief concern of senior editors and media board members is that the records of their reporters' donations are available to the public. As a result, many news organizations are prohibiting political donations altogether, but this has stirred up a conflict with the rank-and-file journalists.

The donors said they try to be fair in reporting and editing the news. One of the recurring themes in the responses is that it's better for journalists to be transparent about their beliefs, and that editors who insist on manufacturing an appearance of impartiality are being deceptive to a public that already knows journalists aren't without biases.

Essentially, the moral dilemma for senior management is how to maintain the appearance of fairness and neutrality. It's interesting that they prefer restricting donations over hiring more conservative journalists.

To be fair, they are probably not intentionally attempting to deceive their reader/viewership. They are still laboring under a threadbare idea that our basic existence, the thing we really hold in common as human beings, is only that which can be measured by the hard sciences. They have imbibed the idea that religion and ideology are only superstructures over our physical base structure. Neutrality, therefore, consists only in what can be reduced to our fundamental biology.

The Left just happens to be more aware of this fundamental reality of human existence. Even though there is an ideology associated with the Left, it is based on what it Real, while conservatism is based on metaphysically impossible notions like objective morality. Even though Christians argue that what all men have in common is their creation in the image of God, that is only a social construction derived after the fact of natural existence. Therefore, it only makes sense to hire more Left-leaning journalists if you want to maintain neutrality. Even if they occasionally lapse into ideological thinking, they are more capable of seeing man as he truly is: a biological organism that strives for survival.

Of course, the problem with this (old and thankfully waning) view of reality is that if it was true it would be impossible to know it is true. While materialist theories abound, the idea that a material thing can consciously reflect on itself and the world around it is as mysterious a notion as anything found in any religion. The idea that basic reality can be (at least potentially) known exhaustively by the hard sciences is as much an article of faith as any other religious doctrine. However, so long as this old school philosophy abides amongst the media moguls, we will be subjected to this fantasy of neutrality.

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