We're Here. We're Liberal. Get Over It.

We in the press are constantly having to defend ourselves against conservative accusations of liberal bias. But our defense is weakened by an inconvenient fact: Journalists are, for the most part, a bunch of liberals.

Witness what happened on Monday at the Seattle Times, where staffers in an editorial meeting cheered Karl Rove's resignation. Executive editor Dave Boardman berated his staffers, saying that to applaud a Republican setback was "simply not appropriate for a newsroom," especially "when we have an outside guest in the room," as was the case at the meeting.

This little episode neatly illustrates how screwed-up the debate about bias has become. Of course it's not the actual political sympathies of his reporters and editors that bugs Boardman; it's their expression—and in front of an outsider, God forbid!

There's no getting around it: Most journalists are liberal. There are plenty of explanations, from the value-neutral (journalists are concentrated in New York and other big cities, where liberals are in the majority) to the self-congratulatory (people go into journalism because they're open-minded and want to understand the world as it really is, and liberals are the same way) to the cynical (journalists historically have been low-paid, so liberalism is in their economic self-interest).

Not only are we mostly liberals; we usually don't mind revealing that—to other liberal journos. I can't tell you how many times during last fall's midterms I was around colleagues who asked whether "we" were going to take back Congress, rightly assuming that everyone in earshot was a fellow Democrat.

So what's the solution? I don't think one is needed. Al Franken hit this one on the head in Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them when he said that the underlying liberal bias of most journalists is utterly swamped by the far more powerful institutional biases of the media: the bias towards being first, towards being right, towards going against the conventional wisdom, towards selling papers and drawing viewers.

All that said, if I were the editor of the Seattle Time, I wouldn't have been too happy, either. Behavior affects thoughts as much as though affects behavior, so people who strive for an appearance of neutrality are more likely to achieve objectivity. Then again, is there anyone who thinks Karl Rove's brand of smear-mongering, wedge-driving, hot-button-pushing politics is what the country needs right now?