FAIR and MRC also mirror each other when it comes to the frequent alerts they send to readers. FAIR's "action alerts" call for readers to contact the media asking for more balanced coverage on stories the group deems biased, while MRC's near-daily CyberAlerts are advertised as "tracking liberal media bias since 1996." Often, however, these alerts don't prove bias; they simply prove that the media sometimes interviews people or makes comments that FAIR and MRC don't like.

FAIR, for instance, recently took National Public Radio to task in an "action alert" titled "NPR's One-Sided 'Liberal Media' Debate." It notes, "Though the program cited a poll suggesting that [claims of conservative and liberal media bias] are believed by substantial numbers of Americans (36 percent see a rightward slant, vs. 46 percent who see a tilt to the left), only one of those points of view got a full hearing on NPR."

FAIR fails to make the obvious point, though, that the NPR piece it criticizes was focused on two recent books criticizing the media for being too liberal, one of which, Bernard Goldberg's "Bias," was a bestseller. The first segment of the show featured the two authors (Goldberg and William McGowan, author of "Coloring the News"), while the second featured two longtime reporters discussing Goldberg and McGowan's perspective, disagreeing with parts and agreeing with others based on their own experiences. FAIR's complaint that NPR did not include "progressive media critics with an opposing view" therefore holds little water. How is it unfair to feature the authors of two books that criticize the media for being too liberal and then interview two journalists to seek their perspective?

In "tracking liberal bias," meanwhile, MRC's "CyberAlerts" often do little more than present evidence of anything liberal ever said in the media, as if all liberal statements are evidence of liberal bias. For instance, a CyberAlert about media coverage of the recent arrest of Jose Padilla, aka Abdullah al Muhajir, for allegedly planning to detonate a dirty bomb leads with this:

"Terrorists had a plan to detonate a dirty nuclear bomb, but CNN's Aaron Brown was much more interested in the rights of the captured suspect. Brown's lead: 'An American citizen, Abdullah al Muhajir, is being held in a military brig with no access to a lawyer, none of the other rights afforded to a citizen ...' CBS's Dan Rather fretted about John Ashcroft's motives: 'The arrest was made May 8th. It's not clear why Ashcroft chose to reveal this a month later with great fanfare while traveling in Russia.'"

These statements are insufficient as evidence of bias on their own, yet MRC presents them as such. Both present legitimate political issues being debated at the national level. And MRC admits later in the alert that the other networks did not present similar reports, writing that Rather had a "hostile attitude toward the story not displayed by ABC or NBC." The entire case, then, that coverage of the Padilla case is biased is that two of four major news stories framed the story in ways that MRC didn't like.

It appears that both groups' real beef is that perspectives they disagree with are aired at all.

Perhaps the worst part of all this is that the methods of these ideological media watchdogs are spreading, with more and more commentators adopting their tactics of selective quotation, and lumping together all reporting they don't like under the rubric of "media bias." This is not only lazy; it is intellectually dishonest.

One is forced to conclude that FAIR and MRC are falling well short of their self-professed goals to, respectively, "invigorate the First Amendment" and "bring balance and responsibility to the news media." The American press, so desperately in need of less ideology and more objectivity, is worse off for their failure.

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