Journalist Panel, Including CNN’s Tapper, Agrees Media Has ‘Liberal Bias’

Today’s POLITICO Breakfast panel featured four journalists (CNN anchor Jake Tapper, NY Times Magazine‘s Mark Leibovich, NY Times reporter Peter Baker, and NBC political reporter Kelly O’Donnell), all of whom agreed that the mainstream media and the DC reporting class harbors a liberal bias.

Leibovich said there are “clues” you witness at the media’s “leftward lean,” while Tapper was more careful in explaining what he believes to be the real issue of bias in the press. After acknowledging that Brent Bozell, president of the watchdog group Media Research Center, would tout this consensus from the rooftops, Tapper argued it’s not so much a liberal bias as it is a bias rooted in personal experience.

He said a “certain type of person becomes a reporter,” and while he didn’t want to generalize, he said most reporters haven’t gone through the same kind of experiences most others have, and acknowledging that fact leads to some of the best reporting.

Baker argued that the bigger issue of bias is towards conflict as opposed to liberalism, while O’Donnell took note that “MSNBC has evolved” and said she personally likes to be “intellectually aggressive” with both sides in her reporting.

Watch the video below, via POLITICO:

[photo via screengrab]

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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac

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