Well, isn’t this a surprise!

If you’d like to check out an endangered species, don’t bother with a trip to the zoo. Just drop by the newsroom of your favorite newspaper or TV station and ask to see the conservatives.

According to a new survey, only 12 percent of local reporters, editors, and media executives are self-described conservatives, while twice as many call themselves liberal. At national news organizations, the gap is even wider - 7 percent conservative vs. 34 percent liberal.

That gap, which has grown wider in the past decade, does not necessarily prove that America’s mainstream journalism is biased, as conservatives have long complained. But the survey does confirm that US newsrooms do not mirror the political leanings of the nation at large.

…

“We should acknowledge that maybe the biggest problem is that most of us think too much alike and come from the same backgrounds,” says David Yarnold, editor of the opinion pages at The (San Jose) Mercury News. “Find the pro-lifers in a newsroom. That’s harder than finding Waldo.”

“Does not necessarily prove”… well, I supposed it doesn’t necessarily prove it, but if you don’t think the two are linked, you’re living in a fantasy world. Every time I see Peter J. or someone else deliver the news with a sneer, I’m thinking to myself “yup, he’s definitely not biased in the least.”

Still, many Americans say a liberal bias does exist. In a Gallup poll last fall, 45 percent of Americans said the news media are too liberal, while 14 percent said too conservative. (Some 20 percent of Americans now call themselves liberal, versus 33 percent who say they’re conservative.)

I just don’t get those 14% on the left that scream that the media is conservative. I don’t think they know the meaning of the word. Or what’s probably more likely, they’re so far left that the media is on the right to them, even if the media is considerably left of center.