Right Wing

For three years, John R. Lott Jr., the controversial American Enterprise Institute scholar and author of "More Guns, Less Crime," has used the pseudonym of "Mary Rosh" to post defenses of himself on the Internet. "Rosh" described Lott as a meticulous, non-ideological researcher, and even claimed to be one of his former students. "I have to say that he was the best professor I ever had," Rosh gushed in one Internet posting.

"Resentment at the 'liberal media' has been a Holy Grail of the American right for 40 years, and a gold mine for conservative direct-mail fund-raisers," writes Joel Connelly. In reality, though, "the right plays an almost dominant role in setting the agenda and stereotyping opponents. It has unmatched powers to get a story airborne. ... The party line gets out on issues from going to war with Iraq to drilling the West." Then why do conservatives still pretend that the media are liberal?

"Setting aside the shrill and nonsensical efforts of those who suggest the corporate-owned media in America is 'liberal,' the situation with regard to talk radio is particularly perplexing: It doesn't even carry a pretense of political balance," writes former radio DJ Thom Hartmann.

Alessandra Stanley writes in today's New York Times: "The revelation that Roger Ailes, the chairman of Fox News, the self-proclaimed fair and balanced news channel, secretly gave advice to the White House after the Sept. 11 attacks was less shocking than it was liberating -- a little like the moment in 1985 when an ailing Rock Hudson finally explained that he had AIDS. Ever since Mr. Ailes changed jobs from Republican strategist to news executive, he has demanded to be treated as an unbiased journalist, not a conservative spokesman.