Brian Williams is set to replace Tom Brokaw as the anchor for NBC. Brokaw leaned “just a bit” to the Left and I had hoped they would bring in someone who is more of a moderate. Williams isn’t exactly a moderate though.

* On January 6, 2000, Williams anchored MSNBC’s analysis after a debate between the six Republican presidential candidates, a group that included John McCain: “It’s red meat for conservatives, the positions rather strident tonight: anti-gay, pro-Jesus, and anti-abortion and no gray matter in between.”

* On the May 3, 1999 The News, after Jesse Jackson helped get the release of three U.S. POWs captured by the Serbs, Williams presented Newsweek’s Howard Fineman with this premise: “Bottom line: No other American was able to do what Jesse Jackson did. Doesn’t the American political system need a Jesse Jackson?”

On the same program on October 11, 2002, Williams asked historian Marshall Frady to sum up Jimmy Carter’s value: “Is it fair to call him the best former President in, at minimum, modern American history, and perhaps, well, I guess, the last 200 years?” Frady needed no coaxing: “Which embraces the, all presidencies, I think. Absolutely.”

The Media Research has many more examples of bias coming from Williams, though I cannot say it actually surprises me. As many of my readers know, I took many journalism classes while in college. Journalism was not my ultimate degree, but I took some of the same classes for public relations. While I attended a relatively Conservative school, Texas Tech University, there did seem to be more Liberals in these classes than the campus represented. Why are Liberals attracted to journalism?

I believe one of the main reasons Liberals are attracted to journalism is that Liberals as a whole want change. Many are activists for some cause and I have yet to meet one Liberal who is not outspoken about some topic. The field of journalism has been painted in a very glamourous light with the great success stories of the past (Watergate and the coverage of the Vietnam War for two examples) and an area where hard investigation can result in swaying public opinion. This is exactly what many Liberals wish to do.

Journalists tend to be creative. Liberals as a rule are more creative than Conservatives. Of course this isn’t exactly the case, but relatively speaking the terms Right and Left in terms of ideology could also be applied to Right-brain/Left-brain individuals. It is a journalists responsibility to cover the most mundane events and make them sound interesting enough to capture an audience’s attention.

While there are surely more Liberal journalists than Conservative journalists, this isn’t the issue with the biased media. Every single journalist could be Liberal however it is their job to present facts instead of opinions loosely written as news. Today’s journalists as a whole do not do this. They opine more than they report.

My hope is that Brian Williams will simply report the news and keep any biases out of his reports, however according to the Media Research Center he doesn’t exactly have the record to support this hope. Ratings numbers for the three main news organizations (CBS, NBC and ABC) have continued to fall and this past election was evidence of the drop in ratings. One reason the ratings fall is because of the bias reported. Williams will do the MSM a service by being a balanced news reporter instead of an analyst of current events.

Williams also has it in for bloggers (via Power Line), but I assume many MSM-types do after bloggers helped take down Dan Rather.

When a fellow panelist mentioned that bloggers had had a big impact on the reporting on Election Day, Williams waved that point away by quipping that the self-styled journalists are “on an equal footing with someone in a bathroom with a modem.”

John Hinderaker has a different story involving Williams whom he met while doing a late-night analysis during the election. Whether or not the MSM will continue to harp on bloggers has yet to be determined, though if I were a betting man, and I am, I’d put my life savings on ‘yes.’

The Politicker linked with NBC Is Tredding On Thin Ice