Drinking Liberally - Liberal Media? Where?

Earlier this week a representative from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) was in town, flanked by a few local activists of note - including one that I'm sure you're familiar with - to hold a press conference on the steps of Asheville City Hall to discuss Charles Taylor's many ethical peccadilloes and what they, as an organization, were doing about it.

Now, the whole idea of a press conference is to present information to the press. And boy oh boy what a turnout of the local journalism community the CREW event had! Let's look at some of the luminaries that were present at the press conference:

• WWNC, 570 on your AM dial! The one place in the Asheville area where a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, log-cabin or otherwise, can listen to the fair and balanced punditry of Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Michael Savage the way nature intended - with lots of static and sibilance. They were covering the press conference, but their coverage amounted to a short report (read the transcript here) that was very favorable to Taylor. (Okay, okay, I can't harsh on WWNC too much - they do have Art Bell in their lineup. He's a guilty pleasure. So is Paul Harvey; the fact that both he and Keith Richards are still alive are testaments to something, but I'm not sure what.)

• The Asheville Citizen-Times? Our local Gannett mouthpiece, the same paper that endorsed Taylor for re-election in 2004, did run an announcement that the press conference was going to be happening, but didn't even bother showing up.

• WLOS was there, but they glossed over the event almost completely, paying it lip service by including roughly ten seconds of footage of the event itself and about ten seconds of an interview with CREW's deputy director, Naomi Seligman-Steiner, as part of a general story about the 11th District's Congressional race. Guess who got twice as much face time and soundbites than the challenger, Heath Shuler? Big surprise! In case you've forgotten, WLOS is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, a conservative media conglomerate that pre-empted that one episode of Nightline a few years ago because, you know, honoring our soldiers who were killed in Iraq up to that point was unpatriotic.

• Mountain Xpress was there, but since the deadline of our own little homespun version of the Village Voice is on Saturday, we won't know what their coverage was like until the next issue hits those purple plastic boxes next Wednesday.

• As of press time there was no word as to whether or not the Global Report, the Tribune, the IWANNA or the Town Tooter covered the event.

This is just a small, local example of media bias. And to think that all of those conservative pundits accuse the media of being liberal. Where the hell were the so-called "liberal media" when this event was happening? It's almost as if our local media outlets are so comfortable with the status quo that they're more than willing - dare I say happy - to ignore illegal activities.

If you're like me, I'm sure you're sufficiently pissed about this.

So... let's get pissed!

Come join us for another episode of Drinking Liberally @ the Asheville Brewing Company (77 Coxe Ave., Downtown), where we can talk about media bias, where we get our news, what we can do to help support independent news outlets on all sides of the ideological spectrum... and ways that we can heed the advice of Jello Biafra: "Don't hate the media, become the media!"

Besides, the Brewing Company has some tasty 'za, great beer, complimentary wi-fi access... and you never know what kind of surprises will pop up at these things.

See you tomorrow!
syntax (co-host, Asheville Drinking Liberally)

(PS - Don't forget about the First Annual Drinking Liberally West Asheville Haywood Road Pub Crawl this Saturday!)