As noted many times over the years, defensiveness in response to constant accusations of liberal bias is what causes "the so-called liberal media" to bend over backwards and do things institutionally that aren't very liberal at all -- like running unedited videos from only one side of the great American political debate. And when we say one side, remember that the Tea Party is hardly half of the American people -- polls show support for its ultra-conservative views to be largely on the order of 25-28 percent of the electorate, at the most. This backwards bending over increased last year, especially in the wake of the ACORN episode -- which is more than a tad ironic since that story was largely a triumph of conservative misinformation -- and also the Tea Party protests which took the mainstream Big Media outlets by surprise.