A new study confirms what most of us have known for a while — that conservative whining about “liberal bias” in the media is baseless. It was always difficult to believe. After all, the mainstream media in this country is largely owned by large conservative corporations, and cable news channels like Fox News are little more than government propaganda outlets.

But now, the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, where researchers have tracked network news content for two decades, and whose studies have often been cited by conservatives, did a detailed analysis of the three television networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) and concluded that they were much tougher on Obama than on McCain. During the evening news during the first 6 weeks of the general election campaign, of the opinions expressed about Obama, 72% were negative and 28% were positive (over 2.5 to 1 against Obama). For McCain, 57% were negative and 43% were positive (just over 1.3 to 1 against McCain). In other words, the media was twice as negative against Obama as they were against McCain.

What I find especially ironic is when someone from the conservative media (Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, etc.) complains about liberal bias in the media — the white kettle calling the kettle black!