Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney claim liberal media bias, but reporters just do their jobs

[Commentary] Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are eagerly attacking the media, portraying reporters as hopelessly biased against them. The truth is, Ryan has a valid point. Most members of the American media do hold a generally liberal point of view toward public affairs. In fact a UCLA study a few years ago found that “of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center.” That said, I spent more than 30 years working as a reporter and editor in several American newsrooms, including 23 years with the supposedly left-leaning New York Times. Never once during all of that time did any editor ever approach me or any other reporter I knew and request a partisan change to a story. The only instruction of that sort editors do offer is to make sure a story is not improperly tilted in one direction or another and therefore unbalanced or unfair.

[Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University, is a Pulitzer-Prize winning former correspondent for The New York Times]