L. Brent Bozell III is founder and president of the Media Research Center (mediaresearch.org), the openly conservative media watchdog organization that has been documenting and challenging liberal bias in the mainstream news media since 1987. I talked to the nationally syndicated op-ed columnist March 21 by telephone from his offices in Washington, where he was preparing for MRC’s 20th birthday gala.

Q: What is the mission of the Media Research Center?
A: It is to document, expose and neutralize the liberal media.

Q: And the main outposts of the liberal media are?
A: Historically, it has been the Big Three networks by virtue of their audiences. And though their audiences have been cut in half in the last 10 years, they still remain strong. But this term "the liberal news media" has morphed into many other things. It is now in the Internet. It is newspapers -- prominently so. It's the wire services. It's the news magazines. So there is a vast left-wing conspiracy out there.

Q: What is your working definition of "media bias"?
A: I've always believed that every reporter is biased. Every human being who hasn't been lobotomized is biased. The problem isn't bias. The problem is not acknowledging the bias that you have. The problem with most liberals in the media is that they make no effort whatsoever to keep their biases in check.

Q: How do you prove to a skeptic that the mainstream media is biased in a liberal way? What's some of the ammunition you use?
A: Countless surveys (laughs). National surveys -- not just of the public but of the media themselves, where they acknowledge the bias they have. I simply invite anyone to turn on the television any day of the week or to pick up the front page of The New York Times or The Washington Post. The bias is there and it's screaming, because the left has become unhinged in the last few years and liberals in the press are making no effort whatsoever to restrain themselves.

Q: When you say bias, are you talking about the personal bias of the journalist, or the bias in the way a story is presented, or whether a story is even covered at all -- or all of those?
A: Biases can be found in many ways. It begins with the story selection -- what is news? That's a subjective call. It is the direction that the news story takes. It is the lead. It is the opening paragraph. It is the conclusion. It is the people interviewed. It is the parts of the interviews of the people who you interviewed. It's the editing process. The bias can be found in many, many different ways.

Q: A bias is a problem when it is in news, right, not editorials?
A: Yeah. Take The Wall Street Journal. You'll find more news in the editorial section and more editorials in the news section. There is a place for everything in a newspaper. One's opinions ought to go on the op-ed pages, not on the front pages. But liberals in the press don't know that distinction.

Q: This is not a question of you being a social or fiscal conservative who is unhappy because your point of view is outnumbered or isn't being emphasized?
A: The last thing I want is a conservative bias in the news media. It would be the same problem. What you want is the search for truth. What you want is reporters to strive for the Holy Grail of journalism -- which is objectivity. You want them to incorporate balance. You want them to be fair. But most importantly, you want them to be accurate.

Q: Why are most mainstream outlets liberal?
A: There are three natural habitats for liberalism in American society: academia, the arts and the news media. In all three fields they can use their talents to make a better world as they see it.

Q: And they try.
A: Well, they're driven by it. So many of them are elitists -- to the point of arrogance. They really do believe that the world is filled with little people and they are the purveyors of truth. They see themselves as having not just the right but a responsibility to promote that truth as they see it through those three branches.

Q: Is not liberal media bias far less of a problem today than it was in 1987 when you got started, with all the new choices in TV channels, Web sites and magazines, plus talk radio, which most people acknowledge is tilted to the conservative side?
A: Well, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that there has been this grand Diaspora of information with new technologies, particularly with talk shows and the Internet. The bad news is twofold. One is that although the consumer can receive information in many different ways, what is almost always the case is that when a conservative offers his position, he is a commentator delivering commentary on the news; liberals, advancing their agendas, continue to call themselves reporters and insist that they are giving objective truth. There’s a huge difference. That’s the first problem. The second problem is that while their overall influence certainly has been reduced … in the last three or four years, liberals have gone off the deep end. The shrill, harsh and hard left-wing agenda that they are promoting in the news media. Continued...