Eric Alterman to Debate Tucker Carlson on 'Conservative Media Bias'

January 14th, 2006 8:19 PM

Mr. In Denial himself, Eric Alterman, is set to debate with Tucker Carlson over media bias. Alterman's take: "There’s no question that television leans rightward rather than leftward" and that "liberal points of view are underrepresented on national and cable news television."

Some other comical quotes from Alterman about this "bias":

“I would say that right-wingers, like Bill O’Reilly, like Rush Limbaugh, like Sean Hannity, definitely dominate the discourse on television.”

While Bill and Sean may "dominate the discourse" on FOX News, I hardly doubt that they dominate the discourse on CBS News, ABC News, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The L.A. Times, The A.P., Reuters, USA Today, and every other media outlet, which Alterman fails to find an example of conservative bias coming from them. And even then, Alterman is comparing political talk shows to the Media that is supposedly presented in an unbiased fashion. Also, I wonder how Rush Limbaugh dominates discourse on T.V., unless Alterman was taking Rush's "show prep for the media" really, really seriously.

Alterman, who writes extensively about the "Conservative Media Bias" in columns and his book, is also a professor at CUNY, Brooklyn. Which begs the question: When will he start complaining about the conservative media bias on campus?

The debate was set for Saturday night at UC- Santa Barbara.