Our national print media is, generally speaking, hopelessly left-wing. The same is often true of the local press in many places, and the public rarely has recourse to an impartial alternative.

Take, for example, the struggling Pioneer Press in suburban Chicago, owned by the Sun-Times. Its affiliates are the main news sources in many communities in Illinois’s 9th congressional district, where I challenged incumbent Democrat Jan Schakowsky.

Throughout the 2010 election–and in its aftermath–the Pioneer Press did all it could to instruct readers to support Schakowsky. The Evanston Review, which is distributed in Schakowsky’s home town, was particularly bad. In July, for example, the same article that appeared in other papers as “Campaign cash flows for Schakowsky and Pollak” appeared in Evanston under the headline: “Campaign cash flows for Schakowsky, foe.”

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If you’re like me, you’re tired of being lied to.

That’s what got me started in media criticism.  I would read the Los Angeles Times every day and shout at the newspaper’s reporters and editors over my cornflakes.  “This isn’t true and you know it!” I’d yell.

Of course, nobody over there was listening.  But they listen to me now… sometimes.

Back in February 2003, I started writing my blog, primarily as an outlet for my frustration at the bias, omissions, and distortions I found in the L.A. Times on an almost daily basis.

Since then, I’ve managed to get the editors’ attention a few times.

During the Iraq war, I questioned an L.A. Times report that a U.S. airstrike in Ramadi had “pulverized” 15 homes and killed 30 civilians.  My military and other local sources denied the report.  Based on my post, the editors backed off their initial claims.

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