Bias

Does the mainstream news media have a liberal bias? Many people throw this idea around, and in many circles it is accepted as simple fact. Today a coworker told me this fact, and I was inexplicably offended. I had heard this claim before and never taken it to heart, but for some reason this time it truly hit home so to speak. I am choosing to devote my life to the pursuit of honest, fair, unbiased reporting; to say such a thing to me is to literally mock my very life. Why are the people of this country so convinced that they should hate the news media? No other nation treats it's watchdogs with such disdain. Journalists dedicate themselves to the protection of democracy through honest reporting. There is no "lesser evil" to a journalist so he equally reports all evils. The only bias is the public's, expressed by what stories they choose to read. It is the public that drives what becomes headlines and what becomes buried underneath, and that is the media's only true bias.
Some people say that unbiased reporting can never be achieved by mere human beings. I beg to differ. Detachment is what allows the soldier to kill, even though he loves human life. Detachment is what allows the police officer to arrest the vagrant, even though she would rather buy him a cup of coffee and let him free. Detachment is what allows the paramedics to methodically manage a crash scene, even when the death and destruction makes them want to do nothing but cringe and cry. And it is detachment that allows the journalist to honestly quote Barack Obama even though he voted for Hillary Clinton, to expose illegal wiretapping despite her thoughts that such crimes are justified, and label opinions as editorials because they are not facts and have no place in reports no matter how much he wishes they were.
Just as the devote Catholic judge can hear divorce trials as well as murder ones, the Democrat reporter can report information damaging to a Democratic president as well as he can report information damaging a Republican one. Just because you can't seperate your opinion from fact, doesn't mean that the people whose job it is to do so can't.
So there's that...