As I've written before, the mass media of the latter half of the 20th century invariably went out of their way to pooh-pooh any claims of bias. (Dan Rather, naturally enough, was a past master at this technique.) But for an assortment of reasons, basically a confluence of alternative media such as blogs, talk radio and Fox News, mixed with a overdose of BDS from the media themselves, that all began to change after 9/11. Or as media professor Steve Boriss writes on his Future of News blog:

The problems began when those on the right started to complain about liberal media bias. They were labeled as angry, mean-spirited, paranoid kooks. Then, conservative talk radio and Fox News Channel emerged. Their audiences were labeled as misfits who were not only angry, but also too closed-minded to face the truth as presented by the objective mainstream media. Eventually, with help from Bernard Goldberg’s book on bias, some very high profile Old Media failures (e.g. Dan Rather’s forged documents), and the Internet, the idea that the mainstream media were biased became mainstream. Those on the right remained mad, while those on the left, who benefited from the center-left bias, understandably did not get quite so worked-up.

But now, the public has gone beyond being mad at media bias. They are laughing hysterically. With the latest bias victim being one of the center-left’s own candidates, and the pro-Obama bias blatantly obvious to everyone, it is now getting difficult for anyone to take the mainstream media and its insistence on its own objectivity seriously anymore. The skit below on Saturday Night Live, a program we can assume has a young, liberal audience, is devastating. Old Media just lost its chance to restore its reputation for objectivity – the firewall that we are told differentiates journalists from bloggers. Some unexpected people are now getting the last laugh.

(Complete SNL clip via Big Mouth Frog, which has exceptional taste in the online video they link to...)