LILEKS ON MEDIA BIAS:

Do reporters suppress the nature of ANSWER / ACTION because they don’t want to embarrass the movement? No. Do they secretly admire the ANSWER / ACTION / WWP positions on China, North Korea, and other dictatorships? Of course not. (Cuba is another story.) Are they inclined to wonder who’s behind the rallies? No. NeoNazis, Klansmen, Separatists, Militias, the Promise Keepers – these words make reporters’ antennae quiver. “Communist” does not. It’s an institutional blindspot, and if you doubt it, consider this:

A fashion designer premiers a line of clothes emblazoned with the hammer-and-sickle. The story runs in the variety section; there are quotes from fashionistas about retro iconography, the kitschy appeal of Socialist Realist art, and nostalgia for the stability of a binary, pre-terrorist world. The story would have the tone of a worldly cultured person peering through a monocle at a butterfly whose wings were amusingly deformed.

Now imagine that a fashion designer splatters swastikas all over the Spring Line. Would the items be reviewed with the same bemused detachment?

The hammer and sickle don’t evoke the same reaction in the average journalist as the swastika – and that’s the problem. Bias isn’t a sin, if you ask me. But indifference is.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh, who had the, er, advantage of living part of his life in a communist country, has comments, too.