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Right wing institutions (Fox's "fair and balanced" slogan being the outlier) tend to be avowedly conservative and dedicated to the overall cause of repealing the New Deal (economic conservatives) and the Sixties (social conservatives). Mixing opinion with news is just part of the game, and charges of bias are easily shrugged off. On the other hand, a good deal of ink (and bytes) in these same publications is spent railing against the mainstream press for claiming to be objective but really allowing liberal tendencies to color its presentation of events.

Conservatives do all this, says Dionne, because it works. Most of the management of major newspapers or television networks are liberals, but they actually believe their own hype and think of themselves as objective observers of events. They are thus sensitive—-often hypersensitive--to charges of bias and unfairness. So conservative criticism tends to change the way the larger press covers stories and often succeeds in mau-mauing the suits into hiring conservative voices for "balance."

To be able to criticize the press for bias while being as biased as they want to be is, in the words of The Weekly Standard's Matt Labash "a great little racket" that conservatives have carved out. And it now appears that libs have decided to get in on the act. From Al Franken to Joe Conason to David Brock, the latest thing is to write books on the pernicious influence of conservatives on the press. You might even call it a new genre, and the latest entry is E.J. Dionne's Stand Up Fight Back. Fancy that …

Jeremy Lott is assistant managing editor of The American Spectator.

Copyright © 2004 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Stand Up Fight Back is available from Amazon.com and other book retailers.

More on E.J. Dionne is available from his Washington Post column.

Books & Culture Corner appears every Monday. Earlier editions of Books & Culture Corner and Book of the Week include:

Thou Shalt Not Swap | The uses and abuses of copyright. (May 24, 2004)

Mystery and Message | Must they compete? (May 10, 2004)

Celebrating Faith in Writing | A dispatch from Calvin College's biennial event. (April 26, 2004)

Shabbos, Sheitels, and Yarmulkes | A novel set in the world of Orthodox Judaism. (April 19, 2004)

The Naked City | The story of the 1977 blackout in New York-the occasion of widespread looting and destruction-has some surprisingly timely lessons for America in 2004. (April 19, 2004)

A Curious Contingency | Confessions of a wordsmith. (April 05, 2004)

"Trust but Verify" | Ronald Reagan's faith. (March 29, 2004)

Baseball Preview 2004 | Plus a look back with some Negro League veterans. (March 29, 2004)

How Do You Live with a Torturer? | A novel of Haiti by the brilliant young writer, Edwidge Danticat. (March 08, 2004)

God Is in the Details | A scientist affirms his faith. (Feb. 23, 2004)

History Repeats Itself, Sort of | How the fate of Eugene McCarthy's insurgency against LBJ sheds light on the 2004 presidential campaign. (Feb. 16, 2004)

The Worst President Ever? | Former Nixon aide John Dean attempts to rehabilitate the reputation of Warren G. Harding. (Feb. 09, 2004)

Wholly, Wholly, Wholly | Calvinists and conga drums in Grand Rapids: a report from the seventeenth annual Calvin Symposium on Worship and the Arts. (Feb. 02, 2004)

The Doom of Choice | Fate, free will, and moral responsibility in Tolkien. (Feb. 02, 2004)

A Rose Among Thorns | A new novel by the author of Father Elijah illumines the spiritual consequences of our simplest decisions. (Jan. 26, 2004)

Baptized in Fire | A new book on Martin Luther King, Jr., emphasizes his spiritual transformation. (Jan. 19, 2004)

O'Connor v. the Antichrist (Jan. 12, 2004)

Moody, the Media, and the Birth of Modern Evangelism | A cautionary tale. (Jan. 05, 2004)

A Few Coming Attractions from 2004 | Plus: What to buy with those gift cards, and some of the books in my to-read stacks. (Dec. 29, 2003)

The Top Ten Books of 2003 | Plus: The Worst Book of the Year, more good reading, digital books, and a little Christmas music. (Dec. 22, 2003)

Books at Warp Speed | We continue our annual roundup of noteworthy books. (Dec. 15, 2003)

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June (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48