I don't think the media is necessarily biased toward the Schindlers and their supporters, but their claims were given too much uncritical attention.

That's an important point, because I think what's so insidious about this is that as long as they don't specifically advocate one side or the other, for many people that adds up to "objectivity." Honestly, more-or-less openly partisan coverage a la Fox News bothers me less than the CNN-style coverage that is misleading through laziness or cowardice about exercising judgment.

OK, I like kids.

However, when a parent is rough-housing with their 10ish year old in their office, repeatedly admonishing them to shush while keeping rough-housing?

I don't like them so much. Or their parent.

I've had to pinch hit babysit for friends at work when something unavoidable came up. I do my DAMNDEST to make sure no one is disturbed by that kid.

But then, the people currently in question are sort of loud mouthed and immature, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

And while I'm feeling bitchy,

her parents' spokesperson was just on my radio talking about being denied access to Terri as she died.

Gee, isn't that similar to what happened to another relative of a hospice patient there? Oh wait, no, they weren't denied access. Having to navigate the protestors and security that was necessitated by the protestors caused that.

I'm not feeling at all charitable.

When I was there in the 80s, British newspapers were incredibly biased. But predictably so. They weren't really pretending to be fair or balanced, so you knew up front. The reporting that I remember the clearest was the day after the first black MP was voted into parliament. On the Tory papers, a large picture of her powdering her nose was above the fold. On the Labour it was all about celebration of the brave new world that was sure to follow.

Coverage of union disputes, South Africa, etc, was similarly split. You knew to read both to get a hope of the news, and one if you wanted to be comfy in your little bubble.

I wonder if it's evened out any.

But predictably so. They weren't really pretending to be fair or balanced, so you knew up front.

That was true of papers in the Czech Republic in the 1990s as well.

ita, the sad part is, that sounds like an improvement over the U.S. mainstream media. Here, the mainstream media seem divided between outlets with an unapologetic hard-right-wing bias and those that try to pretend they don't have a right-wing bias.

Must be nicer to live where you can choose the bias of your media sources.

the sad part is, that sounds like an improvement over the U.S. mainstream media

I think it takes way more work to discover which outlets in the US are biased in which ways. And if people don't know they have to do that work?

Where does BBC fall on the scale, ita?

Where does BBC fall on the scale, ita?

Their "News for Wombats" is pretty liberal....

I know I now prefer BBC News to any US news other than The Daily Show.

At the time, though, I couldn't have told you about the bias. BBC and ITV seemed to have about the same sort of coverage -- my parents balanced this out themselves, since there weren't any other TV stations to do so.

I suspect that is much different now.

What's also odd is I have a friend who has no clue who Terri Schaivo is (was?). Hubby and I were talking about it, and he looked utterly blank. He doesn't watch much TV, but he goes on the internet and there are always newspaper and magazine displays about. I'm amazed at the level of inattention one has to have to avoid things like this.