Don at All Things Canadian picked up on the following statement by Paul Wells:
I can pretty nearly guarantee you there are more NDP voters than Conservative voters travelling with Harper
Don wonders out loud if Wells is suggesting, or reinforcing, that the media is "leftist". If we're going to talk about media bias, we need to make the distinction between the bias of individual reporters and the institutional bias that may exist at a particular newspaper or television network.
My own gut feeling is that the majority of reporters, and in this context I mean particularly reporters and not pundits, would be socially liberal and would range from fiscally moderate to fiscally liberal. I haven't taken a poll, that's just my hunch.
But for the most part, individual reporters don't decide what stories to cover, they go where they're told by their editors. A reporter doesn't choose whether his story is splashed across the front page or buried on page 15. Again, that decision is made by someone in authority. The all-important marketing decision as to which niche a particular paper is trying to appeal to isn't made by the individual journalists, it's made by the owners or people who report to the owners. And if the Globe and Mail, for example, publishes an unsigned editorial endorsing a particular candidate, policy or party, that position has nothing to do with the views of the paper's individual reporters. That position is put forth by the editorial board which represents the paper's publishers and owners.
Given that, it's quite easy to reconcile the Paul Wells statement above with at least the possibility that some of the media those reporters work for might still reflect a more conservative bias. If you want to make a judgement about institutional bias at the New York Times, to choose another example, you can't make that judgement by pointing to either Paul Krugman or William Safire. You have to look at the big picture: which stories get coverage and which get ignored, which are displayed prominently and which are buried in the back, and what does the editorial board have to say because it may not agree with either Krugman or Safire.
You're absolutely right. Reporters of course have their own beliefs and value systems, just like everyone else, and those beliefs and values inform the way reporters go about their jobs. Even inexperienced or untalented reporters aren't, as a rule, blatantly biased in their straight news coverage, but ones work is always guided by ones own lights. However even the most rabidly liberal Birkenstock-shod scribe has no opportunity to air his agenda if the company that issues his paycheques fosters an opposing ideological bent.
A real life example I can offer is that a station I once worked for forbid me and my fellow reporters to write any stories during an election campaign about the local NDP candidate.
(I'm pleased to report, however, that the now-former broadcast executive who issued that order is these days rumored to be running a donut shop somewhere.)