The disparity in coverage between the Knoxville and Duke lacrosse stories can be easily explained without pointing to overt racism -- black 'bamas killing white people is not a rare occurrence. White college kids raping a black woman would be a very rare event. I believe it was Dupek who posted the DOJ stats showing that, in the last year for which data was available, the rate of white-on-black rape was statistically zero.
As for the ??liberal media? argument ?? if you don??t believe that (speaking in the broadest sense) ??the media? is ??liberal,? than you??re blind. It??s kind of like saying Americans love SUVs. Certainly you can find plenty of examples of Americans who don??t love SUVs and can find many adamantly opposed to SUVs. However, speaking generally, it is true that Americans love SUVs.
It??s the same with the media. One can find plenty of non-liberal and anti-liberal media, but speaking broadly, the media is liberal. The former Public Editor (ombudsman) of the New York Times addressed this issue a few years ago. He pointed out that 80% of his staff was liberal, as it is a profession that attracts far more from the left than from the right. He noted that his paper is headquartered in a city where anything goes. He also analyzed the Times?? news content on the gay marriage issue. He found that while the news stories were all legitimate individually, as a group, they showed the paper to have an undeniable pro-gay marriage bias. The Times, he noted, didn??t publish a single article that examined any difficulties or addressed any potential negative aspects of gay marriage. That didn??t surprise him, because he believed his staff and his city were overwhelmingly in favor of gay marriage and it is nigh impossible to overcome one??s own values, even when striving for impartiality.
