Indeed, this reasoning would also explain why the NewsHour was accused of "liberal bias" during the Clinton Administration: because that was a time when Democrats were "making" more news — so news stories probably were featuring more viewpoints from the left.

Accordingly, instead of viewing the FAIR survey results in isolation, we should ask the people at FAIR to do another study that examines NewsHour programming during the sixth year of the Clinton Administration, so we could test to what extent the NewsHour merely reflects the contemporaneous mix of powerbrokers in American politics, rather than some absolute "left-wing" or "right-wing" bias.

We should, thus, ask what is meant by the term "balance." If warmongers, even without a majority of public support, are, in fact, the predominant powerbrokers at some given time, then perhaps a "balanced" news program would feature a predominant number of warmongers. Likewise, the reverse: if the predominant powerbrokers were peace activists, then perhaps "balance" means featuring more peace activists. If, instead, "balance" were to require the NewsHour to give equal time to every group's point of view, no matter how attenuated that group's actual influence might be at that time, then the program would risk becoming irrelevant; i.e., by reporting on viewpoints that, despite being provocative or even valid, are not actually going to matter.

Bottom line: when warmongering, prisoner torturing, illegal wiretapping, hurricane victim neglecting, etc., all become _fait-accompli_, then what quantity of opposing viewpoint is needed to provide "balance," especially when the people who should be loudly protesting their opposing viewpoints (e.g., Congressional Democrats) have, by and large, muted themselves? Perhaps the current "right-wing" bias at the NewsHour merely echoes the silence we have heard from Congressional Democrats during most of Bush's tenure.