The persistent myth that a liberal media bias exists is unfounded. This problem plagues The Daily Reveille’s opinion pages, possibly dismaying its readership. But complications remain: The liberal media might exist to a certain degree, but limited causes and solutions exist.The first solution is the most laughable — Republican affirmative action. The next is imposing artificial balance or impressing mock bias. The third, and most pertinent, would be to reshape election coverage, which likely won’t happen for the foreseeable future. But perhaps the most obvious method of restoring balance in editorials is so simple it’s almost insulting: Republicans should apply for a job. There can be no left-wing media conspiracy if there are no conservatives who even apply. It’s appropriate to start this discussion at the nature of the problem: the errant and widespread belief in the liberal media. The term “liberal media” is misleading in itself. While it may be true that most media members have left-leaning tendencies, it’s patently false to assume the media are innately liberal, intending to persuade by allowing “liberal bias” to dominate coverage.There is no vast left-wing conspiracy in the mass media. Ideology is not a requisite for employment in most mainstream news organizations. It certainly isn’t at The Daily Reveille.What recently launched this constantly recycled uproar was a story from The Washington Post. Deborah Howell, ombudsman at the Post, analyzed the paper’s election analysis and recognized a liberal bias in the paper’s coverage. Many probably felt this reporting reflected a broader trend in national political coverage.Howell had plenty of satisfying evidence to support her argument, including a measurement of 1,295 horse-race stories and 594 issues stories.She should have stopped her analysis right there, but we’ll come back to this later.The Project for Excellence in Journalism reported in October that 60 percent of stories about John McCain were negative. Obama had twice as many positive and half as many negative stories as McCain, according to the study.Howell proposed Republican affirmative action to counter this “tilt,” much to the disappointment of fellow Obama-supporting pundits who quickly and correctly recognized the plea as a form of intellectual dishonesty.But, frankly, this one’s on the Republicans. And it all comes back to this “silent majority” fallacy. The wheel that makes the most noise gets the grease. So if you don’t make your voice heard, you can’t expect others to listen.Looking back on the aftermath of Election 2008, it’s apparent Obama received a free pass from the media. But the “silent majority” is at fault, not editorial writers.The problem conservatives should have with Howell’s modest proposal is its function — equality. As Washington Monthly put it, Howell’s goal is not insightful political analysis, but equal political analysis.As far as Republicans are concerned, equality should never be a goal of the party.By securing positions for Republican writers, the label becomes more important than the talent and ability of the writer.But suppose for a moment newsrooms did hire based on ideology rather than ability. Despite the obvious — traditional conservative arguments about rewarding talent and merit over other lesser factors like race and ideology — another problem arises. Conservatives aren’t hired in newsrooms because conservatives don’t apply for jobs in newsrooms.The Daily Reveille’s opinion section strives to present a range of ideological viewpoints. But under no circumstance does a responsible newspaper employ writers based on ideology alone.By hiring a staff of writers for the sake of diversity, opinion pages would be doing a disservice to readers by imposing what Politico referred to as “artificial balance.” This hearkens an enthusiasm gap between McCain supporters and Obama supporters that Howell never discussed. This type of bias existed precisely because of the media’s “horse-race” coverage of the election. Because Obama had a more favorable rating than McCain throughout the election, more positive coverage of Obama should have been natural, if not expected.People ignoring the irony in this argument also ignore the fact that McCain ran a lackluster campaign and shouldn’t have been expected to do much better than he did.It’s true McCain had the cards stacked against him from the beginning, but those cards weren’t necessarily inherently favorable toward Obama. It just so happened that Obama led in every poll, so when horse-race coverage played out, there was no possible chance of a McCain victory.This “media bias” didn’t occur because of a liberal conspiracy. It came about because people pay too much attention to polls.Blame media coverage, not media bias. Demand journalists do more than amplify existing trends, as Politico put it.Objectivity only exists in newspapers so much as it exists in people who consume the news. Maybe it’s time to quit blaming “liberal bias” and start looking in the mirror.—-Contact Daniel Lumetta at [email protected]