I have noted several times before the reason for conservatives to claim that there is a “liberal media” even when it is clear that the media is not liberal, and even leans notably to the right. But there is another benefit they enjoy from perpetuating this myth. For some time now, networks have gone out of their way to demonstrate that they are not liberal; they do so usually by purging liberal views while emphasizing conservative ones–apparently, while it’s bad to for a news organization to be liberal, there’s nothing wrong with leaning as far as you want the other way.

Recently we have seen an example of this, coming from CBS. One has to suppose that CBS has more reasons, from a PR perspective, to shake off an image of being a liberal news source; it is most often attacked as being liberal by the right, primarily because of Dan Rather and the National Guard story. No matter that it was one story by one soon-fired anchor and there was no evidence of liberalism beyond that (or even evidence that it was liberalism that motivated the story in the first place); no matter that such an image is more forged than justified. That’s just the image that has been successfully plastered on the network.

So after retired General John Batiste appeared in a TV ad that advocated an end to the Iraq war and said that President Bush is putting our country in peril, CBS decided to fire him as a consultant to their news organization. A CBS spokesperson commented:

“When we hire someone as a consultant, we want them to share their expertise with our viewers,” she said. “By putting himself front and center in an anti-Bush ad, the viewer might have the feeling everything he says is anti-Bush. And that doesn’t seem like an analytical approach to the issues we want to discuss.”

She said that Batiste’s appearance in the ad marked a violation of CBS News standards, in which “we ask that people not be involved in advocacy.”

The same person added later,

“General Batiste took part in a commercial that’s being shown on television to raise money for veterans against the war,” she said. “It isn’t just that he took an advocacy position.” She also said that the decision would have been the same had Batiste appeared in a similar ad in support of the president.

The irony here is that Batiste isn’t even a liberal–he is, in fact, a hardcore conservative. But just the fact that he spoke out against the president, against what is currently the conservative line, that was enough. No matter that he did so because he felt the military and the country were in danger of great harm, nor that he had the facts behind him, nor that the ad was not a fundraising ad as CBS claimed was the key point.

But that’s not all; TPM found ample evidence that CBS has had other consultants who have quite publicly advocated for President Bush–and CBS did not fire them. Like many other networks, they have no trouble hiring conservative voices in all manner of position, giving them all sorts of platforms. But if someone comes out as being too liberal, it more often means that they will lose their job. Witness Phil Donahue on MSNBC getting canceled in 2003 despite having some of the best ratings on the network. (Despite having lower ratings than Donahue’s show, conservative-leaning shows like Hardball and Scarborough Country were not canceled and remain on the air today.) It is a sign of progress that someone like Keith Olbermann can keep his job, but it is of note that while Olbermann is growing fast and strong in the ratings, neither his network nor others are responding to that trend in audience preferences and opening up to more liberal-oriented talk shows, as they quickly did with conservative ones when they first showed popularity.

Yet again, the Liberal Media at work!