In the wake of the current troubles coming out of New York City, several controversies have recently arisen concerning our own hometown newspaper, the Los Angeles Times. The first concerns an opinion article written by Robert Scheer that called into question the Pentagon's account of the "rescue" of Jessica Lynch; the second, a memo written by a Times editor attacking "liberal bias" in an article about an anti-abortion measure recently enacted in Texas.

In both cases, the more important story was the reaction by the right to any journalist who dares criticize one of their shibboleths. In the case of Robert Scheer, his original article summarized the findings of a BBC report that questioned the official Pentagon account concerning Private Lynch's capture and liberation. As Scheer correctly points out in a follow-up, subsequent reporting by such lefty rags as the Chicago Tribune have reaffirmed what the Beeb originally reported, that while certain claims made by witnesses were unlikely, such as the use of blanks in the raid, the full scale raid to "rescue" Private Lynch may have been executed more for show than necessity. Conservative outrage at Scheer's opinion should be humbled by the pattern within both the Pentagon and the Bush Administration for consistently dissembling to the public during the recent Iraqi adventure.

Others on the right are also having a field day with a memo written by Times editor-in-chief John Carroll, attacking one of his own writers for allegedly putting his leftist leanings into an article about a recent law passed in Texas, requiring pregnant women to receive "counseling" about the link between abortion and breast cancer. Perhaps in the journalistic tradition of finding someone in the Flat Earth Society to rebut claims that the world is round, or quoting an economist who actually believes that the Bush tax cut will help the economy, Mr. Carroll was upset that the writer mentioned the overwhelming evidence that there is no such link, but didn't give equal time to medical "experts" who believe that it does exist. Of course, the writer did quote such an expert, but nevermind.

The other examples of liberal bias consisted of the writer referring to the law as requiring "so-called counseling" to pregnant women, and his reference to the fact that a legislator who supported the bill was not a doctor. The latter point is too trivial to expand on; the former, far from being an ideologically-slanted phrase, reflects the fact that there is a dispute about whether pregnant women who are being told something that the vast majority of experts do not believe to be true are receiving "counsel".

Ironically, abortion is one issue where complaints about liberal media bias have some merit. In fact, the most famous study concluding that reporters tended to be pro-choice, and that bias seeped into articles on the subject, was published in the LA Times back in 1990, by media analyst David Shaw. Eric Alterman devotes an entire chapter in his recent book to exploring that very fact. I would be very surprised if most reporters covering national affairs didn't vote for Bill Clinton in 1992, or even Al Gore last time. After Shaw's study came out, newspapers took great pains to confront this alleged bias, which can be attested to by the fact that the article Mr. Carroll complained about gave a supporter of the new law the last word, and made no reference to the fact that the faction in the Texas state legislature that passed the bill recently attempted to use the Department of Homeland Security to locate and arrest their opponents.

The complaint, though, seems to run far deeper than simple ideological animosity. People who whine the loudest about the political bias of the media, both on the left and the right, are those who are most threatened by any sort of independent inquiry into their values and beliefs. So they kill the messenger.

Unfortunately for them, there are not two sides to every issue. Just as a journalist need not quote David Irving in every article about the Holocaust to provide "balance", a writer should not be browbeaten by an editor to pretend that the scientific mainstream believes a link exists between abortion and breast cancer.