Even though newspapers don't write the letters that are submitted, their selection of which ones to print says a lot about how fair they try to be. In the Fish Wrapper's case, their selection of the letters to the editor typically shows a liberal bias.

Every day, the DFW will group a set of letters together that all address one topic and give them a headline. In almost all cases, you can count on them to be Bush-hating, anti-conservative, liberal letters. For instance, in the Thursday (11/11) edition, this group was about Bush's speech the night before and headlined "New Iraq strategy: Doomed to fail". As to be expected, each letter is about how Bush has done nothing but screw up and we should just withdraw our troops and let the Iraqis fend for themselves.

Apparently I am not the only one who notices this bias. Here is a letter actually published today in the Fish Wrapper.

Marriage: It's about kids

On Monday, in a box on the Commentary page headlined "Marriage rights: It's time to evolve," all three letters endorsed that position. Is The Oregonian saying not only that that is its considered position, but also that everyone is in full agreement?

That's an excellent point. By reading the letters, you would think that the only letters received by the Fish Wrapper are those that support one point of view. You would think that, being the true, unbiased journalists that they are, the Fish Wrapper would want to show both sides of a story. But obviously that would not be making a safe assumption.

To anyone reasonably free of political agenda, it is obvious that heterosexual marriage is predominantly about children and family. Multiple studies have shown that children grow up best in a biological mother-father family. That's why married man-woman teams (families) get those extra benefits (support) in the first place.

On the other hand, from the grossly self-centered viewpoint of those letters, why should not I, personally, receive all the benefits of the individuals in any couple as well? What do either of the two people hanging out together next door represent that they should get all this government largesse, and not me?

The same bias is displayed in the selections of syndicated columns that are printed. Since I started this web site, I read all of the opinion pages on a daily basis, and it comes as a surprise when I see anything that is not extremely liberal. For instance, columnists like Paul Krugman of the NY Times, who lies about economic data to support his twisted point of view and Thomas Friedman are published on a regular basis. So is Marie Cocco, Deborah Saunders, and other Bush-hating anti-conservative liberals. Even their own editors and in house columnists (except for David Reinhard - I still don't know how he keeps his job there) are all liberals.

With all of these liberal parts of the paper - columnists, letters to the editor, editors themselves - it's no wonder that this liberal bias makes its way into the regular news sections of the paper. Maybe this has something to do with why the Fish Wrapper's circulation keeps dropping. At least I know there will never be a shortage of things for me to write about...