The media doesn't have political bias, not on the whole. The media is corporate, shareholder owned, and is accountable for ratings, subscriptions, and these days, "clicks." Their "bias" is toward sensationalism. If they had a left bias, it would undermine the bottom line, because according to the conservative theory, the entire media (perhaps sans Foxnews) is left biased, meaning they are all competing against each other for left leaning readers and viewers. This makes no sense given the corporate profit driven model. In reality, they are competing for all viewers and doing whatever it takes to grab as many as possible. And there is accountability up the food chain - from writers to editors to directors of news divisions to corporate central to boards of directors and then finally to shareholders.
It's easy to understand why conservatives see it this way. If the media is more or less politically neutral on the whole, then by definition it comes across as further to the left than they are. In particular, those who are politically extreme have trouble recognizing any sort of middle ground between their position and the extreme opposite position. Ask a conservative what a truly politically neutral media would actually look like. It's something probably at or further to the right than FoxNews. They think the media is left biased because they're mistaking their world view for the truth.
The conservative theory of media bias fails because it doesn't have the explanatory power of the theory of media sensationalism. So, for example, a conservative can look at a series of stories about police brutality and notice that race is played up in many of these articles, and conclude it is because of a "left bias." Of course, this ignores the fact that highlighting race brings controversy which generates more hits and views. Still, in those cases, the conservative theory is one possible explanation.
However, there is too much in the media that isn't explained by their theory. If I'm going to provide an example of what I read 5 minutes ago, then I'll ask the question of why the supposedly left leaning CNN has a front end article today discussing the fact that academic studies have shown that in the 2000 election, Bush would have won anyway had Gore been granted the entire recount he asked for. How in the world can a "liberal media" theory explain why CNN would even choose to publish such an article, particularly since it isn't even current news any more. If you have a liberal bias, why piss off liberals over something you're not even required to cover because the issue is now 15 years in the past?
This and a mountain of other things we see daily in the media cannot be explained by the conservative theory of media bias. These things are ignored, downplayed or simply not noticed by the right because they mainly view their own biased media and when they do look at MSM they see only what they expect to see.
Facebook
Twitter