Excerpt:

That quibble aside, conflating the idea that bloggers left and right are enthusiastic about blogging with the general idea of techno-utopianism winds up missing what’s interesting and distinctive about techno-utopianism. Reynolds doesn’t merely think that the Internet and information technology will revolutionize the communications/media industry in dramatic and beneficial ways, he thinks that, in general, technological improvement will essentially solve all major social problems without the need for collective action. This is a distinct ideological viewpoint that I don’t think you’ll find any liberals sharing.

Liberals — including liberal bloggers — tend to think that we need new and/or improved institutions of global governance to combat such problems as global warming and nuclear proliferation. Reynolds thinks that the former can be solved without regulation by mysterious technological improvements while the latter can be solved because deregulation will lead to private sector colonization of space thus allowing humanity to survive despite the risks of nuclear or biological warfare. These are very different points of view and deserve to be treated as such.

Just go read the article. It’s about Republican or conservative bias in the mainstream media and it’s very good.

Very long, but very good rundown. Excerpt:

We expect that some of our readers are angry that we’re raising these matters. Good. You should be angry that anybody would raise John McCain’s wife’s addiction to painkillers, or a supermarket tabloid report about George and Laura Bush’s marriage. It is, as David Broder once wrote, no way to pick a president.

But if you’re angry about this, you should be far more angry that for years, the media has employed a double-standard in covering progressives and conservatives. You constantly hear about the Clintons’ personal lives on television; you read about it in the newspaper. John McCain doesn’t get the same treatment; nor does George Bush or Rudy Giuliani. Intrusive, irrelevant tabloid-style coverage of candidates is wrong. Intrusive, irrelevant tabloid-style coverage of some candidates, while others are afforded an appropriate zone of privacy is even worse. And it can’t go on.

Jason Kottke examines the current state of Dave Winer’s bet that blogs would rank higher than the NYT when searching for big news stories in 2007.