you be the editor

As Editor of a major metropolitan area newspaper, you have the following two stories brought to you for a determination as to which one should be pursued.

Story 1. A radio network headquartered in your city is being investigated for accepting an improper "loan" from a local nonprofit organization whose mission is to help children. It appears that taxes paid by residents of your city could have been used to subsidize this highly-partisan radio operation.

Story 2. The President has nominated a current Federal Appeals Court Judge to sit on the Supreme Court. The individual in question was easily confirmed to his current position only a couple of years ago. Your newspaper has discovered that the Judge's two young children were adopted and the adoption records sealed. A reporter wants to see if these records can be unsealed. There may possibly be embarrassing information in the sealed records.

Most people would certainly select story 1 as it is highly relevant to the newspaper's readers. Story 2 raises a number of ethical questions regarding what level of privacy a public appointee should be permitted to have.

The New York Times had no problem in selecting story 2 as the place to deploy its resources and ignoring story 1 completely. Story 1, it turns out, is about improper financial activities surrounding liberal radio network Air America that had already received a substantial amount of favorable publicity from the Times. Story 2 is about John Roberts and apparently the Times has run into quite a bit of criticism for their attempts to pry into such personal matters.

Is there a liberal bias in the media?