My syndicated column today ties the ABC News bigotry sting and the GWU student journalist’s hoax crime together. An excerpt:

You don’t have to be a Harvard University re searcher to figure out that the media is infected with liberal bias – or to realize that some left-wing journalists will use any means necessary to create ideological narratives that fit their worldview.

The Rathergate debacle at CBS News – in which faked National Guard memos were used to smear President Bush – was an extreme example. But if you look closely, you’ll find everyday examples of Serious Journalists manufacturing the news and concocting social crises. Amazingly, they always manage to make conservatives look racist, intolerant and evil. Funny how that works…

…Welcome to Media Theatrics 101. Instead of simply interviewing folks in the South or staking out real gay couples, ABC News thinks it’s fair and objective to stage-manage social experiments and call it journalism. Next thing you know, they’ll hire celebrity prankster Ashton Kutcher to jump out and yell, “You just got Punk’d!”

Reader Brett from Atlanta e-mails:

You know what’s ironic? Tonight–the very day you have posted this article about ABC hoping to show Southern people as narrow minded bigots–that same network is broadcasting the CMA Awards! The show will do a huge number in the South, and ABC is no doubt charging top dollar to the manufacturers of pickup trucks and jeans to advertise their wares. So at the same time ABC wishes to expose Southerners as bigots, it is wooing them as viewers. Such hypocrisy.