Media critic, critique thyself.

I have to take issue with a minor element of Cathy Young's dissection ("Media Critic, Critique Thyself," July) of Eric Alterman's What Liberal Media? She quotes Alterman's prodding of Ann Coulter about footnotes, but anyone who even opened Slander, much less read it, would know that it is extensively footnoted. Each chapter has about two pages of footnotes, but Young doesn't mention this.

A minor point, perhaps, but it curdled the milk a bit more for me when she asserted that Ann Coulter is the right's Michael Moore. I don't think the knock on Moore is that he is a strident polemicist: It's that he is a liar. If Ann is guilty of objective mendacity in print, I should very much like to see it pointed out. I don't think you will have much luck.

On Bernard Goldberg's book she is on much firmer ground; it was personal to the point of puerility. But Young devotes most of her analysis to this weaker example. To me, this smacks of an overabundance of deference to the left. The reason this grates so is that reason seems to bend over backward to slap left and right with equal vigor, regardless of the merits. Moral equivalence has done much to sap the life from debates in all fields lately, but I wouldn't expect such an acceptance of conventional wisdom in reason.

Ken Watson Atlanta, GA

There has been along-running liberal bias in media, and it is explained as follows: From the Depression through the election of 1994, Democrats generally controlled Congress, and the national psyche was dominated by a New Deal-spawned belief that government should assume a role in any and every perceived problem. What followed was that news people began to see themselves as participants in these grand adventures--and ultimately as believers in what was being done.

We should admit that to be human is to be biased. What will mark the superior news person is whether he can maintain skepticism of government, whether run by liberals or conservatives. At the most basic level, news people are trustees of our First Amendment rights of speech, press, and petition for redress of grievances. They need to be ever vigilant to remind us of our founding fathers' belief that these freedoms pertain especially to freedom from government. And this duty would seem to imply that the best reporters would naturally be biased toward conservatism.

Albert B. Hall Friday Harbor, WA