Jeff, I don't make any excuses for my believing the good that corporations do for this country far outweighs what you see as being negative about them. Why do I sense such a hatred on your part toward them?

I don't recall saying that there aren't bad people within big business. I just don't hold your dire view of what I see as a necessary part of our everyday lives. We as a country have embraced big business and what it does for us and so have you whether or not you believe that.

With respect to a liberal bias amongst the mainstream media and my belief that one exists I offer you this portion of an editorial written by Bernard Goldberg. Taken from the Wall St. Journal on 5/24/1, titled, Rather Clueless, he writes in part...

The problem is that Mr. Rather and the other evening stars think that liberal bias means just one thing: going hard on Republicans and easy on Democrats. But real media bias comes not so much from what party they attack. Liberal bias is the result of how they see the world.

Consider this: In 1996 after I wrote about liberal bias on this very page, Dan was furious and during a phone conversation he indicated that picking The Wall Street Journal to air my views was especially appalling given the conservative views of the paper's editorial page. "What do you consider the New York Times?" I asked him, since he had written op-eds for that paper. "Middle of the road," he said.

I couldn't believe he was serious. The Times is a newspaper that has taken the liberal side of every important social issue of our time, which is fine with me. But if you see the New York Times editorial page as middle of the road, one thing is clear: You don't have a clue.

And it is this inability to see liberal views as liberal that is at the heart of the entire problem. This is why Phyllis Schlafly is the conservative woman who heads that conservative organization but Patricia Ireland is merely the head of NOW. No liberal labels necessary. Robert Bork is the conservative judge. Laurence Tribe is the noted Harvard law professor. Rush Limbaugh is the conservative talk show host. Rosie O'Donnell is simply Rosie O'Donnell, no matter how many liberal opinions she shares with her audience.

And that's why the media stars can so easily talk about "right wing" Republicans and "right wing" Christians and "right wing" Miami Cubans and "right wing" radio talk-show hosts. But the only time they utter the words "left wing" is when they're talking about an airplane.

Conservatives must be identified because the audience needs to know these are people with axes to grind. But liberals don't need to be identified because their views on all the big social issues--from abortion and gun control to the death penalty and affirmative action--aren't liberal views at all. They're simply reasonable views, shared by all the reasonable people the media elites mingle with at all their reasonable dinner parties in Manhattan and Georgetown.

Reporters pride themselves on their skepticism. Yet many uncritically pass along the views of liberal activists in a way they would never do with conservatives. The homeless lobby tells the media there are five million homeless and 10 minutes later it's on the evening news. Why is it that the media elites aren't nearly as cozy with with the anti-affirmative action or pro-life lobbies?

The media elites can float through their personal lives and rarely run into someone with an opposing view. This is very unhealthy and sometimes downright ridiculous, as when Pauline Kael, for years the brilliant film critic at The New Yorker, was completely baffled about how Richard Nixon could have beaten George McGovern in 1972: "Nobody I know voted for Nixon." Never mind that Nixon carried 49 states. She wasn't kidding.

If there is one group that is uniquely unqualified to comment on liberal bias it's the big-time media stars. So Dan and Tom and Peter: Stop telling us that we're the problem, and start thinking about what liberal bias really means.

Mr. Goldberg was a correspondent for CBS News from 1972 until 2000.

Jeff, just because you don't agree with my view of the world doesn't mean it shouldn't see equal time in our news coverage and in our curriculums.

I'm willing to concede on the human rights violations in Saipan. I'm all for rooting out and exposing those conditions wherever they exist.

Kevin G.