I've seen lots of studies about the liberal bias, too (I actually got into debates about it starting just before you started studying the phenomenon when I was in college). I am not, nor have I once so far, denied that there is a liberal bias.
I once argued that there was such a bias in media, and academia, both, to which a friend cagily replied, "You mean all the smart people?"
A clever ploy, but as you point out, and as I did to him at that time, too, many smart people go into business. And, given the tendency for people to want to associate with like people, it's no surprise that this is reinforced, too, at every level.
Still, there are exceptions to these generalities. There are liberal businessmen, and conservative journalists.
I'm not arguing that a preponderance of the news isn't biased in one direction, merely that there are enough exceptions that anyone who wants an alternate view can get one. If, in fact, there were zero outlets with the conservative POV, I'd be just as up in arms against the phenomenon as you. But, fact is, I watch both CNN and Fox, and I see the dichotomy quite clearly.
Is this 100% of the viewpoints? Well, I also watch MacNeil, and read papers, and have lots of outlets on the internet (I tend to hit
http://www.newsdaily.com a lot becaue it co-exists with
http://www.sciencedaily.com which I read rabidly). This combination seems pretty good to me, but I can assure you I'm under no delusions that I'm getting 100% of the POVs. Occasionally I'll even read Asia Times, or even Al Jazeera, just to get some very alternative POVs. Even that's not 100%.
I'm only human, and will never get 100% of the POVs available. At some point you have to take what you absorb from the sources at hand, filter it through the biases that you know to be there, and come up with an assessment of the events going on in the world. I'm sure I do that with a lot of error, too, what with having my own biases. But I'm only human.
One could vacillate all their lives, knowing that there's always another POV to consider. As William F Buckley Jr once said, "The purpose of an open mind is to close it, on particular subjects. If you never do — you've simply abdicated the responsibility to think." You have to assume that, at some point, you can make a reasonable conclusion from the information you have in front of you, including the biases of it's sources.
Sure, lots of people get their news from only one source, and it's likely to be liberal. Even more people, however, don't have any news source at all. None. There are quite a lot of people who just don't pay any attention to the media at all. My wife, for one. She voted for Obama because she's a peacenik, and figured McCain would be the more hawkish of the two.
So you basically have four categories of people, for the sake of this discussion:
1. Party Liners - Those who are already convinced to vote party line. For these people, the media doesn't matter, because what they read or see either goes against what they believe (cons rail then against the media), or the media is preaching to the choir.
2. Media Insensitive - Those who don't pay any attention to the media, and who, therefore, aren't affected by it.
3. Intelligent Swayable - Those people who might go either way, who could be swayed by the media in theory. These people who are willing to think through issues are also smart enough to understand the media bias, and include it in their analysis of which candidate for which to vote.
4. Dumb Swayable - those who are on the fence, and who the media can sway with their biased arguments.
It's this last category that are the ones who are affected by the media bias. My supposition is that this represents a relatively small proportion of the voting populace. Enough to sway an election? Well, sure, in the right circumstances, where things are close enough.
But that's the media's right. Free speech and all. We as the populace are free to reject a media outlet if it lies or otherwise prevaricates. As many have done with the NYT, for instance. An outlet who would argue that they should not be unseated by a few bad acts. But the fact that they are being unseated gives me confidence that, in fact, the public has very high standards for truth.
Bias, we accept, including sins of omission. Because, again, that's unavoidable. But we are, generally, smart enough to see through the media. Trained as dilligently as we are from an early age by Madison Avenue to see through BS.
If those dumb swayable people weren't swayed by the media, they'd be swayed by something else as insidious. Call that the "slop" in democracy. Alongisde the relatively uninformed voter. If you want to regulate that only informed people get to vote... well... who decides what informed means? That's going to be subject to a lot of bias as well.
I think it's unavoidable. And, yet, survivable.
Mike