ABC News political director Mark Halperin’s interview with Hugh Hewitt yesterday has revealed something about the state of the debate over the media in this country.

For a long time, conservatives have complained that the major media organizations in this country are predominantly staffed by liberal Democrats, which inevitably affects the reporting of the news. More recently, a cohort of left-wing media critics have countered that even liberal journalists desire above all to be perceived as objective, which leads them to uncritically parrot Republican talking points. Both sides are claiming that the Halperin interview proves their points.

For those who missed it, Halperin told Hewitt that most journalists are liberal and that conservatives have been right all these years to think that the media hasn’t given fair treatment to their views. But for left-wing media critics, the way in which Halperin seems to be trying to atone for the sins of the “liberal media” confirms their hypothesis that journalists’ desire to be perceived as objective distorts their news judgment.

It’s possible in this instance for both arguments to be right, and for both phenomena to exert some influence over the news. But watching the major media’s coverage of these mid-term elections, I don’t see how anyone could argue that the genuine liberal bias of most news professionals in this country doesn’t have more of an impact.