MEDIA BRANDS: Despite rising scrutiny of biased reporting, public opinion of media hasn't shifted much

Hardly a week goes by when the issue of bias in the media doesn't come up in a very public way. Most recently, the LA Times was attacked for publishing stories about California Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger's alleged fondness for fondling women. The articles have cost the paper at least a thousand subscriptions and led to the kind of vociferous criticism it hadn't felt since it was sold to the Tribune Co., based on the assumption that the stories were a liberal paper's attempt to scuttle a Republican candidacy right before the election.