Work requires effort. The impetus needed to overcome the cost of work is is often supplied by the violation of expectation. When one’s expectations are violated they experience an invigoration that motivates them to do the work needed to discover the cause of the violation. This law of frustration is very basic and explains many things about man including the power of free markets. By pitting people against each other one generates perpetual violations of expectation which leads to countless innovation.

The law of frustration is useful for something else. It helps reveal one’s bias. When one’s expectations are not violated they will fail to interrogate statements as throughly as they would if those statement violated their expectation. This is basic psychology. Its the reason why I get more comments from Jamie, Darwin and Dan then I do from Mitch, Diatribe and Boose.

The one way nature of the law of frustration is another way in which one can see the liberal bias in the media. Take for example a story in the Baltimore Sun attempting to show the ‘real’ cost of George Bush vetoing the federal health care bill for children (which is an example of very bad legislation). The reporter attempts to tell a story of a middle class family that doesn’t make enough money to afford health insurance for their children. The story uses two facts to reveal the family situation.

Bonnie Frost works for a medical publishing firm; her husband, Halsey, is a woodworker. They are raising their four children on combined income of about $45,000 a year. Neither gets health insurance through work.

She and her husband have priced private health insurance, but they say it would cost them more per month than their mortgage - about $1,200 a month. Neither parent has health insurance through work.

These facts paint a nice story. They match the liberal narrative concerning the purpose of this legislation. They show that a working class family needs this federal relief to give health insurance to their children. These facts match the liberal expectation that there are real people in the world that need this legislation. I’m not arguing that nobody could benefit from this legislation I’m simply making the argument that these facts are consistent with the reporters expectation that such people must exist.

The problem is that neither of these facts are true. However, to discover this required several bloggers to have their expectation violated while reading the story. This gave them the impetus to do the investigative work needed to check the veracity of the statements. The bloggers discovered these two facts.

Mr Frost, the “woodworker”, owns his own design company and the commercial property it operates from, part of which space he also rents out; they have a 3,000-sq-ft home on a street where a 2,000-sq-ft home recently sold for half a million dollars; he was able to afford to send two children simultaneously to a $20,000-a-year private school; his father and grandfather were successful New York designers and architects; etc.

A check of a quote engine for zip code 21250 (Baltimore) finds a plan for $641 with a $0 deductible and $20 doc copays.

Adding a deductible of $750 (does not apply to doc visits) drops the premium to $452. That’s almost a third of the price quoted in the article. Doesn’t anyone bother to check the facts?

There is nothing outright in the story that reveals the reporters political disposition. However one can infer that they are most likely liberal. The reporters expectations were met by a family that was hurt by the failure of the liberal legislation from passing. As a consequence the work needed to check the facts was cost prohibitive and thus the reporter failed to scrutinize further. One can also infer the politics of the bloggers. The violation of expectation generated impetus which made further investigation cost effective. The story’s liberal theme was consistent with the reporters expectations while it was inconsistent with the conservatives expectations. Thus one can infer political disposition by only examining who does the work of interrogation.

From an institutional perspective, its much more common to find the MSM getting a conservative themed story’s facts correct then the other way around. The same can be said for notoriously leaning right sided news organization like Fox News whose left themed stories are more carefully scrutinized than the more conservative themed stories.

Combining the law of frustration with editorial decision and you start to get a very clear picture as to what is meant by MSM bias. MSM organization are much more likely to highlight liberal themed stories, ask liberal questions, and highlight big liberal stories. They are all editorial decision. MSM is also likely to get the facts wrong on a liberal theme story while they get the facts right on a conservative themed story. Specific instances is not enough to condemn the MSM as left leaning but in the aggregate it becomes pretty clear which way most journalist vote.