Considering that the same Pew research team recently released a poll showing that far more media people consider themselves to be liberal than consider themselves to be conservative, such suspicions are unsurprising; however, I am more of the opinion that such bias is neither co-ordinated nor conscious (kinda like the fish that cannot see the water in which it is swimming).
As for such suspicions being exclusive to one wing of the political spectrum, I seem to remember a Clintonian accusation of a 'vast, right-wing conspiracy', that supposedly included a sizeable chunk of the media. 
Also, it is useful to note the verified cases of bias-influenced news reporting errors that have caused recent media changes, such as the housecleanings at the New York Times, the BBC and the Daily Mirror, and the apology from the Boston Globe.  Such a pattern of occurrences would quite naturally feed into a conspiratorial mindset.

A Nation Divided? Who Says?
By JOHN TIERNEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/13/weekinreview/13tier.html?pagewanted=print&position=

WASHINGTON - If you've been following the election coverage, you know how angry you're supposed to be. This has been called the Armageddon election in the 50-50 nation, a civil war between the Blue and the Red states, a clash between churchgoers and secularists hopelessly separated by a values chasm and a culture gap.

But do Americans really despise the beliefs of half of their fellow citizens? Have Americans really changed so much since the day when a candidate with Ronald Reagan's soothing message could carry 49 of 50 states?

To some scholars, the answer is no. They say that our basic differences have actually been shrinking over the past two decades, and that the polarized nation is largely a myth created by people inside the Beltway talking to each another or, more precisely, shouting at each other.

These academics say it's not the voters but the political elite of both parties who have become more narrow-minded and polarized. As Norma Desmond might put it: We're still big. It's the parties that got smaller.

Just because a state votes red or blue in a presidential election doesn't mean that its voters are fixed permanently on one side of a political divide or culture gap. The six bluest states in 2000, the ones where George W. Bush fared worst - Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Hawaii, Connecticut and Maryland - all have Republican governors. Even California went red last year when Arnold Schwarzenegger, a moderate Republican, became governor.

Most voters are still centrists willing to consider a candidate from either party, but they rarely get the chance: It's become difficult for a centrist to be nominated for president or to Congress or the state legislature, said Morris P. Fiorina, a political scientist at Stanford and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

"If the two presidential candidates this year were John McCain and Joe Lieberman, you'd see a lot more crossover and less polarization," said Professor Fiorina, mentioning the moderate Republican and Democratic senators. He is the co-author, along with Samuel J. Abrams of Harvard and Jeremy C. Pope of Stanford, of the forthcoming book, "Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America."

"The bulk of the American citizenry is somewhat in the position of the unfortunate citizens of some third-world countries who try to stay out of the cross-fire while Maoist guerrillas and right-wing death squads shoot at each other," the book concludes. "Reports of a culture war are mostly wishful thinking and useful fund-raising strategies on the part of culture-war guerrillas, abetted by a media driven by the need to make the dull and everyday appear exciting and unprecedented."

The book presents evidence that voters in red and blue America are not far apart. Majorities in both places support stricter gun control as well as the death penalty; they strongly oppose giving blacks preference in hiring while also wanting the government to guarantee that blacks are treated fairly by employers. They're against outlawing abortion completely or allowing it under any circumstances, and their opinions on abortion have been fairly stable for three decades. Virtually identical majorities of Blues and Reds don't want a single party controlling the White House and Congress.

Further evidence of a truce comes from Paul DiMaggio, a sociologist at Princeton, and colleagues who have studied attitudes toward a wide range of issues like race, crime, the role of women and the welfare state. They looked at various demographic divisions - by race, age, sex, education, religious denomination, region - and found that gaps among groups have been constant or shrinking for the past three decades.

"The two big surprises in our research," Professor DiMaggio said, "were the increasing agreement between churchgoing evangelicals and mainline Protestants, even on abortion, and the lack of increasing polarization between African-Americans and whites. Evangelicals have become less doctrinaire and more liberal on issues like gender roles. African-Americans are showing more diversity in straying from the liberal line on issues like government programs that assist minorities."

Alan Wolfe, a political scientist at Boston College, reached similar conclusions in his 1998 book, "One Nation, After All," which called the culture war largely a product of intellectuals.

"Compared to earlier periods - the Civil War, the 1930's, the 1960's - our disagreements now are not that deep," Professor Wolfe said last week. "Indeed, it is only because we agree so much on so many things that we can allow ourselves the luxury of thinking we are having a culture war.  When one of society's deepest divisions is over stem cells, that society is pretty unified."

In his book, Professor Wolfe called gay rights "the great exception" that divided Americans, and at the start of this year the Republican pollster Bill McInturff said that the gay marriage issue could give a significant boost to Mr. Bush, who endorsed a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage. But now, he says, it will probably be a minor issue.

Opinion on gay marriage and civil unions has fluctuated over the past year, but a Gallup poll last month showed increased support, with more than a third of Americans in favor of gay marriage and about half in favor of civil unions. The long-term trend has been to a great tolerance toward gays. The percentage of Americans favoring equal rights for homosexuals in employment has risen since 1977 by more than a third to about 80 percent today.

Support for gay rights has become especially strong among young voters, which suggests that the trend will continue.
"Gay rights could prove to be the issue that ends the culture war," Professor Wolfe said. "If gay marriage does not become a polarizing issue in 2004 - and it does not look like it will - there are no wedge issues left."

Why, if the public is tolerant, would the political elites be so angry? One reason given by Professor Fiorina is the decline of party bosses, who promoted centrist candidates because their patronage systems depended on winning elections, and the corresponding rise of special-interest groups, who are more concerned with candidates' ideology.

Losing an election doesn't put pro-life or gun-control advocates out of work - in fact, it can help raise money for the cause. Nor does it hurt broadcast ratings or book sales for polarizing media figures like Sean Hannity and Al Franken, who need battles to keep their audiences entertained.

Another reason is gerrymandering, which has created so many safe seats that the only threat to incumbents comes from within the party, forcing them to appeal to the partisan voters who dominate primaries.

As moderates have become an endangered species in Congress and in state legislatures, the parties' ideological divisions have deepened, and voters have realigned in response. Many moderate liberals who used to call themselves Republicans no longer do, while many moderate conservatives have left the Democratic Party.

The result is greater partisanship, because each party is purer ideologically. But does that mean that voters as a whole are polarized as well?
Not necessarily, although some experts are saying that mainstream voters may be pulled to the extremes.

"The American public is capable of consensus, but right now there are very strong differences on the major issues of the day," said Andrew Kohut, the director the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. He points to a Pew survey last year showing that Democrats and Republicans differed on a range of issues by an average gap of 17 percentage points, a rise of 5 points since 1990.

Democrats and Republicans differ more widely on their support of the president and the Iraq war than they have in their feelings toward any other president or war since modern polling began six decades ago, said Gary C. Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California at San Diego. "The public may not be a lot more polarized overall," he said, "but differences in opinions fall along party lines to a much greater degree than was the case 20 or 30 years ago."

A senior strategist for the Bush campaign, Matthew Dowd, does not believe that anyone can overcome the partisan divide this year. Noting that Democrats gave overwhelmingly negative ratings to Mr. Bush the year before the Iraq war, he said: "A portion of the Democratic electorate doesn't like Bush no matter he does. I wonder if they'd be supporting the Iraq war if Clinton were conducting it. But when it comes to Bush, they've made up their minds."

But Professor Fiorina insists the voters are merely responding to a president who is more partisan than virtually all of his modern predecessors. A president who played more to the center might not stir such strong reaction, he said.

"What if Bush had not ignored the widely accepted Powell doctrine by launching the war in Iraq, never proposed drilling in the Arctic refuge and never supported a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage?" he asked. "It's the actions he takes that polarize the voters in both parties. A candidate who seized the middle ground against a polarizing candidate could still win handily."