The Liberal Media

One weird assumption that is so ingrained is that even fairly liberal people assume that journalists who aren't explicitly conservatives (conservative pundits working in "the liberal media" or journalists working for explicitly conservative outlets) are liberalish. There are a lot of reasons for this and I won't go through them all, but one is the general assumption by a certain class of people is that other well-educated people who are polite and know which fork to use with the appetizer aren't conservative unless they make it clear that they are. They're thought to be a sort of oddity.

I've seen some people reference the journalists caught up in the "oh you're friends with the Nazis" scandal referred to as liberal by people, even though this true of most of them only in the sense they didn't work for explicitly conservative outlets.

I mean, Slate's a bit better than it used to be, generally, but it was ever only liberal (in general, of course there was some genuinely liberal pieces) if you think Will Saletan (not implicated in this) is liberal. And lots of people do! Which is my point.