MAILBAG:

Old conspiracy theories never die. They’re just regurgitated.

Ad nauseam.

Case in point: Chuck Cassity’s “elucidation.” Apparently these media folk have a vast, left-wing agenda that they promote with slanted reporting. “Blatant, out in the open, in the bright light of day” no less. For sure, also.

“Obama got twice as much ink in the lead-up to the election as did McCain,” Cassity writes, “and that’s why the ink he got was three times more favorable.” His source for these hard and fast numbers? He doesn’t say.

If the reporting were more favorable for Obama, the media logically played up the good news and took pains to de-emphasize the bad. The front page was off-limits to discouraging words.

But nothing like that has happened to the Blagojevich story with its potentially embarrassing Obama links. For two straight days, The New York Times splashed it over its front page. On Wednesday, it ran a three-column photo and two related stories. Inside were two more — 134 column inches in all. The Los Angeles Times followed suit with three articles, a smaller photo and 62 inches. And the Washington Post’s coverage has likewise been extensive.

That didn’t come off as slanted, deferential reporting to me. Nor did the mainstream fudge its coverage of William Jefferson, Eliot Spitzer, Antoin Rezko, Jeremiah Wright or Bill Ayres. And Hillary Clinton’s bullet-dodging landing in Bosnia was summarily exposed.

Cassity asserts that the real heavies in his media conspiracy are journalism professors. I agree that many of them, as well as journalists, list to port.

But that’s a far cry from clear and convincing evidence that the former corrupt the latter. As if college journalism students are wide-eyed and vulnerable innocents, potential Manchurian Candidates ripe for turning.

So I don’t buy the notion of widespread reporting bias. I think journalists, as a class, are loath to abandon or compromise their independence. Sometime even at the risk of incarceration.

Consider also the wide spectrum of opinion represented in the major papers’ stable of op-ed columnists. Many are conservatives with clearly independent, dissenting views.

Nary a group thinker in the lot.

Some examples. Washington Post: David Broder, Michael Gerson, Robert Kagan, Charles Krauthammer, Robert Novak, George Will. New York Times: William Kristol, David Brooks.

Finally, some unsolicited advice to Wahhabi Republicans with literary compulsions: Chill. And take to heart a column by New York Times guest columnist Timothy Egan (Dec. 6). Its title: “Typing Without a Clue.”

DICK LEWIS

Newport Beach