And the search continues for a coherent conservative argument to back up the far-right claim that National Public Radio is hopelessly liberal and bias. We all know conservatives want to defund NPR. But most of us still are not sure why.

Here's the latest supposed sin of NPR, as devised by NewsBusters:

NPR Leans Toward Democrats 7 To 3 On Federal Budget Showdown

I'll make sense of the confused headline: In a report on the looming budget showdown, NPR quoted Democrats seven times and Republicans only three times.

Biased!

Until, that is, you examined the NPR report, which consisted mostly of quotes from President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Speaker of the House John Boehner. Note that two of the three key figures in the budget battle are Democrats because Democrats control the White House and the Senate. So yes, logic dictates that if they're each quoted, there will be more quotes from Democrats. And no, that does not constitute bias on the part of NPR.

But don't tell far-right critics.

In the first half of the report, NewsBusters objects to the fact that NPR quoted the President of the United States three times, the Senate Leader once, and the House Speaker once. And yes, this is how hollow the right-wing's supposed critique of NPR has become; complaining that the POTUS gets quoted too often in news stories.

I'm still searching for a conservative media critic who can explain what NPR's liberal media sins.

By contrast, and in a nice bit of irony, notice this week that NPR's David Folkenflik provided some real media reporting and analysis (as opposed to what NewsBusters did), when he examined six months worth of programming on Fox News' Special Report. Folkenflik found that the anchor program of Fox News' supposedly serious news coverage chronically underrepresented liberal voices during its round table “All Star” segments, where partisan conservatives are featured and often pitted against non-ideological journalists and reporters.

Based on the detailed research, Folkenflik's point about the tilt at Special Report was unassailable. Meaning, what NPR did was produce an actual piece of journalism and media analysis. What NewsBusters produced, on the other hand, was a complaint that the president was quoted too often in a single news story.