BOB GARFIELD: From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. The story dominating the news this week was the legal wrangling over the feeding tube that sustains the life of Terri Schiavo. The medical consensus is that she's existed for 15 years in a persistent vegetative state. After a series of court battles nearly as long and the intervention of Congress and the president intended to clear the way for more appeals, the legal consensus is that her husband should be the one to decide whether to remove that lifeline. Much of the coverage served up an image of a nation sharply and more or less evenly divided.

CORRESPONDENT: Demonstrators here at the hospice where I'm standing, they have been increasingly more and more passionate as Terri Schiavo has become more and more dehydrated, and they're passionately arguing their positions.

MAN: I think that the radical right has hijacked this issue and exploited this woman.

MAN: Let's be honest here. You have a woman behind us who is being starved to death and dehydrated.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Tape like that, and the abundant coverage of the protests, offered a range of views, but it also presented a misleading picture of where the public stood, choosing in many cases the appearance of balance over accuracy. And this bothered Eric Boehlert, who's been watching the polls and covering the coverage for Salon.com.

ERIC BOEHLERT: Well, I think originally, when the story became national a week ago Friday, I looked at the coverage Friday, Saturday, Sunday, the television coverage. Virtually no mention of polls. And there were very recent polls at that point by ABC and Fox, which clearly showed that a majority thought it was up to the spouse and not the parents to decide. On Monday, ABC released a poll right after the action by Congress and the president showed even more people were upset that Congress and the president got involved. Again, Monday ABC released that poll. Monday night, World News with Peter Jennings didn't even report on its own poll. [LAUGHTER] But as the week progressed, I think there was more mention of it. CBS released a poll on Wednesday that was even more lopsided than ABC's poll. But, again, in general I think there's been an enormous lack of context, and I think there's been an incredible lack of curiosity, and I think the reporters have done a very poor job in passing that context along to the readers and viewers.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So you think that this is a controversy that's being pumped up for TV?

ERIC BOEHLERT: Oh, absolutely. I think it's a great story for TV, and I think people would pay attention, but I think what's being pumped is that this is sort of a red state, blue state, and people are really at odds over this issue. They're not. The press has left that context out.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now let's talk for a moment about those few seconds of video that anybody with a TV is bound to see eventually. It shows Terri Schiavo looking up with what seems to be a delighted smile at her mother and following the action with her eyes. It's really heartbreaking.

ERIC BOEHLERT: TV has to have a great image, and those are very compelling images. What people don't realize is there's about six hours of those videos from, I think, 2001. You know, we see about 90 seconds. The Schindler family has put out what are clearly highly selective videos in order to create this impression that, with the right care, Terri Schiavo could come out of this state. Judge Greer and others watched all six hours and all the scores of doctors. No doctor who has looked at those tapes has come to the same conclusion.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Also, it was part of the evidence that was presented by Terri Schiavo's parents, and it wasn't always identified as such.

ERIC BOEHLERT: No, right. And, you know, I guarantee, if Michael Schiavo wanted to, he could release very painful pictures of Terri Schiavo that showed her in a complete vegetative state, but you know, he doesn't want to do that, and I think good for him. But again, there's not a lot of context in these images that have become almost non-stop on the cable TV screen.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: How has the newspaper coverage differed from the TV coverage?

ERIC BOEHLERT: I find the same problem. I mean, I looked that first weekend of the coverage. L.A. Times did ten stories from Friday till Monday. Not one story mentioned a poll result about how Americans have felt about this issue. The Washington Times, New York Times, that first weekend of the coverage, all of them did nearly a dozen stories about the specific case and not once did they inform readers, by the way, 60, 70 percent of Americans side with Michael Schiavo on this controversy.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: On Thursday, you saw a little more poll coverage.

ERIC BOEHLERT: A little, but not very much. And the CBS poll, which was released on Wednesday afternoon, that got very little coverage in terms of the mainstream press. I hate to fall back to the, you know, on what if Clinton had been in office, but if Bill Clinton had cut his vacation short to come back to sign emergency legislation at midnight and then two days later, two network polls showed that 70 to 80 percent of Americans opposed that action, if not the entire coverage, a strong subcurrent of that coverage would have been how was the White House going to rebound from this debacle?

BROOKE GLADSTONE: You made a kind of a weird connection in one of your stories this week, likening the coverage of the Schiavo case to MonicaGate and the Clinton impeachment.

ERIC BOEHLERT: Well, I was struck particularly by watching the reaction of the conservative columnists and the conservative pundits, and I drew the parallel that during the impeachment years, the more and more upset and agitated and emotional they got about the issue, the further and further away they drifted from the mainstream public opinion, based on polls. And I think we've seen that this week. You know, if you turn on MSNBC, if you watch Joe Scarborough, I mean he and his entire lineup of guests will say the same thing. You know, "What is wrong with this country? How can this be happening?" As if, you know, a feeding tube had never been disconnected. And then they turn on CBS, and they have to look at a poll that says 82 percent of Americans think Congress and, and the president were wrong to get involved. They don't recognize the country they're living in.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Okay, Eric - obviously, you are a liberal. Is this just a question of the liberal perspective being under-reported? Because even if you suggest an out of touch with the mainstream American right wing of the Republican Party has in fact commandeered this debate in Congress, are you saying that the media are showing a right wing bias too?

ERIC BOEHLERT: Well, yeah, I think they're spooked and they continue to be spooked about this charge about being liberal, about being out of touch, about being anti-religion - that's sort of the latest accusation that's been made in the last six or nine months. So, yeah, I think they are consciously afraid of pointing out the obvious. Even if it's the 14th paragraph in a 20 graph piece in the New York Times, there should be a sentence that says 82 percent of Americans disagree on what Congress and the president did. That includes 64 percent of white evangelicals. Just put it in the story. Let people make up their own minds.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: All right, Eric. Thank you very much.

ERIC BOEHLERT: Thanks for having me.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Eric Boehlert has been covering the coverage of the Schiavo story for Salon.com. [MUSIC]