(FORTUNE Magazine) – ''Media Bias Is in Eye of the Beholder'' was the instantly off-putting headline over Albert R. Hunt's op-ed meditations in the Wall Street Journal the other day, which went on for many a pica before suddenly casting up a thought needing to be agreed with by your correspondent. The exposition up to this point had mainly served to ridicule the possibility that the national media might be dominated by liberal thinkers. The line that led us to finally stand up on the sofa and cheer was: ''Personal beliefs . . . matter if they affect coverage.'' The eye of the present beholder tells him that the personal beliefs of the press corps rather powerfully affect reportage in a number of different areas, the most conspicuous being ''movement'' issues. The eye keeps noticing, for example, that the peace movement, the women's movement, and whatever movement it is that the National Conference of Catholic Bishops is part of somehow are not covered in the same spirit of critical inquiry that your median reporter brings to the Exxon annual meeting. They are instead often covered by characters who sound as though they're part of the movement. Take the peace movement. You will recall that 15,000 or so peaceniks dippily descended on the capital early in August and contrived to memorialize Hiroshima by stretching 25,000-odd banners on a 15-mile ribbon around official Washington in what the Washington Post reporters breathlessly described as ''a gentle message of peace.'' The reporters carried on about the ''bespectacled 61-year-old grandmother from Denver who came up with the idea, as she went about her morning prayers one day in 1982, of encircling the Pentagon in a ribbon of peace.'' The reporters forgot to mention that granny is a radical who has equated the U.S. with Nazi Germany. We intuit that the reporters would have worked it into their copy if the chairman of Exxon held comparable views. New York Times reporters on assignment with the women's movement also seem nondisinterested much of the time. Enthusing about the U.N. Decade for Women Conference, held in Nairobi in July, byliner Elaine Sciolino pronounced that - the document adopted there ''has symbolic value as a world mandate for change'' and approvingly noted the conference finding of a ''natural continuum from violence in the home to the absence of peace in the world.'' Or take reporter Judy Klemesrud's coverage of the recent National Organization for Women convention in New Orleans, where the main event was a contest for the NOW presidency. The vibes in Judy's preliminary reporting seemed to say that both the incumbent president and her challenger were quite admirable; possibly this was why her July 21 report on the election failed to mention what seems to have been the day's most dramatic moment -- a vitriolic personal attack on the challenger (who eventually won) by the incumbent, although, to be scrupulously fair as usual here, we should possibly mention that Judy got around to this detail in a follow-up a week later. Kenneth Briggs, long the voice of the Times in religious reportage, and owner of a lock on stories about the bishops' economic views, has never been observed by the beholder denying any proposition they might affirm. His verb selection says it all -- for example, ''Archbishop Weakland emphasized that the pastoral letter had been produced in a nonpartisan spirit.'' If the archbishop worked at Exxon, the verb would have been ''claimed.''