What Liberal Media?

For more than a decade, I wrote a freelance newspaper column for The Californian, but that publication has made a decided turn to cater to the conservative point of view that reportedly dominates Southwest Riverside County.

While a progressive political perspective is likely a minority in this region, it is a journalistic disservice for news media to amplify a majority perspective at the expense of marginalizing a substantial segment of the community.

For proof of media bias, one need look no further than the second sentence of The Californian editorial of November 25.

“While left-leaning outlets have a fondness for condemning some religious conservatives' opposition to the scientific establishment's current theories on evolution and cosmology, too many liberals are similarly hostile to the legitimate science and engineering behind nuclear power.”

Although the rhetoric was published as an editorial, the amount of right-wing political spin makes my “hostile” head spin. After decades of repeating the notion of a liberal media bias, the existence and domination of conservative media remains a fact denied.

Fox News still insists on calling itself “fair and balanced” and, because they are a “news channel,” it must be true.

Rupert Murdock gets credit for being the brainchild of Fox News, but Nixon adviser Roger Ailes suggested the ploy of a GOP TV news outlet in the 1970s. Crafty Fox ran with the idea, but changed the name to obscure the obvious.

Being fair and balanced was once the virtue of journalism, and use of the public airwaves mandated that broadcasters provide news so citizens could be informed on differing perspectives. From 1949 to 1987, the Federal Communications Commission had a policy called the Fairness Doctrine that actually required broadcasters provide balanced news and information.

The policy may have been imperfect, but news and information were more substantive during the years it was in effect.

I defy any reader to take a spin across the AM radio dial and prove a dominance of liberal media programming. A progressive perspective is a rare find on AM radio. Even on cable, it is difficult to find a perspective that is outside the conservative corporate box.

Thom Hartmann is the most widely distributed progressive voice on radio and television, but I have only found his televised show by way of Russian TV (RT.com) on the Verizon cable lineup.

Now that a handful of corporations own the public airwaves, they have  abandoned journalistic responsibility. News media now exist to profit and primarily serve
infotainment -- a word was even created to describe the non-news they provide -- that reinforces the corporate interests of advertisers and the holdings of media empires.

Information? Not so much.

As news media increasingly tailor content to please advertisers, a disservice is delivered to subscribers. The popularity of Fox News is partly due to the public
being brainwashed into believing that America is politically center-right despite elections that reflect a two-party system that gravitates toward the center. But reality comes secondary to the spin of information delivery systems.

Lee Enterprises, the parent corporation of The Californian has restructured its debt and looks to be getting the gift of bankruptcy protection over the holiday season. I
do not go willingly into this digital age, but if newspapers discard journalistic integrity to serve demographics, they lose the one service newspapers once provided better than most electronic media: impartiality.

When newspapers don't do their job, subscribers will cancel. A newspaper with a dwindling circulation becomes less valuable to advertisers, and that is the recipe for a death spiral.

It is in no way a glad death for me to witness. My first job some 40 years ago was delivering newspapers, and my last job was writing for one.

Patch is a virtual publication that delivers local news and provides a platform for divergent viewpoints. It taps into a new age of “people as media,” where readers can instantly email a correction to a story, comment or blog. Where there is a hole in the diverse voice of a community, Patch fills that void.