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28 February 2004

Taking news at face value, just like buying into an assumption that cannot be statistically or factually backed up

Stumbled across this opinion piece that eloquently expresses my feelings on the so-called liberal media bias...
Liberal media, huh? Hmmm

That must be why giant, profit-driven corporations, such as Westinghouse (CBS), Disney (ABC) and General Electric (NBC), own the major American TV networks.

That must be why every time you open an American newspaper you see a "Labor" section, instead of a "Business" section.

The media has a bias, all right, and it starts with owners (like Fox's Rupert Murdoch), who typically dictate their personal, right-wing slant to the news organizations they own. The assumption all the while -- aside from the media being "liberal" -- is that reporters and journalists themselves directly control the manufacturing of news. That's like saying the workers on an automobile assembly line have a direct say over what product the auto industry decides to build in the first place!

After owners, the largest bias control mechanism in American media is advertising; here, news outlets cannot afford to offend, as 50 percent of magazine, 80 percent of press and nearly 100 percent of radio/television outlets are funded by advertisements. On average, corporations pay more than $170 billion per year to media outlets for advertising time.