The Fourth Estate Is Bankrupt in More Ways Than One

The media is blamed for a lot of stuff. How many times have you heard, “I was misquoted.” or something to that effect. But I have noticed something over the past ten to fifteen years. The media is polarizing. Fox News gets a lot of the heat for being Faux News, because they tilt to the right. Certainly, their opinion shows lean pretty hard to the right. Huckabee and Hannity aren’t exactly unbiased. The Fox Network’s news from 4PM-5PM every day is relatively unbiased. They do report things that you won’t see on other programs. The panel that they have discussing political news is two right wingers, two left. That’s opposite of what the mainstream media does by loading up their panels with left wingers-including the hosts.

But, MSNBC, CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, Al Jazeera, AP, UPI, and local television networks and newspapers are pretty hard left leaning when it comes to ~~reporting~~ shaping the news. It’s gone way overboard the last four years.

It’s time to show the emperor has no clothes.

One of the reasons that there is a “Freedom of Speech” and “Freedom of the Press” in the Bill of Rights is that the founding fathers knew they needed both of those freedoms to keep tyrannical government from over reaching. Most Americans consider those rights their most sacred. Everyone assumed the press would do it’s job, and the people would be informed. Since it’s the people’s government, they could do something about it.

But what about when the press is complicit in becoming the de facto government mouthpiece?

Ace of Spades wrote a piece that you should read.

And I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m truly alarmed about it: What we are witnessing is the full and seamless fusion of media power with government power.

The media used to hide it a bit, in their actions; they would temper their scorn of conservatism, throw them a bone now and again just to prove they were capable of such a thing.

No longer. The media no longer hides it in their actions. They are fully fused with the Obama Administration and DNC. The only way in which they do hide it is by simply lying when confronted about it: They’ll issue a snide denial, then go about doing precisely what it is they were accused of doing.

This is dangerous and unhealthy. I keep banging this drum but honestly, some patriotic billionaires do have to band together to purchase or build a media outlet. The outlet would be founded upon a simple premise: that it is dangerous and ultimately fatal for democracy for media power to fuse with government power, that the adversarial press is vital.

Think about the times in human history where the mainstream press has fused with the government. What was the outcome?

Consider: The government locked up a filmmaker because the filmmaker expressed his free speech rights in a way the president found politically problematic. Not only has the press shown no fears about this, they’veactively campaigned for the man’s jailing.

That’s frightening. Even if you come down on the side that the guy did what he’s accused of and all that… to have absolutely no trepidations about the government jailing people primarily for their Speech Crimes? That’s something.

That happened in October of 2012. In America. Did you hear about it in the mainstream press? Any mainstream papers? Where was the story positioned? Front page first story? Or somewhere buried?

This is something to think hard about, and do something about. First, we vote with our feet. You can get better more accurate information if you follow good blogs than if you watch television news. Twitter has more up to date stuff-and many times so does Facebook or Google+. Keep the mainstreamers streaming down the road to bankruptcy. Newspapers continue to have trouble making money. Second, figure out a way around the big media companies. Cut the cable cord.

To be clear, the people that run companies and news outlets all have personal biases. That’s human. But, they can’t let those personal biases get in the way of how they conduct their business. They need to check those biases at the door. Many do not-even in private industry (which is an outgrowth of crony capitalism).

There are many more examples of media in lockstep with government. I am sure as you read this you can think of more. Until the people hold the media personally responsible so that they do their jobs as unbiased investigators of government and its actions, nothing will get done.

A TEXTBOOK EXAMPLE

Doug Ross posted a clear example of media bias on his site here. (shakes head in disgust)

Side Note

Even companies that are supposed to be unbiased, are hugely biased in favor of the left. Zemanta for instance is a company that produces content add ons for blogs. When I went to add tags to this post, Al Jazeera and MSNBC were auto added-Fox News was not. I added it as a tag. Over the time that I have used Zemanta, I have seen it’s liberal bias. Must be ingrained into the way it searches the web for content.