Cry me a conservative river

Oh my God, if one more whiney conservative complains to me about how liberal the media is I might just vomit. The idea that the mass media is deliberately liberal is the greatest and most successful lie since the 2000 election results in Florida.

There is absolutely no social scientific evidence to support such a claim. And please, don’t e-mail me with something you got back in the day when you were ‘Hanitized,’ to prove how liberal the media is.

Any information you get from conservative talk radio to further your own argument is hardly objective and unbiased. In fact, it’s about as effective as a liberal pulling out statistics they got from the latest Michael Moore movie to prove their point.

Let me take a page from the Bush administration and do a little pre-emptive strike on the argument most conservatives make for a liberal media: reporters typically vote Democratic.

Now, that argument does seem strong at first but here’s the thing, chief pay, no attention: a reporter has about as much say on what they are going to report on as the sandwich artist at Subway does regarding what the price of a six-inch turkey is. Sure, they both have a little bit of pull but at the end of the day they are working for huge corporations that determine all the significant company decisions.

Make no mistake about it, the media is every much a business as Subway is. The media depends on advertising dollars as much as Subway depends on Jared for their very survival. The media is certainly not going to rock the boat of their corporate buddies.

For example, ABC television is owned by the Disney Corp. Do you think it’s very likely that 6 On Your Side is going to bring hidden cameras into Disneyland and run an expose on child sex offenders working at the happiest place on earth?

If the media is so liberal, why is an entire section of every major newspaper in the country devoted to business and financial reports? This doesn’t make much sense when less then one percent of the country owns more than half of the stocks and bonds.

Where is the labor section of the paper since the majority of Americans work as laborers and not business owners? I’m guessing pay raises and health insurance, or the corporate name ‘cost of labor,’ would not be looked at as a negative thing in that section.

In his autobiography, the former president of NBC, Lawrence Grossman, mentions that the Chief Executive Officer of General Electric, Jack Welch, once told him, “Remember, you work for GE.” Mr. Welch was right; GE owns NBC and what business owner would not admonish his employee if they were publicly critical of the business.

The problem with all of this is that an unbiased media is critical for a society to have a true democracy of quality. Not just believing whatever those in power tell you as total truth is also part of your responsibility as a citizen of a quality democracy.

So, yes there is a bias in the media, a corporate bias. If you can’t see that by looking objectively at the facts, then why look at anything at all?

Just save yourself the time and vote for the person with the ‘R’ or ‘D’ next to their name and ignore all discussion, debate and facts regarding any issue.

Drew Mayes
Opinion Editor

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