Why There is no 'Liberal' Mass Media

From the TPM, an editorial writer explains why she had to censor her writing about the Iraq War:

"And yet, in the years following 9/11, I felt editorial restraints that never allowed us to tell the whole truth about the lies and deception that led to America's most catastrophic foreign policy disaster. Others in the mainstream media felt far greater restraints. Jessica Yellin, a CNN journalist, for example, says she felt pressured by corporate executives at her previous network to support the Iraq War. To Anderson Cooper, she described how she and others were 'under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president's high approval ratings.'"

As has been said before, while the writers and even editors of newspapers/TVnews may be "liberal", because these are for-profit businesses, the corporate ownership requires the news to be biased for marketability.

This bias is institutional and also completely understandable and obvious. It's a business; you need to sell papers and/or sell advertising minutes. And since the reporters/owners believed that the country supported a crazy revenge war against the man who tried to kill the president's daddy, then that's the story they were going to sell.

The midterm election of 2002 and the crazy thin-win of 2004 convinced the media ownership that the country was perfectly OK in ignoring the Bush malfeasance. To go against Bush meant to lose advertisers. And since FOXnews was the most profitable 24hr station at the time, it showed the other owners and bureaucrats that Bush-smooching sells.

I believe that the breakdown in this corporate collusion came from two sources: (1) Katrina and then (2) the 2006 midterms.

Katrina gave the rank-and-file reporters some backbone to try to buck their corporate 'responsibilities' and actually report the horrible effects of the Bush administration. Then the polls showed most people agreed (Miers, Schiavo, war dead all helped) then it became more lucrative to allow some criticism of Bush (or at least less slavish coverage). Then the 2006 midterms showed that the country actually wanted to attack Bush, and so that's where we are.

Press 'bias' is a market decision, pure and simple.

I think another bellwether moment was Colbert at the 2006 Correspondents Dinner. At the time, the press corps (following their owners' lead) was horrified that Colbert would dare challenge the naked emperor.

Anyway, this trend of press bias following the conservative business impulse of their owners won't go away until newspapers/newsTV becomes a non-for-profit business again. And I don't know how that will happen.

But read the TPM article to see what I'm talking about.