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Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Douglas MacKinnon :: Townhall.com Columnist
Liberal Media Unemployment
by Douglas MacKinnon
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Will the Dems' health care Christmas Present to America be an improvement or detriment to our health care system?


Whoops. Fast forward a few months and it’s clear they orchestrated their propaganda campaign a bit too well. I just spoke with a liberal Member of Congress and an investment banker about the role the media is playing (and denying) in driving down our economy. Both said that the non-stop negative news is having a direct, lasting, and detrimental effect on the economy and that it has to stop.

Why would these liberal reporters and editors continue to tear down the American economy when they successfully helped to elect Barack Obama? My liberal editor friend says they still can’t help themselves. Rather than lay any blame on Democrat leaders in the House and Senate -- following the “no blame for Democrats” example set by President Obama -- these far-left editors prefer to vilify the “evil” banks and “wealthy” corporate leaders. As they daily or even hourly attack these “evil institutions” and leaders, is anyone surprised at the effect these irresponsible rants have on the bottom-line of these banks, companies, the market, and our very confidence in the system?

These newspapers are going out of business because they believe in manufactured and biased “news” but not honesty. If they did believe in honesty, they would admit that not only does the leadership at their paper have to be liberal, but also the movie reviewers, the fashion reporters, the sports reporters, and those who report on “Global Warming.” In a nation and world where Pulitzer and Nobel Prize committees are controlled by the far-left, where the vast majority of college professors are liberal, where the entertainment industry is far-left, and where “Historians,” have long since stopped hiding their far-left beliefs, is any of this a shock? Is it any wonder that readers and the majority of the American people have tired of the countless liberal indoctrination sheets masquerading as newspapers? The breaking point has been reached.

While my liberal editor friend says the Internet and the economic meltdown are greatly accelerating the demise of these papers, he still believes it started with the biased and unethical behavior of far-left editors, reporters, and columnists. Unprincipled behavior that caused conservatives and centrists by the millions to cancel their newspaper and magazine subscriptions over the course of the last two decades.

Why do I think “Historians” will never see it that way?

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About The Author

Douglas MacKinnon is a former White House and Pentagon official and author of the forthcoming novel, The Apocalypse Directive.

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I prefer getting my news from the newspaper. I just enjoy the process of reading the page more than reading off a screen. I also feel that the process of getting it into print ensures a bit more care than getting it onto the screen.

Journalistic organizations of all political stripes have at one time or another done studies of "media bias" and have shown that people who self-identify as liberal think a story they are given to read is slanted to favor a conservative view, and people who self-identify as conservative think that same story is slanted to favor a liberal view. When shown the same story and told it comes from a conservative publication, people who identify as being conservative tend to agree with it and think it's fair and balanced. As you might imagine, when shown the same story and told it comes from a liberal publication, they think it's liberal.

The same thing happens with factual stories about members of political parties--stories that address good news/good outcomes for conservative political figures are seen as fair and balanced by those who identify as conservative, while stories that talk about bad news/bad outcomes about conservative political figures are seen as having liberal bias.

The lesson from all these studies is that the issue of "media bias" is far more in the eyes of the person reading the story than it is in the essence of how the story was reported/written. As a world of evidence shows, evidence far more believable than Mr. MacKinnon's "friend", the newspaper business is declining for reasons that have nothing to do with the hollow claims of "liberal bias."

I prefer newspapers
When I get the chance, I prefer to get my stories from newspapers. The television news generally only gives headlines. There is no in-depth coverage. But too many of the newspaper stories any more are slanted. I tend to read them - and then check internet and other sources if I can to verify or at least hope to get the real story.

If ALL news media would go back to printing the whole truth and only the truth, I think they would do much better than trying to slant the stories to fit their own beliefs. Journalists should again learn that news is who, what, when, where, why, and how - ONLY.
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