Friday, December 06, 2002

Liberal Lighthouse - E.J. Dionne, Jr. is quickly becoming one of my favorite columnists. His latest piece in the Washington Post discusses something that I have noticed and felt for some time now: the myth of a liberal media. Dionne makes a good point that mainstream media is likely to represent the privileged professional and intellectual classes, which tend to tilt leftward on social issues, but moderate/conservative on business/economic issues. Furthermore, "mainstream" news media is no longer what it was 20 years ago. In fact, it strikes me for the first time that most people's news comes not from the National Print Media (i.e. The New York Times or the Washington Post), nor increasingly from network news channels, but rather from local newspapers, radio, cable television networks, and the internet - all of which tend to be dominated by conservative voices. In fact, the impact and presence of the shrill conservative tirades against the "liberal" media would seem to indicate that conservative voices are getting more "press" than they would lead you to believe - if not in the few, big, liberal-leading media outlets, at least in the majority of other media outlets that the average person sees much more regularly. I can tell you that down in the Big Easy, hardly anyone cares about or reads The New York Times, but significant numbers listen to Rush Limbaugh on the Crescent City's most important Talk Radio Station. Just an observation linked to Dionne's thoughtful essay; and I'm finally glad that someone in the "liberal" media is finally taking this myth of "liberal" media bias head on.

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