Dakota Beacon

Night settles on the charade of media neutrality and objectivity. News coverage has been anything but neutral. Today the bias is more blatant than ever.

Something many of us have known for a long time, or at least suspected, is the collusion, connivance and collaboration between the mainstream media and liberal Democrats. The Democrat Party agenda fares well given the assistance of the dominant liberal/progressive media. Non-neutral news outlets include the New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post, Time, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and NPR. Lesser leftist luminaries in the media culture include Salon, Politico, Huffington Post, Guardian and the New Republic.

Liberal/progressive media collusion helped elect Obama and continues to give him cover. It sustains his Democrat majority in congress.

When editors deliberately ignore or deflate legitimate news stories to protect their agendas, people rebel. Liberal/progressive editors who choose some stories and reject others based on their own political views carry a lion’s share of responsibility. Spiking stories like Obama’s affiliation with terrorist Bill Ayres and radical leftist Jeremiah Wright, stories like voter intimidation by the New Black Panthers and Attorney General Eric Holder’s dropping of charges against the same reflect the leftist lockstep mind set of mainstream media editorial boards.

It was Andrew Breitbart, not the dominant media, that broke the story of ACORN’s assistance in setting up a faux prostitute and her pimp in business in a half dozen cities. It was the supermarket tabloid The National Enquirer, not the dominant media, that broke the moral hijinks stories of former Senators John Edwards and Albert Gore, Jr. Yet, these stories get scant coverage.

Times are changing for the dominant media. What was once a powerful influence in American society is now in a steep decline. Not only is the mainstream media shrinking, but journalism itself is becoming a lost art. Old fashion journalism has gone the way of the horse and buggy. Liberal/progressive journalists are insulated and exist mainly for each other.

Last week the internet website the Daily Caller let sun shine on media collusion when it published the story “Documents show media plotting to kill stories about Rev. Jeremiah Wright.” The story focused on the website Journolist, a listserv, comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, sympathetic professors and progressive activists. The Daily Caller exposed many e-mails giving substance to the story’s title and in doing so highlighted the extent of collaboration between liberal/progressive journalists and their political agendas.

Representative of the e-mails is a quote from Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent. He urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. “...(T)ake one of them--Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares--and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country?”

Enter a different piece of evidence of media collusion. It is humorous to watch liberal talk radio Air America mount a tepid challenge to conservative dominated talk radio. Americans didn’t buy it and Air America is gone.

Market share of the old media powerhouses continues to shrink. Not a month goes by without new reports of the collapsing newspaper industry. Huge news groups such as McClatchy and Gannett are at risk. Advertising revenue continues to plummet, newspaper employment spirals downward and newspaper chains are de-listed from the New York Stock Exchange.

Newspapers are not alone. For the last decade the Big Three network news ratings steadily declined. Their once iron grip on public opinion has loosened.

So, here is the question. Is the decline of the mainstream media a sign of 24/7 cable news coverage and the internet? Or, is the decline a sign of an increasingly leftward tilt driving readers and viewers to an alternative media? Undoubtedly, the answer is “both.” An alternative media grows as it relentlessly pursues the old dogs.

What are some of these successful alternative media outlets? Fox News is one. Conservative talk radio is another. Both have exploded in the last decade. Publications such as the Conservative Chronicle, The American Spectator and National Review have also mushroomed.

Most profound is the impact of the internet. Sites such as the Drudge Report, National Review on Line, The American Thinker, Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, Townhall, World Net Daily, Big Government and more, continue to proliferate and dominate.

It’s not far fetched to say the liberal/progressive mainstream media has committed a disservice to Americans. People deserve fair and balanced information free of leftist agendas.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at P. O. Box 337, Stanley, ND 58784 or (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).