Democrats and the Media

Some Democrats have gotten it into their head that the media is biased. Against them. Yes to the first, an emphatic no to the second. Certainly conservative voices are the majority on talk radio, and yes Fox is a pretty successful cable news channel, but liberals still maintain their stranglehold on ABC/NBC/CBS, NPR (with our tax dollars, mind you), as well as the major print organs (mind you, the influence of all of these is waning, as Brian Anderson points out in South Park Conservatives, reviewed here).

But even these, some on the left (especially the far left) feel are anti-Democrat, Bush-hugging mouthpieces for those crazy Republicans to spread their gospel. Beyond reminding them to take their pills, here are some fun facts.

According to MSNBC, media figures favor Democrats with their political donations something like 9-1. If that's not a blatant sign of favoritism, I don't know what is. And the money is merely the most visible evidence. While not all reporters are as biased as say, Dan Rather, we're all human and thus largely unable to keep our prejudices from affecting the way we do our jobs (There's some discussion of this, especially how unconscious discrimination can be) in Freakonomics).

Returning to talk radio, Think Progress (a.k.a American Socialists) have released a report on the reasons for conservative bias on that medium and how to counter it. Their recommendations are almost laughable: increase diversity of ownership. Of course this will be the government's job in their eyes...But what I'm curious about is how they define "progressive" radio? Should we simply pipe in the news from Venezuela and Cuba? Or do we need to dig up Stalin's speeches and rebroadcast them? But what we have to remember in the first place is the reason that conservatives dominate talk radio is because the AM airwaves were empty and because conservatives couldn't get a say in the Old Media outlets. In essence, they circumvented the MSM and thus gained the wrath of the Left by not only spreading their message but doing so effectively.

Oh and MSNBC also released a list of all donating journalists (I don't know if they covered everyone): check to see if your favorite is on here.