The rest of the world will be watching with anxiety when President Bush is inaugurated Thursday for a second time, fearing the most powerful man on the planet may do more harm than good.
Yes, this is considered a news piece and not an opinion column. Reuters bans the use of the word “terrorist” within news articles because the word is deemed too judgmental. Wouldn’t want judgment creeping into the news, eh Reuters? But it is perfectly acceptable to print a ridiculously absolute statement like the one above, a statement that can be proven false by finding just one foreigner who supports President Bush. Sloppy reporting or media bias? I report, you decide!
Meanwhile, Jim Geraghty of National Review looks at the news media’s left-of-center outlets and wonders why they’re all going after the same market segment:
If you’re a conservative, chances are you prefer Fox News. You often sense that the “mainstream” networks don’t give a fair shake to your leaders, your party, your views, or your beliefs.
[...]
But if you’re a liberal, or at least a non-conservative, your attention is the target of CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, and all the major-network news operations — basically, every one except Fox News. Fox will welcome you and tout their fair and balanced approach and their room for such liberal commentators as Alan Colmes, Juan Williams, and Mara Liasson, but by and large they’re well-established as the network of choice for conservatives.
In the print world, the major newsweekly magazines, and almost every major city newspaper is clamoring for your attention if you’re a non-conservative. In fact, most of the coverage is written from, and for, your viewpoint. You can read the New York Times nationally, or the Los Angeles Times, or Reuters wire copy. Both Chicago and Philadelphia have two major papers, neither of which is conservative. At the magazine rack, you have The New Republic, The Nation, The American Prospect, The Progressive, Mother Jones, Washington Monthly, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Harpers, the post-Michael Kelly Atlantic Monthly, and Slate and Salon on the web. (This list isn’t exhaustive, I’m just trying to give a sense of the breadth and depth.)
On the radio dial, you’ve got Air America, as well as much of NPR’s programming.
That’s a lot of media competing for the attention of the 49 percent [of the electorate that voted against Bush].
Geraghty foresees an interesting future for the old media elite:
In light of this, doesn’t it seem likely that the mainstream media will face consolidation in the coming years? And will some news network that’s struggling with one of the smaller fractions of the blue-state audience decide to take on Fox News directly by competing for their red-state audience?
That will probably happen eventually, but I doubt any time soon. The old media is controlled by people who put ideology first, and that’s not just me saying that, that’s Howard Fineman, someone who’s as close to a one-man embodiment of the establishment press as you can get.
Until today’s Big Media bigwigs retire or are fired, I’m sure they’ll unwittingly continue to drag their own institutions towards the grave.
