Kindly help dispute this "liberal media" LTTE in my local paper.

This is from the Daily Local News in Chester County, PA. I already plan on using this article:

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-liberalmedia.htm

However, I thought some of you might be able to provide some unique insights not found in the above article. Thoughts?

The letter in question:

Looking for some answers

Admittedly, I am still struggling for words to convey the basic premise or question posed in this letter. I am optimistic that the Daily Local News will print it even though that periodical is, necessarily, included in the object of my concerns.

My question is simply this: how did the mainstream media and, coincidentally, the vast majority of professors in academia become so overwhelmingly allied with the left- leaning liberal political point of view? Is it conspiratorial? I sometimes wonder when I consider what I might do if I were a power-hungry tyrant desirous of conquering a given society. I think that my first two priorities would be to control the media and then the basic machinery of education. With these two at my fingertips the selling of my philosophy and the acceptance of my rule would be greatly enhanced.

The only other logical answer to my question I can come up with is that the symptoms are those of the self-destructive complacency that an affluent society falls into accompanied by the tendency to accept more and more services from, and therefore control, by government. This ultimately results in the slide down the slippery slope of socialism which history has shown, time and time again, does not work and finally results ina dictatorship. I am searching for other answers to my question.

HARLAN (BUCK) ROSS

I love those specific examples of "librul bias" in his letter. Doof. Ya just can't argue with stupid.

Any response should just ask Harlan for some examples. Since he can't supply any, then it can't be proved.

lots of imbedded links also help.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200605260016

citing any actual examples of the so-called liberal media in action.

Point to this fact front-paged on DailyKos - the most overwhelming demographic in the 2004 elections was that Fox News viewers voted Republican by an 88-7 margin. It was a greater margin than evangelicals voting Republican, African-Americans voting Democratic, millionaires voting Republican, gun-owners voting Republican etc, etc.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/3/22/91410/2640

The far right wing counterpart to Media Matters is a group called the Media Research Center (MRC). In their analysis of the network news, the MRC found the major networks were slightly biased towards Kerry (53-58% of stories leaned Kerry while 42-48% leaned Bush, depending on the network)... but, even the MRC had to admit Fox was biased Republican, by something like a 6 to 1 margin. Now, take that in perspective - a far right group like the MRC detected a slight bias in the media towards Kerry.

Additionally, in 2000, a large majority of newspapers endorsed Bush over Gore. While it was closer in 2004, a majority still endorsed Bush over Kerry.

if I were a power-hungry tyrant desirous of conquering a given society. I think that my first two priorities would be to control the media and then the basic machinery of education.

Wouldn't it make more sense to control, oh, the people who have most of the heavy weaponry (i.e. the DoD) and the people who have most of the money (i.e., banking and industry)?

Last I checked the people controlling those two groups didn't exactly lean left.

Conservatives tend to claim there is a liberal media based on two factors. That can't stand any authorative and objective viewpoint which contradicts their own subjective views and many journalists self-identify as liberals in polling. The second factor seems to be more damning until you recognize that these polls rarely if ever define what "liberal" means. When reporters claim to be liberal they aren't claiming any specific opinions, just a generally "liberal" world-view, which is usually nothing like the stereotypical evil liberal that conservatives love to use as a straw man. Secondly when reporters are quizzed about their stances on the individual issues they prove to be exactly as liberal as... drum roll please... the American public. The exception is on economic issues where reporters usually prove to be MORE conservative than the American public.

Finally these "liberal" reporters (who are only liberal for a given value of "liberal" to begin with) work for giant corporations many of whom have direct vested interest in the stories that these reporters write particularly when it comes to their parent companies and their political interests. They are also constrained by the conservative version of PC, which (as we have learned through various Bush scandals) paradoxically asserts that you can't investigate a conservative for wrongdoing unless you have already proven they've done wrong and you can't assert that a conservative idea is bad until you've already tried the conservative's bad idea. All this contributes to a media that would be perfectly in line with the opinions of the average American if it weren't for conservative press bullying tactics and corporate editorialization.

in Media and Education. Teach the truth and you are a Liberal. It doesn't get any more simple than that...Name what Liberals refuse to swear to tell the truth under oath....We know where Conservatives are on this one...

...of course tend to be liberals. There are LOTS of "conservative" professors. They tend to gravitate toward bible colleges, where indoctrination passes for "education." There's nothing "conspiratorial" about it. The writer is just short sighted, and obviously not intellectually curious himself. As for the media, he sounds like one of those people you see on CU or FR who reads one critical article in the newspaper and cries "LIBERAL MEDIA!" without ever questioning what is NOT being reported to him, or looking into any sort of overall pattern. To the intellectually incurious, ANY criticism is bad, therefore even ONE story they don't like proves to them the media is "liberal."

.

In 2004, the head of CBS, Sumner Redstone, endorsed George W. Bush.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Sumner_M._Redstone

One of the top fundraisers for George W. Bush has been Jack Welch, former head of General Electric, which owns NBC, CNBC and MSNBC.

http://www.makethemaccountable.com/coverup/Part_04.htm

http://www.prwatch.org/node/582

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/sep2002/wlch-s17.shtml


Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, which also owns ABC allowed the fictional pro-Republican “Path to 9/11” on the air, while not distributing the truthful anti-Bush “Fahrenheit 9/11” movie a few years earlier.

CNN employs well known conservatives like Glen Beck, Wolf Blitzer, Paula Zahn and Lou Dobbs, but has no liberal counter-part on the air with any regularity.

Fox News, of course, has a well known bias towards Republicans, and their CEO, Rupert Murdoch, is a leading member of the right-wing media machine.