WHAT LIBERAL MEDIA? For years, I’ve heard about the “liberal media” in the United States. Well, I sure would like to find that liberal media. I spent 40 years working for newspapers in six states and I sure never found it. The U.S. media is, and has been for many years, conservative. When the giant media corporations swallowed up the local newspapers (and, later, local radio and television stations), the media became more conservative. By their structure and management orientation, corporations are naturally conservative. In newspapers, the change started in 1949, when for the first time in history, U.S. newspapers’ prime source of revenue was from advertising rather than from subscriptions. It took a couple of decades, but gradually the corporate owners started putting people with backgrounds in advertising in charge of the papers. When I began working for newspapers, the publisher or general manager of the paper usually had an editorial background. With the shift to top management of the paper to people with an advertising background, things change – and not for the better. The direction of the newspaper changed drastically. Papers had historically sought to increase circulation by expanded area coverage. Increased coverage led to increased circulation, which led to increased ad sales. That model had been successful for generations, but that was turned on its head. As an editor, I started running into publishers who said if there is no advertising, then there is no reason to provide coverage to an area. I had always thought that if the paper showed it would cover an area town, then the circulation would rise – and advertisers would see a new market. With newspapers’ shift of focus to advertising rather than news, the editorial pages also changed. When I started in newspapers, editors – even conservative editors – strived to provide their readers with a variety of opinion, featuring a variety of syndicated liberal and conservative columnists and cartoonists, as well as staff columnists and even local cartoonists. Over the years, I noticed that the liberal writers were being used less frequently and the conservative writers were getting the bulk of the space -- and those conservatives were becoming more shrill. Gone were the reasoned, thoughtul pieces of conservatives like James J. Kilpatrick and William F. Buckley. They were being replaced by people who called themselves “conservative,” but in reality were radical rightwingers. As an editor-cartoonist-columnist, I found that as one who is politically left of center, I had to defend and ensure that every line I wrote could be shown to be factual. That was what I always did anyway, but what I found offensive was a couple of my publishers, including the second of the three who held that job during my decade at the Hereford Brand, a small daily in the western Texas Panhandle, would demand that I run a column by a rightwing zealot, like Bill Kristol or Anne Coulter or even Michelle Malkin. When I pointed out the factual errors and, in some instances, outright falsehoods, I was told to run the columns anyway because that was just their opinion. When I asked if that “opinion” standard applied to me, he said, “No, because you’re local.” That attitude still makes no sense – and I am still looking for that liberal media.
Posted on: Wed, 02 Jul 2014 22:48:44 +0000
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