The talk radio personalities are always complaining about the liberal bias of the media. I'm not so sure that they are getting it quite right. Yes, some of the media do have a liberal bias. Take the so-called non-profit, public radio programs. They don't come out and say they are liberal, but the way they deal with social issues seems to indicate they are. They like to champion the plight of some minority group, and shame us into accepting them. Those poor, misunderstood male lesbian transvestite medicinal marijuana-smoking fringe-Catholic whatever-Americans. They can't help it, you see -- they were born that way. And to think that we aren't spending enough tax dollars to support the poor souls. How insensitive.
But what really gets me is the media that is in it for the money. I don't blame capitalism per se, but sometimes the love of money changes the location of the line that gets crossed over. When the media exists to make money (through advertising), their sole purpose is to attract viewers (or readers, or whatever; let's call them customers). They present whatever factoids they can to attract those customers. So now the things that make the news are blood, tears, tradegy, fear, horror, scandal, or whatever. If it isn't bad news then it isn't interesting. The sucky thing is, it seems to work.
When I was young, some kids were known as tattle-tales. They would run in the house saying “Mommy, Johnny just said a bad word“, or something like that. They did it just to get some attention. Seems like those are the people who grew up to be media reporters. “Watch channel 5 tonight at 10. Our news team investigated some (fill-in-the-blank here), and you won't believe what we found”.
The “responsibility“ line has been way crossed. Take the death of Princess Diana. I had no particular affinity for her, but as I see it, the media (ok, granted, a fringe group of them; paparazzi) was responsible for her accident -- the driver was trying to ditch them. Then the media capitalized further on the incident, feeding the hungry masses with the details of the funeral, the investigations, and everything else. So now the media does not only report bad news, but they also create it.
And what really irks me is the fat, dumb and happy audience that just takes it all in. There's the greedy media, and there's the willing customers. What have we become?
This is another one of those situations that I don't see a way out of. Oh well, I guess we're doomed.