...they're doing it because they can. Right now, all of the media outlets are owned by a precious few corporations, and most of their programming either leans right-wing or is unabashedly firmly entrenched in the right-wing. While it would be nice to reintroduce the Fairness Doctrine, note how difficult that would be considering all the corporate money which would be used to oppose it.
We need media outlets owned by liberal individuals to establish our point of view. My feeling has always been that when the phrase "media has a liberal bias" is used, I get upset, not because it's a condemnation of the liberal viewpoint or that its just an underhanded way of saying that you can only trust the right to keep you informed, but that it just isn't true. If ONLY that were true... Since factuality these days has a distinct liberal "bias", I would LOVE the media to have a liberal bias. That way I wouldn't have to personally fact check everything the media has to say just because they aren't much interested in dealing with all of these inconvenient "liberal" facts.
And to go a step further, I think these media outlets should be large and competitive. I'd like to see a large network serve as a counterforce to all of the right-wing demagoguery, who would bring people like OWS out in front of the public where they can express their viewpoint and get it into the faces of those who have been brainwashed, without having to be "fair and balanced" and bring in the wharrrgarblers to interrupt them and smirk smugly and shout over them (Are you listening Bill Maher? Love the show, but it's always better when you don't invite foaming-at-the-mouth neocons on the show... just saying.) So long as the media is owned by conservatives, stations like MSNBC which have liberal voices and talk radio like Air America are simply token "fairness" who'll have their contracts cancelled or their stations change format the second their corporate heads see any material traction being gained. Liberal interests have to OWN some media and make it pay, if for only the reason that only when you own something can you control its direction and its message. You can reward people who challenge Fux Noisy and the right-wing-scream-machine, their Koch and Murdoch masters, rather than cancelling their shows and dismissing them over "creative differences".
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