The Ship Is Listing to the Left...Right Before It Sinks

The media is in big trouble and they don't even seem to realize it. They've insulated themselves from the rest of the world by hiring only those of like mind (lefty, of course) and still think they can influence the rest of us in their direction. Not true anymore. Thanks to the Internet, talk radio, and people who are wise to the media's leftward tilt, they're not fooling anyone anymore.

John Leo writes about the major problems facing the mainstream media:

It's official. conservatives are losing their monopoly on complaints about media bias. In the wake of Newsweek 's bungled report that U.S. military interrogators "flushed a Qur'an down a toilet," here is Terry Moran, ABC's White House reporter, in an interview with radio host and blogger Hugh Hewitt: "There is, I agree with you, a deep antimilitary bias in the media, one that begins from the premise that the military must be lying and that American projection of power around the world must be wrong." Moran thinks it's a hangover from Vietnam. Sure, but the culture of the newsroom is a factor, too. In all my years in journalism, I don't think I have met more than one or two reporters who have ever served in the military or who even had a friend in the armed forces. Most media hiring today is from universities where a military career is regarded as bizarre and almost any exercise of American power is considered wrongheaded or evil.

Not long ago, memorable comments about press credibility came from two stars at Newsweek: Evan Thomas and Howard Fineman. During the presidential campaign, Thomas said on TV that the news media wanted John Kerry to win. We knew that, but the candor was refreshing. Fineman said during the flap over Dan Rather and CBS's use of forged documents on the George Bush-National Guard story: "A political party is dying before our eyes--and I don't mean the Democrats. I'm talking about the 'mainstream media' . . . . It's hard to know now who, if anyone, in the 'media' has any credibility." It's worth mentioning here that the unrepentant Rather and his colleague Mary Mapes, who was fired for her role in presenting the forged documents, received a major industry award last week, a Peabody, as well as "extended applause" from the journalists in the crowd. (What's next? A lifetime achievement award for New York Times prevaricator Jayson Blair?)

The media is taking their lumps over this stuff. Newspaper readership is plummeting, and network news ratings have never been lower. Leo says something has got to change:

Time is running out on the newsroom monoculture. The public has many options now--as well as plenty of media watchdogs, both professional and amateur. So the press takes its lumps and loses readers. In March, a report on the state of the media by the Project for Excellence in Journalism said that in the past 17 years, Americans have "come to see the press as less professional, less moral, more inaccurate, and less caring about the interests of the country." According to the report, fewer than half of Americans think of the press as highly professional (49 percent, down from 72 percent 17 years ago). Another finding was that coverage of George Bush during the presidential campaign was three times as negative as coverage of John Kerry (36 percent to 12 percent). If the press is that much out of sync with the country, its future looks very uncertain. Something has to change.

But will anything change? I doubt it. The media folks are so sanctimonious in their belief that they hold the keys to all truth, I doubt if they'll be able to right the ship before it goes down.