The Left has completely lost it. Stick a fork in 'em.
Why is Obama sinking in the polls? Because the media is biased towards Republicans.
So what is this house advantage the Republicans have? It's the press. There is no more fourth estate. Wait, hold on...I'm not going down some esoteric path with theories on the deregulation of the media and corporate bias and CNN versus Fox...I mean it: there is no more functioning press in this country. And without a real press the corporate and religious Republicans can lie all they want and get away with it. And that's the 51% advantage. ...But most importantly we should bring up re-regulating the media and who owns it and what that conflict of interest is a lot more. By pretending there's no conflict of interest we're failing to alert the public that they're being lied to or given a looking at a coin at the bottom of a pool slanted truth. Every time a pundit or elected official is on any TV news program it should be a polite formality to mention that GE has made such and such billions off the war in Iraq by selling arms or that Murdoch is a right-wing activist with a clear stake in who wins and who taxes his profits the least. Disney, GE, Viacom, and Murdoch -- all want profits and the candidate and agenda that will get in their way the least.
I mean, seriously. Seriously. There are people on the Left who actually believe that the media is biased in favor of Republicans.
That's insane enough, but just in case you aren't yet convinced we're in Bizarro-world don't miss the fact that self-described "liberals" see only one solution to this perceived bias: clamp down on free speech!
It's kinda sad, like watching a possum twitch after it's hit by a car. I can only hope that the remaining fragments of the Democrat party can regroup after November and come back in a few years with a newly rational political philosophy that doesn't depend on the lunatics that are their current base.
(HT: Gateway Pundit.)
Well, I'm not American, and I don't receive the full range of American media, so I don't know what the bias is like.
However wikipedia has an article on American media bias which has examples of liberal bias and conservative bias. We in Britain have our own editions of the Murdoch press, which has imo a very disruptive influence on our political landscape.
Few people are keener on free speech than I, however I'd say that Murdoch's ownership of so much of the world's press is problematic. I don't think he should be allowed to control any more of it; in fact I think he should be obliged to give up control of much of what he currently has.
The media bias in America is unbelievable. The mainstream media will outright deny to cover conservative party op-eds, and blacklist anything that casts the liberal party in a bad light. That's why newspaper circulations are dropping like an anvil, and big news stations are struggling and/or replacing far-left anchorpeople (Hello Olberman & Matthews). The media has been a hammer for the liberal party for years, and this election it's finally coming to a head. People are getting really tired of it. I want to see BOTH viewpoints. The liberals want to see only one.
Paradoxically, the media bias is a big part of what has made American conservatism so strong. Liberals know only their own opinions, because they aren't exposed to any other. Conservatives know both their own beliefs and the liberal beliefs they oppose.
That's not due to any special virtue on the part of conservatives; we just can't get away from the liberal media megaphone. We're flooded with it, not only in news, but also in universities and Hollywood.
The Palin situation demonstrates this basic strength asymmetry. With Palin's pick, we saw how ignorant the left was of what the right thinks. The liberal media thought that Palin's family troubles would inspire revulsion in Bible-bashing conservatives, and it took them several days to understand that they had it completely wrong.
Now the smart liberals are starting to understand that they don't understand how half the country thinks, though they don't know what to do about it. But most liberals still don't know that they don't know, so they'll keep making big mistakes straight through the election, and beyond.
None of this would have been possible with a conservative media, because that would have allowed conservatives to relax in an echo chamber, and it would have forced liberals to pay attention to what we think. In victory most people become sloppy, and that eventually becomes their downfall.
I think the "echo chamber" effect is real, and a real problem for the Left, but I don't think it's the fundamental issue.
At heart, the average Leftist is a statist who wants to wield centralized authority to bring about his vision of what's best for everyone. That inclination pushes Leftists to pursue positions that accumulate autocratic power: lawyers, professors, movie stars, media figures, politicians, "reverends", etc.
(Businessmen, even the super-rich, don't have much individual discretion over their power because they answer to shareholders. Plus, businessmen don't have power till they reach the pinnacle of their field, unlike the positions that Leftists prefer which accumulate power incrementally.)
So, naturally, the Left does what it can to appeal to the people it wants to be, which includes the media. When the Left gets rave reviews from journalists, they honestly think that those journalists are representative of American voters. The Left admires journalists and wants to please them, so naturally the rest of America must do likewise.
I guess I'm converging with BB's thoughts more than I expected to when I started writing all this. Key point: most people don't want to wield autocratic power, they just want to live their lives. The Left can't comprehend this.