True. Oh so true.

But instead of bitching continuously about the lying leftists of the news media, why don't the rest of us conspire to buy the news media, and just fire them?

(Then, in no time at all, the news media will be dominated one end to the other by us righteous rightists.)

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Arnold, the right-wing already DOES own the media. ClearChannel, GE (a major defense contractor), and NewsCorp dominate the media landscape. I realize that doesn't fit into your carefully crafted myth of a liberal media, but it's still true.

Re: Presidential campaigns, the mainstream media bias has three ingredients --

1) Which candidate do they like?

2) Which candidate do they think is running the better campaign?

3) Which candidate do they think has the best chance of winning in November?

The result? Currently, the media favors Bush on points #1 & #3, and #2 is (at best) a toss-up.

As a result, I'd have to say that the media has a bias for Bush, not Kerry.

Don,

My only carefully-crafted myth is my self-deception that I might sound humorous in print.

Anyway, I'm a right-winger, but the only media I own are the CDs onto which I copy datafiles.

(But the point I'm trying to make is that freedom of the press is reserved for the man who owns a press, as A J Liebling once pointed out. So if you don't like what they say, but it from them, fire their editors and reporters and replace them all.)

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Clearly, most reporters and editors do not like Bush, and clearly they want to sell as much negative news as possible.

I don't expect self-described "Yellow Dog Democrats" to see it that way, however. In their world, all bad news is always the fault of the Republicans, and any good news is merely lucky.

Republican partisans work the same way of course. Which makes all such people difficult to have conversations with.

"Clearly, most reporters and editors do not like Bush, and clearly they want to sell as much negative news as possible."

That may simply mean they're paying attention to the facts and, like any good capitalist, they also like their profits.

A couple of days ago (Monday?) in the comment section, I believe, on one of the many blogs I visit, someone posted a list of media personalities who previously worked for Democrat admins/congressmen/senators. I may have gotten to it via a link, but for the life of me I can't find it. Did anyone here see something like that "somewhere"? I knew I should have c/p'd when I first read it....arrggh!!

It's like a revolving door, cardeblu.

Liberal media?
Hell! The media's way too leftist to be called liberal.

The Gail Wynands own the mass media but the Ellsworth Tooheys control them.

Steven Malcolm Anderson et al,

The bastard's full name was "Ellsworth Monkton Toohey". Which made him sound as if he were tagged at birth not only to be a sanctimonious little pig but also to have that vaguely indefineable quality of something vile that sticks to your shoe when you walk along a path in a city park. All through "The Fountainhead", the first time I read it and then re-read it as a young guy, I was sort of expectantly waiting for Gail Wynand to open up one of the windows in his 56th floor office (or whichever floor it was on) and pitch his architectural critic head first to his death on a New York City street some 600 feet straight down. I never could understand why he let that creature live and thrive.

The thing I liked about Ayn Rand and her literary characters is that they either were heroic -- in the mold of what they called "covjek i po" (man and a half) in Serbo-Croatian, or they were scoundrels to be overcome, or wastrels to be ignored. Rand just didn't care for ambiguities, and mostly, neither to I.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Considering how often we demonstrate that they aren't paying attention to the facts, excuse me if I don't think the explanation is that they're just "paying attention."

You're excused, Dean. I have my own favorite "overlooked" facts. It was just a theory. I'm pretty sure about the profit thing, though ;-)

Arnold Harris:

Excellent description of the louse Ellsworth Monkton Toohey (gooey, phooey), propagandist for collectivism in a newspaper owned by a capitalist -- which is the situation of the media today, as well as of the foundations. You're quite right that Wynand should have tossed him out the window. Roark would never have hired the monster in the first place.

Personally, my favorite character in "The Fountainhead" is Dominique Francon, with whom I identify, and some other friends of mine identify with her too. Very complex and richly drawn. Ayn Rand was a great writer, far greater than most of her critics.

Ara Rubyan, you think that the media likes Bush? You're kidding, right?