Monday, December 27, 2010

Thom Hartmann: Mainstream media has been taken over by Conservative ideology

You need to know this. The mainstream media has been taken over by Conservative ideology. A new Pew Research Center Survey studied the media exposure of politicians during the recent midterm elections. What they found was - out of the ten most covered candidates during the election season - the top 3 were all Republicans. And most surprising - Sarah Palin - who essentially has no job and was not running for one - received three times more coverage to spew her talking points than the sitting Vice President Joe Biden. Also - conservative commentators like Glenn Beck received considerably more media coverage than their more liberal counterparts like Keith Olbermann. These findings from the Pew Research Center are similar to a study by MediaMatters back in 2006 that found that Republican talking heads appeared on Sunday morning news shows 58% of the time compared to Democratic commentators appearing only 42% of the time. And finally - reporter Sebastian Jones - with "The Nation" magazine - uncovered at least 75 corporate lobbyists or PR officials that now appear on television political talk shows with no disclosure of what business interests they actually work for. Their job? To do the bidding of their corporate overlords under the disguise of "expert political commentary". So now can we finally put an end to the myth that there is a liberal bias in the mainstream media? And hopefully now start recognizing we need to create new media outlets that aren't beholden to corporate interests or the talking points of their billionaire owners like Rupert Murdoch. Maybe then American will again hear the news they need to know.

-Thom

(Have you noticed this? Tell us here.)

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