Bias in US Media

Fair-minded people everywhere blanch when we see our media going out of its way to ridicule conservatives, e.g., waiting for Jeb Bush to say something that makes him appear dim-witted, while refusing to do the same to Bernie Sanders.  Yet I challenge conservatives everywhere to take a peek at this article and explain how they continue to believe that there is a consistent liberal bias.  

My theory: the media is part of the entertainment industry.  It does what it needs to in order to succeed in this context, and it’s extremely adept in performing its task.  It accomplishes its goals in a variety of ways, one of which is lampooning conservatives as being either unintelligent or mean-spirited.  Yet that is just a sub-category to the center ring of the stage: vigorously promoting the notion that we live in terrifying times, and that we all need to be scared to death, mad as hell, and that our only solace is getting ahead in our consumer world.  They have observed, correctly, that consumption of this “news” content is addictive: we feel angry, afraid, and inadequate–and we crave more input that re-enforces these existing beliefs.  The corporate-owned media (95% of the information that Americans receive comes from one of five enormous corporate entities whose main mission in life is profit) provides us with precisely the information it has calculated to produce this effect.

Of course, we Americans are fortunate in that we don’t live in places like North Korea, where the truth is literally inaccessible.  We Americans who, for whatever reason do not wish to be manipulated are at liberty to pursue other avenues to inform ourselves.  Having said that, anyone who thinks he’s being fairly and objectively informed by mainstream media is a fool.