The Stout Republican

Alicia Colon’s editorial called “The Mendacity of the Liberal Press” in the New York Sun today states:

I pity the Americans who do not have the computer expertise to access the exposés of lies of corrupt politicians and gullible television anchors, biased newspaper headlines, and anything from the Associated Press. If it were not for the Internet and Lucianne Goldberg’s Web news forum, I would never learn the truth behind the Times headlines as pitched by the Drudge Report.

Matt Drudge, who may or may not be a willing accomplice to the distortion of news reporting, must be held responsible for the dissemination of the bias in the liberal press. Studies have shown that the readership of the Times is down — as it is in other liberal publications — and so are the television ratings of the alphabet networks and CNN and MSNBC, while Fox News is up.

Nevertheless, the propaganda of the enemedia — an excellent descriptive term coined by one poster to Lucianne.com — continues to sully news coverage, thanks to Mr. Drudge. A study of press bias by a professor of political science at the University of California-Los Angeles, Tim Groseclose, listed the Drudge Report as one of the most liberal sites on the Web because it consistently posts articles from left-of-center sources.

Now Matt Drudge is generally conservative. As any listener to his weekend show would know, he falls reliably conservative, occasionally libertarian, but should he be held accountable for the media bias?

I say no. It’s very seldom that Drudge offers his own editorials, and it’s usually reflected in the attention getting headlines. As the lazy man’s Google equivalant of a news source, sans the requirement of entering a search word, Drudge simply showcases current political, social, and entertainment events. The stories already exist in traditional media sources, and are just linked through. This isn’t “new” news…the Groseclose study noted that Drudge was left of center, simply because he cited sources from major media, which were even more left of center:

The only Internet journalist put through the ringer, Matt Drudge and his popular “DrudgeReport,” was just left-of-center, with a rating of 60.4.

…

A paradox, noted Barro, was that the major media is even more biased to the left than Democratic members of Congress.

“Thus,” he said, “if the political opinions of viewers, listeners, and readers are similar to those of their elected representatives, the political leanings of most of the media are far to the left of those of most of their customers.”

So the media is even further left than the majority of elected Democrats…weird.

The irony Ms. Colon…is the fact that your slam on Drudge will now probably be absorbed and pondered on my more readers than any other editorial you’ve written, simply because Drudge deemed it link-worthy. It isn’t all bad then is it. The dominant liberal media composed of ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and PBS is what led to the slightly right leaning FOX…which now dominates the ratings…maybe Liberal Bias could be a thing of the past, then we can hear the Liberals complain (more than they do now at the mere existence of Fox) about how their status quo is being threatened. Meh….

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