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The problem is when unknown, writes and unknown story, with an unknown bias. After 2000 when the mainstream was really alterted to this kind of thing the excuse by news execs was that well it exsisted but it was unconcious
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jesus.
1. you are confusing the structural problem of major media, with its reliance on wire service stories that get picked up and echoed without change from paper to paper, with questions concerning political stance.
the mass media as echo chamber is an obvious effect of the concentration of ownership of media outlets and the strategies of consolidation this concentration entailed---you know, the "new and improved" management ideologies of vertical integration, the treatment of information as a commodity like any other (like hamburgers, like little plastic elvises full of tapwater from graceland, destined to become one of your most treasured possessions)-----this is a structural feature of how mass media in the united states is now organized, and the problems it creates cut across ideological divisions---if you are a free marketeer, you have nothing to say about this effect of the rational unfolding of capitalist markets. if you are a tv news executive, of course you have nothing to say about it either--whence the "unconscious" remark---by the way, is that anything like an accurate quote? it seems unusually stupid...
2. i do not see your point concerning "unknown unknowns" writing "unknown known" stories. would you prefer total stasis in the production of information? the same old farts writing the same stuff over and over until they keel over, just so the informational universe you inhabit comes without interpretive problems? INFORMATON REQUIRES CRITICAL READING even if you know the old fart producing it. even when walter cronkite was on the air and people trusted him as if he wrote the stories he read (alert ustwo: news anchors are talking heads--they do not write their own copy--think ted baxter) you still had to think critically about the infotaiment you were being handed---that cronkite's paterfamilias demeanor was reassuring means nothing in this regard.
the only problem with having to read critically is that it inconveniences the lazy.
3. in order to plow the fields later planted with rightwing propaganda, it has been convenient for conservatives to latch onto anything and everything they can that encourages a kind of facile cynicism about the mainstream media. teh word facile is important in this regard because were it other than facile, you would not be persuaded of some hallucinatory "liberal bias" in the mainstrean press. the only reason such a claim is compelling is because it is easy--it is handed to you by right pundits--it is never explained, the claim never holds up to systematic scrutiny--luckily for the right, they have the good mr. baltzell to reinforce the empty claim of "liberal biais"--host has been posting alot about this particular rightwing toady of late----but i would be really surprised if you read any of it ustwo, protective of your scrolling finger as you appear to be when it comes to anything host posts.
elphaba: thanks. i think this appearance of unanimity was a major sellingpoint for the dittoheads during the clinton period. right radio lost much of its purchase once the right was no longer in opposition, and the power of these claims dissolved along with it. i would expect to hear new versions of it once the right is in opposition again, which it will be, and that not a day too soon.