|
Honestly, there's not an overall bias or some conspiracy. It's a matter of corporations being squeamish about ratting out their friends or reporting something unpopular, and journalists bringing their own particular biases to their work. Any journalist that says he or she is 100% objective is either lying or doesn't understand him or herself.
After 9/11, it was financially prudent to back the wartime president. The last thing they wanted was to be labeled unpatriotic... and there's a lot of money in patriotism. Those few media members that dared speak up were, just as predicted, labeled as un-American or unpatriotic (two completely meaningless terms), and were marginalized as the acquiescing media outlets gladly gobbled up information from the wartime administration. I wish I could have seen the looks on their faces as millions of Americans protested against the war back in 2003. I'm sure they were doing advertising math, trying to pick sides, all along many journalists were falling into the same trapping of vengeance that many people were feeling.
Fast forward, and we see that wartime corporate position slowly morphed into the status quo for many because it was quite profitable. From there, corporate interests aligned themselves with either progressives (centrists, actually) or conservatives because there's a lot of money to be made in the us-vs.-them game. Just look at sports.
Is there a conservative media bias? Kinda. There are generally two camps, centrists that think they're liberal, and right-wing extremists that think they're right-center. In reality this averages out to a conservative bias, but it's a bit of an oversimplification.
|