The Leftmedia's Broken Monopoly

Agence France Presse revealed this week that the U.S. newspaper industry lost more than 50% of the jobs it had as recently as the 1990s. Unsurprisingly, AFP attributed the decline to the “massive shift to digital media that has hammered traditional newspapers.” No doubt that is a factor, but the comments section following the article was much more revealing. Overwhelmingly, those who gave up reading newspapers cited two reasons for their decision: liberal bias and the virtual extinction of anything resembling journalistic integrity.

Unfortunately, liberal bias and a lack of journalistic integrity have moved seamlessly into the digital realm. Yet far more important is what was unable to completely survive the shift: the Left’s monopolistic control of news dissemination. Gone are the days when the Big Three TV networks, and a handful of “important” newspapers such as the New York Times and Washington Post, made it seem as if the entire nation were marching in lockstep behind the liberal agenda.

That is not to say they’ve given up trying. “For the two and a quarter centuries of our republic, Americans have expected the fourth estate to tell it raw and straight,” writes columnist John P. Warren. “In the lifetime of Baby Boomers, however, the Progressive Establishment, abetted by most news and information outlets — State Media — and Academia, have distorted our founding truths in much of what we hear and watch, not unlike the Soviet Union’s Pravda and China’s People’s Daily.”

Exaggerated?

Warren provides a compelling and disturbing list of the top five media conglomerates and their subsidiaries: