The Lamestream Media Cling to the Old Models

There are days when I'm in full political-junkie mode. I go to RealClearPolitics, and right-click all the headlines that interest me, queuing them up in a row of tabs across my browser.

Sometimes I'm incensed to find that one of the tabs has started blasting me with recorded video, that I'm not ready to listen to. It's usually very easy to see which one is the culprit. I look for a little lamestream media logo, like ABC. I go to the tab, and more often than not just close it. I want control over my viewing methods and choices. They want to control the horizontal and the vertical.

Not in my browser!

Then there's the matter of the institutionalized bias that I find in almost all of their stories. They play this game where they pretend that they're even-handed and objective. <snort> To be "even" and "balanced" you have to pick a balance point. And the formerly mainstream media has picked a balance point that's somewhere buried in the left side of the spectrum.

To me, it looks like their worldview bias is so ingrained that they can't even see it. Oddly enough, people on the right in this country have an easier time seeing their own bias, because so many of the public institutions are on the left side--the formerly-mainstream media, the government schools, the universities--that most people on the right are constantly reminded of the the viewpoint of the other side.

Oddly, it's seems easier to live a life with a leftist worldview and no contact at all with those on the other side. I've lived almost my entire life in some of the most "liberal" (i.e. leftist) communities in the country, so maybe my experience here wouldn't be valid in other areas of the country. But one of the reasons for this leftist isolation is that some people of a leftish persuasion won't even talk to you if you express an opinion that's not politically acceptable (to them). They'll walk away. They'll avoid you and scowl at you. This doesn't make for a comfortable atmosphere in which to share alternative viewpoints.

It's a kind of coercion of consensus. And consensus is important to the left, because it's the basis on which they adopt their rather arbitrary list of beliefs.