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Spokane, Washington's Spokesman-Review featured an article yesterday on America's failing news business.
"America’s local news outlets are in crisis and in search of a new business model, forced to cut staff or close altogether amid rising costs and falling revenue."
"But two proposals to Congress, backed by Northwest lawmakers, Democrat Maria Cantwell, and Republican Dan Newhouse, are being touted as possible cures for a dying news media."
It's stunning that the news media fails to face the facts, and are instead, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, as the ship called "news media" continues to sink.
Be informed, not misled.
The Spokesman-Review begins with this:
"The Local Journalism Sustainability Act, introduced in 2021 by Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Democrat, and GOP Rep. Dan Newhouse of Sunnyside would use tax credits to let news outlets hire more journalists and help subscribers and advertisers pay for their services. Those measures could offer a temporary lifeline while another bill, the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, would let news publishers negotiate to get fair compensation for the content they create."
The solution, according to these public servants, is to hire more journalists and pay them more money.
The Spokesman-Review story recognizes that news and ad revenue has moved from the printed to the webpage and that Google, Facebook, and others are replacing the newspaper as the primary source for their news.
The story notes that local US newspapers have lost 40,000 jobs in the last 15 years "and according to Pew Research" the Online news outlets have only partially filled the gap.
Danielle Coffey, executive vice president and general counsel at the News Media Alliance, said the most fundamental problem facing the news industry is the way Facebook and Google have siphoned ad revenue with little recourse for news outlets. Over the past decade, she said, online audiences have grown tenfold, yet revenue has fallen by half.
While this story focuses on "local" newspapers, the epidemic ailing the news media, in general, exists in both local and national news.
It's biased to the extreme---to the core.
"Science" claims journalists are not biased.
In a lengthy published study, "Science Advances" reports this:
"Is the media biased against conservatives? Although a dominant majority of journalists identify as liberals/Democrats and many Americans and public officials frequently decry supposedly high and increasing levels of media bias, little compelling evidence exists as to (i) the ideological or partisan leanings of the many journalists who fail to answer surveys and/or identify as independents and (ii) whether journalists’ political leanings bleed into the choice of which stories to cover that Americans ultimately consume."
Are they kidding?
Science Advances admit that 78% of journalists are liberal, while only 21.97% are conservative, 78.23% are Democrat and 21.77% are Republican.
Then they take a deep dive into why none of this matters in regard to the authenticity of news that is published to the American people.
Why would Maria Cantwell, Dan Newhouse, and other public servants believe that hiring more of the same, and paying them more money would save the failing news media?
Cantwell would believe it because the news media is a significant support structure for President Biden and the Democrat Party.
Does Dan Newhouse honestly believe that hiring, say 10 more journalists with taxpayer dollars will change anything when 8 of the 10 will likely be far-left, Democrats? And their bias will bleed through to what they report, and how they report it.
Pages of research of this kind by Science Advances conclude:
Regardless of the exact reasons for a lack of ideological bias, our results provide concrete evidence that counters popular narratives by political pundits, academics, and even President Trump himself. Despite repeatedly claiming that the media chooses to cover only topics that are detrimental to his campaign, presidency, and followers, we find little evidence to comport with the idea that journalists across the United States are ideologically biased in choosing what political news to cover.
That's the "science" the Left loves to follow. And yes, they actually said that.
Recent media bias.
There are at least a thousand examples of media bias that most of us would recognize, but let me share two, that we will all remember.
Hunter Biden's laptop.
Remember when the owner of a small computer repair store called the FBI to report he had a laptop that Hunter Biden left for repair, and never returned to pay for and pick up?
We all remember but had the media had the last word, none of us would have ever known about it.
There was active collusion between Democrat Party officials, the media (print and broadcast), and Big Tech working in concert to bury that story which was about to break just before the last presidential election.
Now, two years after the election with President Biden inserted into the White House, the story has finally seen the light of day.
This act is called "gatekeeping"--- keeping stories hidden from the public by blocking most public distribution.
Two years later, the New York Post says, "These and other information purveyors owe us---not just this paper, but this country---restitution for what looks like the most egregious and willful fake-news scam of our time."
This united effort killed a story that affected at least 8% of voters who said they voted for Biden but would not have done so had they known about the laptop and the details of Biden family corruption before the election. Much of which was revealed on Hunter's laptop.
Not only did the media consortium block the story, but they also labeled it "Russian misinformation."
Assassination attempt on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Bill Maher is a comedian and talk show host well known to late-night TV audiences. He now has a podcast and a show on HBO.
As you can imagine, he is neither a conservative nor a Republican.
The other night he sounded more like the conservative Media Research Center that tracks down the lies put forward daily by the "news media."
Last week he called out the New York Times for burying the assassination plot against Justice Kavanaugh. He said,
"If this had been Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, or Jackson Brown---the media would have been all over it. It would have been front-page news. It would have also spawned endless segments about how conservatives are domestic terrorists. Instead, the paper buried it"...deep inside the back pages.
He later tweeted: "The New York Times buried this. If this had been a liberal Supreme Court justice someone came to kill, it would've been on the front page...They wear their bias on their sleeves and if it's not part of something that feeds our narrative, [explitive] it.'
These two incidents reflect what happens in our news media day in and day out in America.
Takeaway
Danielle Coffey says, according to the Spokesman-Review, "Quality local news coverage in communities across our country, that's what's at stake."
Noting the critical importance of local news in reporting about health issues, schools and businesses, she claims all this is "about information to ensure a functional democracy that newspapers have always provided historically, for hundreds of years."
I understand the importance of local news, but how will hiring two more journalists with taxpayer dollars "ensure a functional democracy" if it's nothing more than two more echoes of the far-left agenda reverberating across the hills and lakes of North Idaho---or the wheat fields of eastern Montana? Or the ultra-liberal San Juan Islands? Or the Royal City Register?
It's an 8 in 10 chance the new reporters will be far left.
I understand how this works for Maria Cantwell and her far-left constituents, but how does this work for Dan Newhouse? And his constituents?
Although their research affirms the narrative that the media is not biased. The research report itself confirms the deep bias that exists in our news media---by swearing in the name of science "there is no bias."
Colossians 2:8: "Beware lest any man spoil [mislead or decieve] you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, not after Christ."
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Engaged. Be Prayerful.