[Jeff Higgins]

It's clearly not the image our press want to portray for its target audience. I'm developing a bit of a theory about this, so hang with me for just a minute.

Any form of mass media today is all about business; the bottom line. That bottom line is entirely dependant upon the advertising dollars they are able to generate. Advertisers expect something for their investments in media air time and print space; increased sales. Pretty simple stuff; we all understand the relationship.

Now look at the "quality" of today's mainstream media, from TV to print. It's all targeted at about a late grade school stage of intellectual developement. The programming, printed articles, and advertising all share this trait. The "news" that is slotted in between all of this is as well. It's targeted at the same short attention span audience. An audience that either can't or won't digest anything deeper than the superficial. The really big bucks mass marketing is targetted at this largely non-thinking (except what the media tells them) audience. One has to stray well off the beaten path to come up with "smarter" media and advertising.

I think what we are seeing is not so much a media that is attempting to shape peoples' views, as a media that is catering to the views that are already in place. The views of its target audience. The views of a shallow population that can be unwittingly manipulated into buying things they don't need or really want, thus supporting the big advertisers. They present information to this audience in their "news" that will keep them watching (and buying). "News" that will shock them, but "news" they agree to be true. No one keeps watching if they think the "news" is b.s.; they have to be able to sit there and think "yeah, I knew it..."

In the end it all fits. The slant of the major news media reveals its target audience. They are after some one that mindlessly sits on the couch, absorbing but not analyzing or questioning. Easily influenced and molded (by the advertisers). Pre-teen stage of mental development. They are after non other than the modern liberal.

The modern liberal hates the war, Bush, and anything to do with either. Modern media does not want to awaken him from his stupor long enough to pick up the remote and change channels. If the media presented us as winning, or anything positive at all about the war, our liberal would quickly call "b.s." and change the channel. He does not want good news from Iraq. It makes him feel bad. When he feels bad, he changes the channel and no longer buys from your advertisers. No one can disrupt the little world he has built for himself; he already knows how things are and won't be disuaded from his views.

So where is the conservative during all of this? Certainly not watching the fifth grade level mass media that so absorbs his liberal neighbor. The media realizes this and long ago qit even trying to target an audience that has better things to do. Conservatives are too busy working and contibuting, rather than sitting on their collective fat a$$es on the sidelines. They don't have nearly the time for mindless entertainment that the spoiled, kept liberals do. They are far more selective in what they watch and what they read; the fifth grade stuff no longer holds their interest.

So that is my theory on why you will not see this kind of reporting (as a general rule) in the major media. Their audience simply won't tolerate it.