Will the failing newspapers be the next industry to receive our tax money?

While a guest on a radio show a few weeks back, a caller asked a question about how the media and leftist government establishment were joined at the hip. In response, I mentioned something I had been pondering. With bailouts all the rage in Washington, said I, it wouldn’t surprise me if the ailing newspaper industry received one in the not-too-distant future. After all, the statists have their three pillars of deceit – the brain trust called academia, the bread-and-circuses culture shapers in entertainment, and the mainstream media – and why would they let their crack public relations arm go bankrupt?

I rendered this prediction in food-for-thought fashion, with all due humility. I’m no Dick Morris – meaning, I’m not in the habit of making predictions that seldom come to pass with the cocksureness of the Oracle at Delphi – so I didn’t sell it as bankable. Well, I bet you can guess what’s coming next.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, a few in the news business had been joking about such a development. And now columnist Michelle Malkin reports that just such a proposal has been floated. She writes:

The Republican governor and the Democratic attorney general of Connecticut went on the record last week in support of government intervention for failing local newspapers. . . . Attorney General Richard Blumenthal asserted: ‘The newspaper is an information lifeline. It provides really an essential service.’

It certainly does . . . for leftists who need their message reliably disseminated.

This is not to say that all who want newspapers preserved have Machiavellian motivations. For instance, Connecticut Governor M. Jodi Rell touted print’s quaintness, saying, “There's something about having that paper and being able to sit there with your cup of coffee or your tea and read through and find out not only the news but the real feel for a community.”

Now, being a hopeless nostalgist, I can relate. I’m the kind of guy who could probably turn on TV Land or some old black-and-white movies and get lost in the past; that is, if I didn’t have to worry about the troubles of the present. But I do, and those troubles are embodied in the newspaper industry.

The mainstream media long ago abdicated its responsibility to search for and deliver truth and is now just an agent of leftist social change. This has become more obvious than ever with how it was in the tank for Barack Obama during the campaign, and many have dubbed 2008 “the year journalism died.” Yet the truth is that it died long ago, and now, finally, the newspapers’ financial state is starting to reflect their ethical one.

It’s impossible to present even a shadow of the media’s bias in a 1000-word piece, and, really, it is much like what is said about proof of God. For those who understand the media con, no proof is necessary; for those who happily imbibe the Kool-Aid, no proof is sufficient.

And even many who accept the bias’ reality don’t understand the breadth of the problem. For example, Bill O’Reilly once said that the media would win five extra points in the election for Obama.

That’s cute.

I’d say, try 25, but even that doesn’t illustrate the problem. Understand that, along with academia and popular culture, the media has literally reshaped the American mind. So many of our age’s basic suppositions are false, and they imbue our culture largely because of the preaching of our secular media madrasahs.

Their doctrine is everywhere. People largely believe that anthropogenic global warming is a fact, the intersex wage gap is caused by discrimination, semi-automatic rifles are “assault weapons,” the Republican proposals to reduce the rate of spending in the 1990s were “cuts,” our economy is “laissez-faire,” and the “separation of church and state” is in the Constitution, to name just a few examples. (For more, read Walter Williams’ recent piece about national ignorance.) And all these things are untrue.

Yet I feel ridiculous providing examples, because it’s much like using a few specimens of roaches to prove an infestation. People are living in a media/academia/Hollywood matrix, a faux reality in which up is down, left is right and lies are truth. And it is only truly understood once you can step outside of it. Thus, it’s not quite accurate to say that the media might have won Obama 25 points, as this is only true if you accept the media matrix as the default reality. Because if the media had been telling the truth for the last few decades, far better candidates would rise to prominence and the Obamas and McCains of the world wouldn’t be elected dog catcher.

As for bailouts, while I’m against them in principle, the notion of propping up propagandists is particularly galling. Just imagine, the same government that may silence rightist voices on talk radio via the Fairness Doctrine or “localization” rules may subsidize leftist ones in print with tax money.

If such a bailout ever becomes reality, every traditionalist Internet site from JBS.org to AmericanThinker.com to mine should demand its piece of the pie. After all, money equates to exposure, and I’d like a few million to help me spread my message, too.

Barring that, we could also demand such a bailout include the requirement that the leftist media phalanx be broken. After all, given that approximately 86 percent of “elite” journalists have voted for Democrat presidential candidates since 1964, the introduction of some real diversity in the newsroom is long overdue.

Of course, I’m just making a point. I do believe in the separation of press and state, and I’m not sure how free speech is going to be when government is paying for it.

So forget about Uncle Sam picking winners and losers in the journalism business. Congress should make no policy respecting an establishment of media.

Selwyn Duke is a columnist and public speaker whose work has been published widely online and in print, on both the local and national levels. He has been featured on the Rush Limbaugh Show, at WorldNetDaily.com, in American Conservative magazine, is a contributor to AmericanThinker.com and appears regularly as a guest on the award-winning, nationally-syndicated Michael Savage Show. Visit his Website.

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RichardR369 said:

	The First Thing That Needs to DIE!!!! The media needs to fail. Americans have learned to ignore them because of their bias and that industry NEEDS to fail.
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December 16, 2008
Votes: +4

Peter Steele said:

RE: The New York Times The NYT seems to be an anti-American newspaper and it did not give my late father a proper obituary when this great man passed away in 1989 - I dropped the paper and did not want my mother to be given an obituary. The NYT will go out of business for its lies and perfidy - it's FDR's newspaper as I told Dad that FDR was a rat of a President. Human Events is Robert A. Taft's, Barry M. Goldwater, Sr's amd Ronald Reagan's newspaper and Dad, God Bless Him was published in it in 1963 and 1964 - so it is going to get stronger as The New American is to do same for both are God;s media. Peter F. Steele

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December 16, 2008
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Regan said:

Neo-Cons Selwyn Duke is a Neo-Con! Savage is a Neo-Con too! These guys are a perfect example of a wolf (socialist) in sheeps clothing. Non of these guys especially Rush and Savage had anything positive to say if anything about Ron Paul, The Fed and the freedom movement when they had the chance which is everyday they are on the air......... what a sham - shame. The best part of Ron Paul's campaign is he exposed all these talking heads for what they are when they failed to support a true statesman let lone even mention him most of the time.

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December 16, 2008
Votes: -4

fleck said:

There's always a bucket ... We are in a war. A total war. A war of money, a war of souls. A war of munitions, a war of drugs. A war of philosophy and a war of ideas. I don't think it is necessary to put each and every personailty in a bucket. This guy is a neo-con, that guy is a socialist blah blah blah. Selwyn Duke could be a communist for all I know, but he is dead right on this issue. I'll borrow his opinion. I'll assimilate it with all the other ideas that I like. I'll fasten a new weapon with it. Before the war is over, we are all going to be shocked and awed by who we find as allies and the many traitors yet to be uncovered.

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December 17, 2008
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president scaturro said:

	goodbye the US media outlets put out to much trash they play the balme game all the time something must be done before our repubilc looks more stupid
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December 18, 2008
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