In
the early days of blogging there was a blog called Oh, that liberal
media, which regularly exposed instances of liberal media bias. In fact
in the early days of blogging that was one of the top achievements of
the blogosphere, to point out the easy political bias most supposedly
objective news sources engaged in. I used to think that the blogosphere
would serve as a necessary corrective to the media, but that hasn’t
happened.
In recent years, I don’t think that the criticism has had the same
effect, even if in some ways the media cocoon has worsened.
I
think that conservative media critics have convinced all those who can
be convinced of the bias and now either people accept the bias because
they agree with it or look to alternative news sources because they
don’t trust the MSM. And the MSM started paying less attention to the
criticism. Most of those who were persuadable have been persuaded. (As
far as those who deny that such bias exist … it’s hard to deny when
prominent journalists have boasted of the bias.)
But I still believe that it’s possible for the media to jump the shark.
At some point the media will show that they are so hopelessly out of
touch with most voters, that even non-ideological types would cease to
believe them.
Glenn Reynolds’ op-ed Monday in USA Today makes me wonder if the media
may have just reached that point with the front page New York Times
editorial over the weekend calling for confiscation of all guns
in the
wake of last week’s San Bernardino terror attack.
In his op-ed Reynolds (Instapundit) wrote that there’s a very good
reason that President Obama and his supporters may want to focus
on
something other than the Middle East, the economy or personal safety:
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