The Fourth Estate Is Dead

I was reading on Drudge Report about how the Media is going to be covering the upcoming book by former Secret Service agent Gary Byrne, Crisis of Character, which is an unflattering portrayal of the Clinton White House. And because it makes Hillary Clinton look bad, the Media is split on who is covering it. Fox News will cover it, Politico will attack him, and the rest of the broadcast news will blacklist it.

You may no longer read news or watch it on tv and expect that it is objective. It is all about Democrats and Republicans, and extends to any causes espoused by either party. If you want pro-anthropogenic Global Warming stories, go to the Left news sources: MSNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, New York Times,. etc. For anti-anthropogenic Global Warming stories, go to Fox News and independent bloggers with occasional smaller websites covering these stories too. For full coverage, check Drudge Report. Drudge is almost libertarian in their coverage, happily tossing both D's and R's under the bus.

But even Drudge has a problem: When it links to news sources, it is bringing along their bias with the link. Even news aggregators are not immune.

Why is this happening? All of these Media companies are owned by big businesses (market capitalization is shown in parentheses):

--ABC News is owned by Disney. ($161.5 billion) 

--CBS is owned by CBS Corporation. ($24.5 billion)

--Fox News, Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post are owned by News Corp. ($6.6 billion) 

--MSNBC and NBC News are owned by Comcast. ($151.6 billion) 

--New York Times is it's own company. ($1.9 billion) 

--Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon), whose individual net worth is north of $63 billion.

Now consider the campaign donations and lobbying donations of the companies above, along with investments from members of Congress (from Opensecrets.org. Numbers from 2014):

--Disney Co.: $880k donated to campaigns, $3.5 million spent lobbying, stock owned by 31 members of Congress. 

--CBS Corp.: N/A 

--News Corp: $1.0 million donated to campaigns, $5.8 million spent lobbying, stock not owned by any members of Congress. 

--Comcast: $3.9 million donated to campaigns, $17.0 million spent lobbying, stock owned by 25 members of Congress. 

--New York Times: N/A 

--Washington Post: N/A

While half were unavailable, there is enough there to get a fair idea of how crony capitalism has infected the Media. These companies are invested in politics, which is in turn invested in them.

Say what you will about the quality of news bloggers, most of them do not face such an obvious conflict of interest with their news subjects.

So when you see an obvious news story like Gary Byrne's book about the Clintons, and that story is getting ignored by a large portion of the Democratic Party Media, you know what is happening. That isn't just bias, but corporate interest dictating what gets reported. And that corporate interest is determined by politicians, thereby making the Fourth Estate nothing more than a propaganda arm for the Republicans and Democrats. But at least they report the weather and the traffic, right?

(Disclaimer: I am not being paid by anyone except Google for the ads on my blog. And I will happily toss Google under the bus if it drives up my numbers. Just kidding Google! Love ya man!)