I haven’t been beating the drums over the FCC’s proposed rules to allow even more media consolidation, but it’s gaining a reasonable amount of attention. This article raises an interesting question:
Here’s a quiz for you: Name the best-known and most influential conservative commentators in America? Rush Limbaugh? George F. Will? Bill O’Reilly? Now, quick, who are their liberal counterparts?
If you can’t think of any, you’re not alone. Conservatives love to rant that liberals dominate the news media. Trouble is, it’s just not true. In fact, I’d argue that the biggest problem with America’s public discourse today is that the left is barely represented at all on mainstream TV and radio talk shows and in major newspapers and magazines.
Via Rhetoric & Rhythm (permalinks bloggered), a left-leaning blogger from San Antonio who digs baseball. He goes on in his subsequent post to list some liberal voices, which leads me to ponder which of these people would you most like to see on the air, and which unlisted liberals would you like to tune in to. Leave a comment with your nominations.
Meanwhile, the Economist looks at how radio frequencies are allocated and what the future may hold there. If I were convinced that the spectrum is not really a scarce resource, I’d feel a lot less apprehensive about whatever mischief Michael Powell is up to.
Opinion journalists and commentators represent a small subset of the “news media” if they are properly considered part of that group at all. Surely the blogger you cite doesn’t mean to suggest that because conservative opinion journalists are well represented (even predominant), all news media is therefore dominated by conservatives? Yet it seems to suggest just that.