Drinking the Liberal Bias Kool-Aid
The Record of Hackensack is going ahead with its probe of nefarious LIBERAL BIAS.
Research uncovered for editors the startling fact that some people who believe the Record is liberal. Imagine that. Vague, unsupported shouts of “liberal bias!” The Record surely is the first newspaper to face this charge.
Where have these editors been? There is a very small, but very vocal, minority of readers at every paper who attribute anything they dislike about the paper to “liberal bias.” It’s and empty, meaningless phrase. Never mind that most papers blindly printed pro-war propaganda in their news columns, print attacks against Barack Obama in their news columns while giving Republicans a pass and now are picking up John McCain’s diversionary “congressional earmarks” cry in the name of investigative journalism.
Never mind that papers overwhelmingly endorsed George Bush on their editorial pages and print conservative op-ed columns far more often than liberal thought. Never mind all that. A few chants of “liberal bias,” and clueless editors respond by becoming even more conservative, alienating the majority of their potential marketplace.
Newspapers are not dying because of the internet. They’re dying because they have lost their audience, particularly their younger, better-educated readers. You know the type: Liberals.
Forget politics. This obsession with becoming more conservative is bad business.
So drink the Liberal Bias Kool-Aid, Record editors. The rest of us will watch one more newspaper continue in its death spiral.
