by Craig Rhodes

While there are still too many Americans who rely on the corporate media, both national and local, as their go-to source for information, there are signs that it's fast losing its grip as the gate keeper of information. It is none too soon given the failure of the corporate media on nearly every issue of importance now facing our republic.

The cracks became obvious in the run up to the Iraq Invasion and Occupation. When the grand old lady of news organizations, the New York Times, became the mouthpiece of conservatives in promoting war with Iraq through their disgraced senior reporter Judith Miller, it became increasingly evident that the grand old lady was growing long in the tooth. This only added to the already bogus reporting as epitomized by the Jason Blair scandal and his fictitious articles that led to his dismissal.

And to this day the beltway newspaper, the Washington Post, still editorializes a pro-war stance that ignores the reality of the quagmire the U.S. has created by invading Iraq. Added to this is the bias of the AP as epitomized by its Washington bureau chief, Ron Fournier, as well as the Moonie owned UPI and Washington Times. And I won't even go into the extreme right wing bias of Fox News, which serves as a mouthpiece and transcriber for the Republican Party. At this late date, anyone who thinks Fox is fair and balanced is beyond help.

The hemorrhaging networks, NBC, CBS and ABC, have faired no better. With their focus on the salacious, as evidenced by the Stephonopoulis/Gibson moderation of the Obama/Clinton debate, their corporate bias, or their focus on transitory pop culture at the exclusion of more serious issues; the networks have relegated themselves to bit players in the information revolution? At this point, according to ratings, a significant number of Americans have turned off the network screaming heads for more reliable sources of information coming from the internet or even comedy shows like The Daily Show. No wonder that they are becoming news sources of last resort.

This same pro-war, pro-corporate, conservative bias has also made its way into National Public Radio and its sister media outlet the Public Broadcasting Service. It is likely that the appointment of the right wing zealot Kenneth Tomlinson to head the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was the impetus for Public Broadcasting's turn to the extreme right.

On the the national level we have Fox pundits like Mara Liasson and Juan Williams masquerading as senior political reporters for NPR. It's interesting to note that when both of these "reporters" are introduced on their gigs for Fox they are identified as NPR senior reporters as well as Fox commentators. However, when introduced on NPR they are only introduced as NPR senior staff while their roles as Fox pundits are disingenuously ignored.

Juan Williams, because of his lap dog deference, is Cheney's go to reporter for his rare interviews and Liasson's reporting is laced with none too subtle promotion of conservative ideology. Neither can be taken serious and by consequence one has to listen with some skepticism to NPR reportage in general. Add to this NPR's promotion of all things corporate, whether it be nuclear power, "clean coal", agribusiness, military industrial complex etc. and it is obvious that Public Broadcasting has been co-opted like the other mainstream media.

This scenario is not just relegated to the national media but has also worked its way down to regional and local media. The Paxton Media Group's Paducah Sun is an example.

Two unnamed inside sources working for the Paxtons have told us that loss of revenues have resulted in the Paducah Sun cutting staff to the bone. Senior staff are now doing the job of junior reporters who've been laid off. And while the Paducah Sun has many serious, hard working journalists in its employ, the fact that their editorial staff write some of the most extreme, ultra conservative editorials in the nation as well as their history of editing their ultra-conservative bias into otherwise legit articles; their present predicament was inevitable.

I monitor the Paducah Sun under the dictum that if you don't know your opponent's argument then you don't know your own but most people I know have finally given up on them because of their editorials. No wonder they're going broke. I suspect that the Paxton Media Group's days are numbered and expect McClatchy, Gannet or the equivalent thereof to buy them out in the future.

Moreover our local NPR outlet, WKMS-FM, provides an outlet for conservative hate-mongering in order to appear "fair and balanced". This is the "Fox" excuse they gave last week for allowing commentator Richard Nelson to use the airwaves for his bigotry. At the same time they stonewall any commentator who dares take their crony corporate sponsors to task. Meanwhile they extend their high pressure fund raising from a week to months for ever more money without any sign of improvement over their local news coverage.

The upshot is that we are witnessing a revolution in the media and how the public is informed. This revolution is being driven by the internet which is placing the power of information gathering into the hands of ordinary citizens. And while we have to remain vigilant in order to prevent corporate control of the internet, I hope that over time a neutral internet will loosen the hold of the corporate media over what we view or read. In other words, we're witnessing the democratization of information.

In the end, Senator Al Gore, who was responsible for writing and pushing through the legislation that made the internet available to the American public, will have the last laugh over the corporate media that was complicit in subverting democracy in 2000 at the expense of our nation and the world.

Craig