David Limbaugh

Call me paranoid, but I smell a growing move afoot among the declining liberal media oligopoly to push for government intervention to rescue them from their waning influence. They are merely laying the foundation now, but I suspect more will follow in the relatively near future.

Only close-minded liberals would deny that liberals enjoyed a virtual monopoly in the major media, say, from the sixties until fairly recently. But they have watched it slip away since the advent of conservative talk radio, the Internet and now Fox News, and they're beginning to panic.

They dominated (and still do) the editorial boards of most of the nation's influential daily newspapers. They controlled (and still do) the three major television networks, including their news departments and anchors. Check the voluminous data provided at mediaresearch.org under "Media Bias Basics." No space here to set it all out, but the objective evidence is powerful and unarguable.

Their bias is palpable, permeating their news selection and content so seamlessly they might not even realize it's there. Indeed the eeriest revelation of Bernard Goldberg's Bias <read review> was the elite media's obliviousness to their bias. They don't see their liberalism as bias, but objectivity. To them the only ones guilty of bias are those who deviate from their objective norm, namely conservatives. (By the way, how can people so devoid of self-criticism operate as watchdogs over anything, much less themselves?)

The media elite are not used to competition. Liberal politicians, pre-Rush, were not used to much media accountability. But all that has changed. The jig is up, and they don't like it. (Remember Bill Clinton's pathetic complaint from the bowels of Air Force One that it was unfair there was no "truth detector" to compete with Rush Limbaugh's three hours a day? Transparency didn't suit him too well.)

Rush started and continues to power an avalanche. Strong Conservative voices, like Sean Hannity, are emerging all over -- and they're succeeding in the marketplace of ideas. Meanwhile, liberals have made excuses for their failures. Their first one was that talk show audiences consist of angry white guys and liberals just don't fit that description. Actually they do, but that's beside the point. In fact, Rush's listeners and those of many other conservative hosts are intelligent, informed and of good cheer.

David Limbaugh


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