Flipper

Flipper

When I was growing up the main-stream media clearly had a right-leaning bias.  Some time around the early 1970's things there flipped dramatically to the left.  I suspect it was a result of the Watergate scandal and Richard Nixon's resignation.  However, the events in Viet Nam and the resulting protests ... along with Walter Cronkite's declaration of our eventual defeat by the Viet Cong ... and the publishing of the Pentagon papers by the New York Times ... all clearly presaged Woodward and Bernstein's triumph.  After that, the media fully realized its transformative powers and believed that its primary mission was bringing about even more social change ... as opposed to just reporting,  This coupled with the Supreme Court's decisions emasculating libel laws gave the U.S. media an extraordinary headwind to port.

The question then poses itself -- when will our media's bias flip back to the right?  (And I can confidently predict that this will happen someday ... the question is, of course, when?)  Clearly the Fox News network and the successes of the right-leaning talk radio (and some blogs) suggests that there is some movement in this direction.  However, the media tally (mostly network news, newspapers, Hollywood, and news magazines) is still overwhelmingly liberal.  My wife posed this very question to me this morning while watching Morning Joe on MS/NBC (which was sans Joe Scarborough, and, thus, a little hard to digest without some antacid tablets ... Mika Brzezinski's continued smirks exacerbated my dyspepsia.)

Over the course of today, I've attempted to answer this question many ways ... perhaps a Democrat scandal of the magnitude of Nixon's ... perhaps when Fox News's ratings match those of the combined network news programs ... perhaps even when a right-slanted movie takes the country by storm (Act of Valor?).  All these things are possible indications, but, upon much reflection, I have come up with what I believe to be the acid test ... that would be when that political chameleon, Arianna Huffington, flips back and, once again, becomes a conservative.