Depending on what poll you read, between 40-60% of the public doesn't believe or trust the mainstream media. This trust issue is causing the public to grow frustrated with the media. It resulted in activists staging protests in early November 2013 as part of a coordinated series of demonstrations across the UK and the US known as the "March Against Mainstream Media". The protesters attempted to bring the left-leaning media bias to the public's attention. The protesters had a valid point and the liberal bias is real, organized, and corrupting our country by conditioning Canadians to consider only one point of view.
The thing is, this organized media bias is not a secret. It's just that Canadians have stopped paying attention and questioning what they are being told and by whom. Even with numerous studies in the US confirming this bias, such as the 2002 study by Jim A. Kuypers and the 2005 study by political scientists, Tim Groseclose and Jeff Milyo, and surveys conducted by the American Society of News Paper Editors (in which 61% of reporters stated that they were members of, or shared the beliefs, of the Democratic Party), many still dismiss even the idea of liberal bias in media. But to me, its not just the media bias that's concerning, it's how it's being organized by the left to frame the way we think.
So how does the liberal media organize? Again, this has never been a secret from the public. Even though the liberal media tries to keep their bias and intentions to collectively frame our perspectives off the mainstream radar, they have always left a trail. Liberal "Gatekeeping" is being done today by way of social media. Hundreds of left-leaning reporters/bloggers get together online to discuss which stories to run and what slant they should have. Ezra Klein created the online forum, JournoList, in February 2007, which was one of the first such discussion groups formed with over 400 left-leaning members. After JournoList was shut down in 2010 when it was exposed, a new group calling itself Cabalist was started by Jonathan Cohn of the New Republic. I have no doubt there are more of these left-leaning internet sites set up to make collective decisions about what to write. But, the important message for the public to know is that there is an organized left-leaning media being streamed to them daily by these journalistic groups. Unfortunately, your only defence against this indoctrination is to check the sources and look for alternative opinions, so you can make your own informed judgments.Mainstream liberal media gatekeeping is not new. It's been going on as early as 1922. It's only since the arrival of social media that it has been able to become increasingly sophisticated, pushing the "Third Way", which refers to various political positions that try to reconcile right-wing and left-wing politics. The Third Way was created as a serious re-evaluation of political policies within various, socialist centre-left progressive movements in an attempt to be more attractive to the voting public.
Sadly, I have to say, I don't believe the public will ever get a non-biased media, as long as media sources maintain a culture of left-leaning journalism and make the bulk of their money from advertisers who, in turn, often ask for political favours. The only thing the public can ask is that the media disclose their biases so we can look for the other side of the story and inform ourselves.
Make your voice heard. The protests have begun.
