Harken

In the time that I've spent reading things on the internet, it seems clear to me that "The situation is getting no international press coverage," or "the mainstream/liberal/conservative media won't cover this" are simply shorthands for: "This isn't generating the response that I think it should, so people obviously aren't be informed of it." In my own experience, it's rare to find a story that "the media" is supposedly ignoring that doesn't immediately turn up in the recent archive the first two or three major news outlets I investigate. Those that don't commonly fall into one of three primary categories; items that are more conjecture or opinion than factual reporting, limited interest stories with relatively low relevance outside of a particular niche and things that are simply out-of-date.

But the idea that "the Media" commands the public's attention, in the sense that it can literally dictate what people do and do not pay attention to, dies hard, perhaps because it's such a convenient way of understand why things that are so important to certain people aren't at all on the radar of everyone else. Some of this is a sense of superior intellect and sensitivity. It's fairly simple, I would think, if others are easily lead astray and "distracted," that they must not be as intelligent or discerning. And so not only is the self-professed media watchdog more upstanding and ethical than the editors and owners of the media outlets they disdain, but they're smarter, wiser and/or more "awake" than the general public. And perhaps this sense of virtue is what keeps the idea going.

Not that there isn't media bias, of course. Media bias and a general bent to story selection are common. My favorite example is National Public Radio; they seem to have never encountered a story about a hardworking, but undocumented, immigrant jeopardized by America's immigration rules that they didn't like. But for me, this is a function of the left-leaning audience that NPR currently has. And to the degree that people who are willing to donate money to the network keep the lights on and the salaries paid, NPR's coverage can be expected to align itself with what prompts those individuals (and organizations) to open their wallets.

And this is my general theory of "media bias." Rather than the media leading the public, the audience leads the media. Sure, a media outlet can get out in front of it's audience. But if it heads off in a direction that the audience wasn't already willing to go, it will find itself alone, and lacking revenue, when it arrives.