If you're looking for some good reasons to go with the feeling in your gut that the corporate newsmedia has so many interconnected conflicts of interest that you shouldn't trust them to tell you the time, much less the truth,
this editorial provides a heck of an overview. Some highlights:
That same day, CNN's parent company, Time Warner, announced the hiring of DeLay's chief of staff as a top Washington lobbyist. This news, and its timing, prompted Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy to tell the L.A. Weekly: "Time Warner aligning itself with the right-wing DeLay machine should send shudders [down] CNN and HBO."
At least that wily old codger Sumner Redstone, head of Viacom, parent company of CBS, has admitted what everyone already knows is true: that, while he personally may be a Democrat, "It happens that I vote for Viacom. Viacom is my life, and I do believe that a Republican administration is better for media companies than a Democratic one."
As for Immelt, he publicly wishes his MSNBC could be a clone of FNC. Not surprising, since he let his network and cable news cheerlead the run-up to the Iraqi war without ever bothering to tell viewers GE had billions in contracts pending. More than half of Iraq's power grid is GE technology.
Disney, parent company of ABC, has turned most of its extensive radio network and owned-and-operated stations into a 24/7 orgy of right-wing talk. (Sean Hannity is their poster boy.)
Plenty more there to think about, too.
Every time I hear talk of a blogger ethics conference, I laugh so hard my stigmata starts acting up. If we want the newsmedia to get back to reporting news -- and I mean actual, politically sensitive news, not breathless on-the-scene reports from whatever stagelit tropical scene White Girl Number 23 has disappeared from this week -- we need to surgically detach the news organizations from the conglomerates that have subsumed them.