From e-mail - While I might agree that "the free flow of information," as you put it, is in the best interests of a free society, what the media spews out day after day is very biased, very one-sided. ...the U.S. media is controlled by the liberal ideas of big business.Although I agree that big business--in this case, conglomerates--control the major media outlets, the concept of "liberal" is worth taking a moment to examine. Most big business tycoons, as well as the men and women who sit on their board of directors, are pretty conservative in their personal thinking—in some cases ultra-conservative. While these people obviously call the shots in terms of major decisions, it's interesting that their conservative ideas don't seem to end up in program content, or don't seem to be reflected in network and station programming decisions. The reason, which is based on maximizing profits, is discussed in some detail here. The possible exception to this is in news, where people seem to show a preference for "news they agree with." This is also discussed in this article.
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