Local Media Are Just Followers of the MSM

Here are some honest words describing the typical hometown news rag.

That there is indeed a striking uniformity of opinion in chain-owned newsrooms over at least the first and third items is almost beyond dispute. Stories about crimes committed by illegals almost never get around to telling us that the criminals involved are indeed illegals, or how they managed to stay here for months or years. The "sympathy salsa" gets taken off the shelf just about any time an illegal faces deportation. Reports on environmental issues lean heavily towards the assumption that global warming is occurring (Really? Note that the report is in an English newspaper), is a big problem, and that anyone who doesn't buy in can't be taken seriously.

It doesn't help that in certain areas, most notably business coverage, even at the state level, the chain locals, and most other locals, are at the mercy of relentlessly biased outlets like the Associated Press, Bloomberg, and Reuters.

The tragedy is that while the top-tier blogs and talk radio are filling in many of the cavernous gaps in national coverage, local and state news, which is often at least as biased, both in what is reported and in the choice of what isn't, is subject to less overall and certainly less influential scrutiny. Perhaps this will change as more downsized/early-retired Old Media refugees join the blogosphere (Daily Bellwether blogmeister Bill Sloat is one such person) and other forms of alternative media, they will see how bad it is from the outside looking in, and fill in the gaps. Someone surely needs to.

From my area perch, local newspapers devote an inordinate amount of column-inches to save-the-planet, recycling, clean water, clean air, blah, blah, blah, environmental stories, all with the premise that Earth is on the path to destruction.

Much of the remaining space is then hogged by pet reports -- cuddly pets, life-saving pets, stray pets, pets at the pound, blah, blah, blah .... and pleas for money for the fire department, the rescue squads, the schools, blah, blah, blah. All the while, I live in an area that is becoming crowded with illegal aliens but you wouldn't know it by reading the local newspaper. No, everyone is busy saving the planet and the pets.

Frankly, the hometown rag long ago ceased being a regular read.