I'd like to see the numbers, because standard dems reply is that papers are OWNED by reach and filthy republicans. The editorial boards, is a different animal completely. But I'd like to know if the ownership claim has anything in it.
I think that the official Democrat position is that anyone who is stinking rich must automatically be a Republican exploiter of the masses.
But a little investigation reveals that probably the majority of rich people are now Democrats. An odd transformation. The ancient WASP establishment is no more. Yuppies rule the roost. Even the old money families have drifted left, in my experience.
With respect, you both, as well as most folks on this forum, have fallen into the trap of allowing your focus to be misdirected onto the false idea that the political parties, Democrats and Republicans, are the decisive factors in determining national policy. They are merely the tools and puppets of the oligarchical elite which owns and controls them both, as well as the MSM.
Both political parties serve that oligarchy, not the citizens of this country, and whenever the "natives (that's us) become restless" and veer off in directions contrary to their desired agenda, they will always join forces and, with the aid of the Media, lie, distort, demonize, or do whatever else it takes to manipulate and shape "public opinion" to nudge us back into line.
With regards to the specific question of who owns the newspapers and other MSM, the answer is: it's both sides - some are Repubs and some are Dems, but that distinction is a false, meaningless and irrelevant one. The specific term which explicates the true power relationship is called an "interlocking directorate".
If you get copies of the Annual Corporate Reports which all these corporations issue to their stockholders and examine the names which appear on the rolls of the Boards of Directors you will begin to notice some curious "coincidences". Many of the same names which appear as Board of Director members on such supposedly right-wing, Republican controlled corporations as Halliburton will also appear as Board Members of supposedly left-wing Democrat controlled corporations as Time-Warner. With a few acknowledged exceptions, this pattern is replicated throughout the directorships of the major corporations in this country. The same is also true of the Boards of Trustees of the major academic institutions.
What you have is a wealthy, well-connected elite (oligarchy) which is well-entrenched in all the institutions with the actual power to buy and control both the political parties and the Mainstrean Media, and thus the power to determine national policy. The fact that some of these people are Republicans and some of them are Democrats is essentially irrelevant.