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I'd like to make a few observations as someone who works inside the belly of the corporate media beast:

1. I have no respect for Gannett for a lot of different reasons. Chief among them is that a while back they came out with guidelines for their reporters stipulating that a certain number of people cited in stories had to be minorities. Their idea of "diversity" is the assumption that skin color and not knowledge/insight/experience with the topic at hand is what makes for a good source. Aside from that Gannett papers are all cookie cutter rags that are produced on the cheap with about as much regard for the the uniqueness of the communities they "serve" as a McDonald's franchise.

2. Anyone familiar with the media who claims that they have been deferential to any Republican administration since Ike, is either so liberal that their idea of a centrist is Phil Donahue, or they are being deliberately disingenous.

3. The consolidation of the news media into a small group of owners is, in fact, a cause for concern but not because of the reasons Krugman is talking about. One big problem is that it makes them lazy. Instead of hustling to beat the competition, they come to rely on press releases and whatever a spokesperson tells them. It also leads to a sense of groupthink and clubbiness among the few reporters that do "compete" against each other. That's why the Washington press corps is so useless, and becoming ever moreso.

And at the risk of sounding like a liberal, these new synergy conscious news divisions that are part of conglomerates do in fact become corporate shills for their home office. Think you'll ever hear any news of a Disney boycott to come out of Peter Jennings' mouth? Or how about the way the cast of Time Warner/HBO's "Sex & The City" shows up on the cover of Time Warner's alleged "news" magazine Time. You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe that you aren't going to get proper news coverage from an entity that makes most of its money from selling things other than the news. (e.g. Disney, Newscorp., Viacom, GE, AOL Time Warner, etc.)

And at the risk of sounding like a liberal, these new synergy conscious news divisions that are part of conglomerates do in fact become corporate shills for their home office.

I agree with 90% of your analysis, but I think your mention of shilling proves, not disproves, the liberal bias.

Look at your example of a Disney boycott. Lately, whenever I read of an actual or contemplated Disney boycott, it is because of either (a) Disney's pro-gay polices; or (b) Disney's dedication to selling near pornography (Britney Spears, Christina Aguilara) to elementary school kids. In other words, the corporations they are shilling for are selling products that are decidedly anti-conservative.

And at the risk of sounding like a liberal, these new synergy conscious news divisions that are part of conglomerates do in fact become corporate shills for their home office.

Well, there's nothing neither new nor partisan about that, though in the newspaper business it was more common to see interlocking dircectorships between members of large corporations and those controlling the operations of newspaper and media chains.

One of the better examples was that of Central Newspapers Inc, holder of controlling interest in the old Pulliam Family newspaper chain of mostly Indiana and Arizona, including those run by Dan Quayle and his adopted brother Mike. When a Louisville gunman on the *murder drug* Prozac massacred several of those busy printing the Louisville Courier Journal's next-door press shop, details about previous murderous incidents involving the drug [that included the bizarre suicide of one of the drug's developers by hanging himself, naked in Hoosier National Forest, after burning the contents of his wallet as tinder, possibly trying to burn the entire forest down] that might have hurt the bottom line of the drug's Indianapolis manufacturer, Eli Lily & co.

After all, since several of the members of the Board were also members of the BOD of Eli Lily, they were in a very convenient position to keep anything embarassing from seeing print in their monopoly newspapers.

And since George Bush [senior] was one of those members of the Eli Lily BOD after he left his position as CIA director in 1977 [see Bush's financial disclosure statement to include his 1979 Tax report and the article Bush Tried to Sway a Tax Rule Change But Then Withdrew in the NY Times, 19 May 1982 regarding Bush's continued pressure to get special tax breaks for drug companies [Eli Lily] manufacturing their products in Puerto Rico...until personally ordered to cease doing so by the supreme court in 1982. But Lily continues to receive a 23% tax break for their companies who make drugs distributed in the third world, though outlawed for use in the USA.

Of Course, Bush isn't the only political figure so involved...Dan Quayle has also sat on the Lily BOD [and contributed to his political campaigns; which I figured was a fair reason to identify his political operations as *being funded by drug dealers* in a syndicated newspaper column distributed in the Hoosier state...] as well as Indiana's US senator Evan Bayh, whose wife Susan was a Eli Lilly pharmecutecal products attorney from 1989 to 1994, and is at present on the boards of directors of several pharmecutical firms herself, as is Bayh's father, former senator Birch Bayh.

So the problem is nothing new in media circles, nor is it at all directed toward just one political party. They're both bought and paid for.

-archy-/-