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First that quote: ““What the Founding Fathers envisioned was a Press that was completely independent of politics and not beholden to such interests… ” is the author's, not jennivinson's, and I'm taking issue with the author, not the poster.

Perhaps the author just doesn't write well, and meant to say something like “What the Founding Fathers envisioned was a Press that was completely independent of governmental control.” - which would still be incorrect (for example the Founders never envisioned a rack of Hustlers behind every convince store counter) but at least would be coherent. In fact what they expected – and what they got – was a highly partisan press often closely aligned with “party” interests; this after all was a country and a press that had just experienced a period which valorized the person and works of wildly read Revolutionary Propagandists such as Thomas Paine.

Personally, I'd enjoy lining in a country with a lively and politically diverse mass media of the sort which thrived in print shops of the post Revolutionary America, and perhaps given the “Internet” I'll live to see it.

As for what “happened” to the “Conservative” media, it appears to me that public assess to conservative opinion in the “professional” media has greatly increased in the the last 25 years, to take one example Fox News is clearly well to the “right” of any US Mass Media existent in 1970, another is that political talk radio – which has expanded greatly in influence during this periods – remains on a total listener-ship basis primarily the province of conservative opinion.

This of course begs the question of how it is that we find ourselves in a position where large numbers of both Liberals and Conservatives are convinced that the media distorts reporting in favor of the other's opinions.

The answer, I'd say, is that US mass media primarily represents the interests, concerns and goals of it's corporate ownership, and this ownership while certainly “conservative”” represents only one faction of “conservative opinion”, and that while this opinion is not monolithic, neither is it representative of political opinion at a place like FR. Rupert Murdoch is quite willing to present viewers of Fox's English language news programming with a range of opinion including quite vehement anti-immigration commentary – while at the same time Fox Sports en Espanol continues it's aggressive efforts to expand viewer ship of it's Spanish Language outlets in US markets.

In such a situation a lot of people, both liberal and conservative, start to experience a pretty serious disconnect between their own experience and opinion and the underlying message conveyed by Corporate Media.

As for efforts to suppress political opinion in the mass media, at the moment almost all serious call for such efforts come from the conservatives – for example many commentators here on FR would clearly prefer that the US press operate under something much like Great Britain's Official Secrets Act.

To a certain extent this reflects that fact that with a Republican Administration in office it's mostly Republican Oxes that are getting gored, but to some extent IMO it reflects the fact that many “conservatives”, despite an aversion and distrust toward “big government”, are a bit too ready to let partisan fever blind them to the fact that they may like these powers less when they are vested in a Democratic administration.

it is that we find ourselves in a position where large numbers of both Liberals and Conservatives are convinced that the media distorts reporting in favor of the other's opinions.

No. The answer is that journalism is "conservative" only in the sense that it predictably follows the rules of its own industry. But the rules of that industry are radical, not conservative. As well say that a bank robber is conservative when he follows all the tips he picked up in prison on how to not get caught.
Journalism, with its superficiality, unrepresentativeness, and negativity towards all other businesses, is not at all conservative in the political sense. The only way to have a conservative journalism is to impose censorship. Then all the negativity would vanish, and you would see stories about the abundance of the harvest and how wonderful the government was. Just as we understood to be the case in the USSR.

You are substantially right that the appearance of a conservative media is a relatively new phenomena. That is largely due to a) the end of the "fairness" doctrine, which required every single newscast to be "balanced," allowing the entrenched stations to "balance" the liberal with someone only slightly less liberal. (BTW, studies have shown that the deregulation of TV/radio in the late 1960s also had an interesting effect on religious programming that was almost identical to that of political programming, namely the rapidly growing evangelical/fundamentalist groups suddenly were all over the place, and the dying "mainstream" religious denominations couldn't get on, because they had no money. Once the market takes over---except in politics---you usually see programming the people want.) b) Obviously, technology in the form of the Internet but also Rush's remarkable restoration of AM radio, which had been abandoned as a venue.

Now, the reason money does NOT work in your model---the reason it is NOT "corporate" interests on every side---is that the "news" divisions pride themselves as a profession on being "objective" and unbiased. This dates back to the Civil War, when the partisan press was ditched because of the public's DEMAND for accuracy of battlefield reports, and also because several entrepreneurs figured out that by alienating half the consumers, they were losing money. So a very strict standard of "objectivity" came into play---breached, certainly, from time to time, but overall remaining in place until about 1960. I won't go into why that dissolved.

However, once those restraints (and they were methodological---how reporters gathered information---and structural---how they set up the stories) were lifted, it became fair game to again inject bias into stories through processes known as "framing" and through personalizing all stories with a victim. Again, I repeat, our research, which is not complete, is indicating the BIG SHIFT came well before Vietnam, and certainly before Watergate. In other words, something else in the early 1960s was eliminating the rules that governed journalism.

So here is why the "corporate" view doesn't hold up: if it was JUST about profits, then one would expect to see at least half the stations/newspapers as conservative, with some VERY conservative. We don't. We see, at best, 5-10% of the major media market conservative. Why, when there is so much profit to be made there? The answer is, there really isn't: the major media outlets, just like Hollywood, subsidize their liberalism through unpaid advertising in each other's papers and on each other's shows. Notice that they absolutely refuse to acknowledge FOX, even when it breaks news. That's because to say "ABC has reported," they are giving free advertising to ABC, but they won't help FOX.

This had always stymied me until I saw a column by Jason Apuzzo, of LibertyFilmFestival, on why, in fact, Hollywood is not defying the market with movies like "Brokeback Mountain" or "Syrianna." They DO make some money; they are very cheap to make; and they get pheonomenal amounts of free advertising in the MSM via "reviews" and on "ET," and so on. Annually, this comes to BILLIONS of dollars in advertising that Hollywood, and the MSM, do not have to shell out to sell their product. So they are somewhat insulated from the market through their own semi-monopoly of the airwavs and ink.

As for what “happened” to the “Conservative” media, it appears to me that public assess to conservative opinion in the “professional” media has greatly increased in the the last 25 years...

So, where was it for, say, the last 50-60 years or so? Was "conservative" news just not exciting enough to sell, or were there other considerations?

This of course begs the question of how it is that we find ourselves in a position where large numbers of both Liberals and Conservatives are convinced that the media distorts reporting in favor of the other's opinions.

Just my own observation, but liberals are mental cases who believe anything and anyone not left of Josef Stalin are right wingnuts, and wouldn't recognize true media bias if it bit 'em in the a$$. And it has. I have watched the "animated" Neal Gabler on Fox NewsWatch a few times and the guy's arguments almost always fall flat. "The media is owned by corporations, so they must be biased towards business"(that is, conservative) as an example. No evidence, even anecdotal, but he says it loud and long enough the others on the panel, even Jane What's-her-face, just shake their heads in apparent bewilderment. I personally know of people just like him who will not even debate the issue of utopian dreamers running the media, or anywhere else for that matter. I expect these people will always be with us. The trick is to see their ranks aren't increased.

It ain't gonna be easy but we've got to continue trying. Our target audience should probably be the 20% or so of the uncommitted electorate that are the swing votes in each election. They are reachable and and persuadable, given the proper motivations. What that is, is anybody's guess.