That vast right-wing conspiracy

It's for real, actually. And the press is in collusion.

I want to call your attention today to an article entitled, "How the press discriminates against Democrats". The subtitle is, "John Murtha, Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton are just the latest Democrats to face biased media coverage -- but they won't be the last."

I've blogged about this before, as you know, and I just can't overemphasize how harmful this is and what an uphill battle we have. Here's how it gets started:

Last week, MediaMatters wrote:

"At this point, you'd have to be blind to miss the pattern. Every prominent progressive leader who comes along is openly derided in the media as fake, dishonest, conniving, out-of-the-mainstream, and weak. We simply can't continue to chalk this up to shortcomings on the part of Democratic candidates or their staff and consultants. It's all too clear that this will happen regardless of who the candidate or leader is; regardless of who works for him or her. The smearing of Jack Murtha should prove that to anyone who still doubts it."

The recent media treatment of Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) illustrate this point: No matter who emerges as a progressive leader, or a high-profile Democrat, they're in for the same flood of conservative misinformation in the media. Too many people chalk up outrageous media treatment of, say, Al Gore or John Kerry to the men's own flaws, pretending that if they were better candidates, they'd have gotten better press coverage. That's naïve. The Democratic Party could nominate Superman to be their next presidential candidate, and two things would happen: conservatives would smear him, and the media would join in. To illustrate this, we look back over the last dozen or so years.

Go on and click through to the rest of the article to read the examples. It's a long article but we really need to be informed about how this stuff goes down. I'm afraid I'm very pessimistic about the possibility of change. Why does the press still favor Republicans and smear Democrats when Bush's poll numbers are so low? Undoubtedly it's because they've been thoroughly bought out by big business.