The media is biased, some of it conservative, some of it liberal, some of it just self-serving and sensationalistic. Mostly, it is propaganda and indoctrination by the ruling powers. However, private media has a right to be biased and opinionated, reflecting the beliefs of the owners. There are no unprejudiced humans. The current problem is the severe reduction of diverse ownership and opinion from consolidation of media under the ownership of a few large corporations.

Journalistic standards are an ideal, but not to be expected from all media outlets. Even those with high standards will not report some news that they think not relevant, but they often don't have the objectivity or knowledge to deal with alternative information or the judgment to discern what is important among all the competing items, so they play it safe. The media have no incentives to report on issues that question our sacred cultural assumptions, but those are precisely the ones that need to be reported, examined and discussed, either to confirm or deny them.

The most serious shortcomings of the media are its reliance on government information without questioning its accuracy, the demise of investigative reporting and the consolidation of the various media under the ownership of a few large corporations. This creates a media that acts as spokepersons for the government and corporations rather than an independent opposition. It stifles free inquiry and the airing of legitimate differences of opinion. The "fourth estate" is in foreclosure.

The worst problem journalists face is opposition from advertisers or stockholders to specific content, especially when it would be editorially correct to question an advertiser's product, service or political/social behavior. If you bite the hand that feeds you, you don't get fed and then you can't produce any content. This is the eternal problem that faces journalism that must be supported by commercial forces to produce quality reporting. But is there an alternative except in volunteer and nonprofit efforts that can't hope to perform anywhere near a journalistic ideal? Government support, no matter how public and open, isn't an answer because any government supported media would just be a soapbox for government views. Yet, in the end, perhaps all serious newsgathering and reporting should be nonprofit to alleviate market and political pressures.

When news has become a ratings game media is forced to pander to a lower common denominator and offer to the people what it thinks they want. And if people only want the conventional and don't want to be challenged, that's what they'll get - junk - but they'll be intellectually malnourished, deprived of alternatives and increasingly incapable of dealing with an ever more complex society. This describes America of the early 21st century.

You should worry about what the Internet portals and ISPs aren't letting you see. They offer an illusion of availability, but they may be filtering out some sites that they think objectionable for prurient, political or business reasons and restricting your freedom to access information in trade for their convenience. It's media control of society trying to reassert itself, just as the broadcasters had before the advent of the net.

Only bad news is good news.

NPR Midwest Mafia. Have you ever thought about the predominance of NPR programming from the Midwest? Is it a conspiracy to normalize America? It's because of a little-known firm, Public Radio International (PRI, Minnesota Public Radio), that's now moved to LA, trying to take over all public radio programming and making a whopping profit. Public, commercial-free, nonprofit radio is now an oxymoron. It's about as public as a top 40 station. They already have ads in the form of corporate sponsorship announcements that have allowed blatant promotion to creep up on us.

Public radio is no longer supported by government and is so little supported by the people that right wingers and fundamentalists have bought some of those stations, and turned them into their biases. Many mainstream commercial radio networks also covet the bandwidth used by public radio and are working against it.

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