Liberal Talk Radio

Via Instapundit, I find Howard Kurtz on the role of the media:

He writes:

A Sept. 12 Washington Post story was headlined “Katrina Pushes Issues of Race and Poverty at Bush.” An equally apt headline would have been, “Katrina Pushes Issues of Race and Poverty at a Media Establishment That Has Largely Ignored Them.”

The media has been ignoring the poor forever. Why’s that, Howie?

Newspapers and magazines, meanwhile, have been chasing suburban readers who appeal to upscale advertisers. The poor, whether in New Orleans or Newark, were, well, very ’60s.

There have been exceptions, of course, certain journalists who have specialized in scrutinizing the problems of the underclass and efforts to alleviate them. And certainly the media have covered the policy debates over welfare reform, subsidized housing, school vouchers, affirmative action, out-of-wedlock births and other issues that affect the poor. But poor people themselves were relegated to an occasional walk-on role–until the levees broke. “TV dislikes poor people,” says Newsweek, because they’re a “downer” and bad for ratings.

There’s a weird leap of logic there — that only poor people want to read about poor people. Is that true? I mean, to a certain extent people like reading about themselves, but the whole idea of journalism is that it’s supposed to go beyond navel-gazing, right?

Still, point taken. The “liberal” media is completely beholden to their advertisers. Which is why you’re more likely to see a news segment on the new iPod or PSP than on poor Americans. I actually witnessed this first hand recently, watching CNN Headline News on the airplane: a 5 minutes segment on the Sony PSP was followed by less than two minutes on the War in Iraq or something meaty like that (I can’t remember — it was too short). And though Kurtz singles out the WaPo and NYT for blame, there’s plenty to go around, especially among local networks.

P.S.: I’m listening to a podcast of To The Point from last week about the same subject. He’s got Barbara Erhenreich and Rick Santorum talking about the root causes of poverty. Erhenreich says more and more people slip into poverty — either because they’re working a job that doesn’t pay the bills, or they get hit with a medical emergency while they’re in-between jobs, and Santorum, well… Santorum thinks it’s about (1) the estate tax is killing jobs, and (2) the decline of the family. I’ll leave the former as an exercise for the reader, but as for the latter, he argues that a huge percentage of kids are born out of wedlock, and that’s what causes poverty. Well, Senator, if that’s true, I have two suggestions: teach birth control in public schools and keep abortion safe and legal.