Atlantic Unbound | Fallows@large | 2002.04.12
Subject: Re: The weirdness of being awash in media - Part Two

On Bias. First of all, I'm not sure what to conclude from bestsellerdom—either Bernard Goldberg's or, for that matter, Michael Moore's, Goldberg's number-one displacer. The numbers are, by big media standards, puny. A few tens of thousands of book sales can get you onto the list—not much more than two percent of a Stephen King's sales, say; one-tenth of one percent of a mediocre movie's attendance; less than that of a so-so TV series' audience. Also, right-wingers are fiercely loyal—they give Fox a big baseline audience to grow from, and they buy their folks' books. (Lefties are much more fickle, and since lots of their own are in the book game, they tend to score free copies.) There are no left-wing dailies left standing--no equivalents of The Washington Times or the New York Post. Nor is there any left-wing equivalent of Richard Mellon Scaife or the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, ready to put lots of money where their far-right mouths are. Left-of-center foundations prefer to fund local and segmented projects.
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/fallows/jf2002-04-03/gitlin2.htm