The Profit-Driven Corporate Media's Dilemma: It Must Slant News Because 40% of Market Made up of Bigots

What's a national media outlet to do, when it yearns to maintain a high standard of professional journalism, but is beholden to shareholders to increase profits and a good 35% to 40% of its market audience are hard-line racists and bigots?

I'm not referring to FOX News.  That percentage probably hovers in the 95% range, although a good chunk of that block are individuals who would never label themselves as prejudiced and think that the only real  bigots running around America are Al Sharpton, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and, of course, President Barack Obama.   

Today I just so happened to be looking at NBC News because of its predictable coverage of an incident that occurred during a protest in Berkeley, California last night.   The following headline appeared on NBC News: Undercover CHP Officer "Justified" in Pulling Gun at Protest: Photographer, reporting:

"A photographer who saw an undercover California Highway Patrol officer point a gun at a crowd during a protest in Oakland said the action seemed to be a justified reaction to what had happened moments before: A protester had hit his undercover partner in the head, and the crowd seemed to be moving in."Yeah, it was an appropriate response," Michael Short, 38, of Oakland and a freelance photographer for the San Francisco Chronicle told NBC Bay Area on Friday, two days after the officer pulled the gun at Harrison and 27th streets in Oakland. "I would have been scared if I saw my partner get knocked to the ground. He was justified. I felt threatened by the protesters, too."

But just in case you're curious, this is how the same incident was reported all over the blogosphere and social media:  Undercover Cop Attempts to Instigate Looting, Pulls Gun When Outed as Police.  As had been described in previous incidents, undercover cops had been breaking windows in stores, trying to instigate a wave of looting, when several protesters became suspicious and pulled off one of the men's masks.  The policeman then pulled a gun on the protesters, claimed he had been assaulted, arrested the man who outed him and others.

Now, why would I believe what has now become thousands of social media sites over NBC and CNN?  Let's just forget FOX altogether.  It is because they have for the past six years worked so hard to balance bigotry and decency, as though the middle path represented an ethical victory of sorts.  No level of racist insanity was ever called out, because that would have insulted too large a segment of their market.

Little more than 9 months after Barack Obama had been elected to his first term in office. Professor Jared Gardner of Ohio State University had noticed the seemingly bizarre ways in which the mainstream media had begun dismissing incidents of racism.  He noted:

". . .the mainstream media sits off at the sideline, discussing the birther movement with its back-to-Africa chants as if there are legitimate concerns here that have nothing to do with racism. And when Joe Wilson calls the president a liar on global television, and folks who know a thing or two about racism -- from Jimmy Carter to Spike Lee -- state unequivocally that race has a whole lot of something to do with this unprecedented speech act, the media can stare at their own monitors in innocent bewilderment: "Where? I don't see any racism. Do you?"

And six years later, even armed insurrectionists claiming that slavery was preferable has, according to mainstream media commentators, no racial connotations whatsoever.  For now at least I'll just have to trust the veracity of the blogosphere over the compromises that turns the corporate media into something even worse than a bigot -- an echo chamber of infinite nothingness.