Right Wing Media Bias, The Irony of it All

Great column (behind the subscriber wall) by Lawrence Martin in the Globe today.

He starts by contrasting the media reaction to the recent Missile Defense pullout to both the media reaction in the 1980's when Mulroney said no to Star Wars, and to popular opinion (which is against the Missile Defense plan).

"The media, to the tune of about 90 per cent, ripped the Martin government to pieces over its decision to reject Washington's missile-defence plan. The people went the other way; they favoured the decision in polls by a 20-per-cent margin, which, in political terms, is a landslide.

Flashback to the mid-1980s. Like today's Liberals, the Mulroney government said no to Ronald Reagan's Star Wars. The people applauded and, unlike today, there was no collective media hissy fit."

This leads him into a convincing argument that, while the Canadian population remains largely centre-left, our newsprint media has moved well to the right.

"The journalism culture underwent dramatic change in the mid-1990s when the country's biggest newspaper chain, centrist-leaning Southam, changed hands. The media empire is now owned by CanWest Global, which makes no secret of its pro-American, conservative tilt."

and

"Another big change from the days of liberal media came with the continuing expansion of the conservative tabloid Sun chain to become Canada's second-biggest newspaper group."

furthermore,

"National newspapers are major agenda-setters, both for print media and television. Canada has two. One, the National Post, is firmly on the right; the other, The Globe and Mail, is slenderly conservative.

The portsiders can always boast of having the Toronto Star. But even it pummelled the Martin government on missile defence, and some see the paper as moving to the centre. At Maclean's, a former editor of the National Post is now taking charge. At Policy Options, formerly a very liberal magazine, two former cronies of Mr. Mulroney run the show."

Martin really nails how the right-wing papers are out of touch with the population in their 'don't make dad angry or we'll all get grounded' coverage of Canada-U.S. affairs,

"On missile defence, the media tone was remarkably hostile. The issue was examined not so much on the basis of what Canadians think but on what the Bush administration would think. It was as if — after 138 years of existence — we were still strapped down to a client-state mentality wherein the driving imperative was approval from a higher authority."

So I'm wondering. Do people with centre-left views just prefer to read right wing papers? Or does a vastly higher percentage of right wing folks buy newspapers vs. centre-left folks?

Or maybe there's a market out there for more centre-left journalism (perhaps it's not so surprising the Star has the biggest circulation in the country) but the newspapers are willing to sacrifice the profits they could make by filling it because it doesn't suit their owner's agenda - which would be more than a little ironic since one of the main agendas they're pushing is that government shouldn't interfere in markets because pursuit of profit leads to the greatest good rather than pursuit of principle.