merely a fleshwound

Lol! At least I'm not the only one who makes allusion to "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"!

Let it bleed.

(that's a Rolling Stones reference. they're a music group)

Ace:

I think you've got the wrong moment in the battle. I think that stopping the bleeding would only slow the rate of loss of audience. They'd have to re-engineer their entire approach to news gathering and reporting for the trend to turn around.

The Black Knight has had all four limbs severed, and is saying "Come back here, you coward! I'll bite your legs off."

I tend to agree with Limbaugh on this one (who only harbors an opinion that is held by many others, including Michael Barone), and it goes something like this:

1) The mainstream media is one of the only enterprises on this earth that does not follow the basic rules of the free market.
1.1) They do not cater to their audience's desires; they insult them and treat them as unenlightened.
1.1.1) One must assume that any audience in any town wants diversity of views in their news stories; but, in most newspapers, the major sources of the news are from the four titans: The Washington Post, LA Times, NY Times and AP.
1.1.2) These four dictate the stories both in the newspapers and on television network news.
1.1.3) Mid-sized and even large media markets cover national and international news with these four, and then fill in some national but mostly local news with their own reporters.
1.1.4) Again, broadcast news merely carries out the themes and stories that were reported the morning by one of the four. (Though it can be accepted here that to a lesser extent, Knight Ridder, Media General and some others drive content).
1.2) In any other market (cars, soda, you name it), they'd have died a rapid death long ago.
1.2.1) The mainstream media has been protected and kept on life support for so many years in spite of this lack of respect for their consumers (readers).
1.2.2) This has happened because of consolidation in most major markets. In most major cities, you have ONLY one or two large-circulation papers. In cases with two papers, one can be described as moderate-left and the other can be described as far left.
1.2.3) In markets where only one paper dominates, it's usually left or far left.
1.3) But, readers still buy papers. Why?
1.3.1) Simple. Most buy the paper to catch up on their local news, read the funnies, sports and grab some national headlines.
1.3.2) And those Sunday ad supplements are VERY important. Think I'm kidding? Try telling a coupon-clipping freak that you're going to stop the paper. Your toast if you do.
1.3.3) To any liberal friend that says that there is no liberal slant in the media, ask them this simple question: "Why don't you turn on Fox News for one week? Tell me how you feel afterwards." They'll reply "No way, that news channel is so right-wing it's pitiful." Answer them with, "Well that's how I feel when I watch CNN." A conservative reader or viewer knows bias when he or she smells it, just as a lib can.
1.3.4) So the conservative reader skips over the bias, stops reading if it becomes too much to take, and just grazes the national stuff and goes to the sports, funnies and local news.

The life-support is over, and it's happening fast. Why are even the most thoughtful liberals so abhorrent of Fox News? Why wouldn't they welcome a different viewpoint? They have such domination (the left) of the media, why care if this little channel is on. Isn't diversity OK?

Lefty responds: Of course diversity is OK. But Fox is not diversity. Because Fox doesn't represent diversity, the mainstream media has plenty of diversity and has a questioning nature of all things in the establishment. Fox news does not do this.

The MSM suffers from groupthink, and they are pretty much the only game in town. Until now. The end is near. In fact, the end is here. It's only a matter of months, perhaps a year or two, then poof, no more control over the story.

At that point, they face the truth and start including other viewpoints ON THE NEWS PAGE. Remember Ace's post on the fun part of news telling (the story telling part)? He said that the MSM is great at data gathering, but really pitiful and sneaky at the story telling. They are sneaky at story telling by selecting what to put in a story and what to leave out. That was about the most insightful summary of MSM bias I had ever read. Short yet profound.

If the MSM doesn't do this, the now-fragmented alternative news outlets will gather and combine in numbers, and challenge the MSM's stranglehold on news. And then the party's over.

Once enough choices become apparent to Joe Sixpack, and Joe can choose easily, everything crumbles.

Goodbye, MFers. It's been nice knowing you.

Ain't got time to bleed.

Would it be horribly trite to say: "Tis but a scratch!"?

Eric:

It'd be completely accurate to suggest that the MSM are saying "'tis but a scratch." And it certainly isn't trite; it's frightening.

R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. suggested a long time ago that the media are so hard-wired liberal that they aren't even aware of their own slant. To them, they can't imagine people not thinking their way, from the news reporter to the op-ed analyst.

To extend the thought, it doesn't take much to suppose that the MSM sees their dwindling market share as not their own demise, but that they're happily treading water.

So, to them, their imminent death 'tis but a scratch.

If the mainstream media are the Black Knight, then bloggers are the vile, foul-tempered bunny rabbit attacking without mercy.

And the french...well the french are still the french. But instead of hiding in a castle wearing silly hats they hide in cafes and wear silly hats.

I hate to disagree (what am I saying; disagreeing about Holy Grail characters compared to the media?), but since the topic is sillyness, then why not change the assignment of charcters.

1) Daily Kos and their fever swamp are the French fellows, launching dead animals at Arthur. They hit Gannon, in a triumphal moment.
2) The rabbit is Charles Johnson, the one-man neck-biting monster.
3) Ace is well, Tim, who can shoot at anything randomly with his staff, and hit it dead-on. He also does an excellent job of describing the rabbit's fierceness to the mainstream media (sadly, they are some of Arthur's knights), but they don't comprehend the rabbit's tenacity.
4) Sir Robin is Rather before his signoff.
5) The father at Swamp Castle is Bill Moyers.
6) The dead cow at the French castle is Mary Mapes.
7) Lancelot, who is so wise in the ways of science, and keeps flipping the face-covering piece on his helmet that he can't see through, is...Lileks.
8) King Arthur is I guess Tim Russert. The only sane journalist surrounded by idiots.
9) The Swifties are the Holy Hand Grenade.

I give up. Any takers?