Mark Halperin: media favours right-wing stories

Time magazine's Mark Halperin has recently asserted that the mainstream media will give a lot of weight, credence and devote coverage to stories which originated from the conservative or right-wing media entertainment industry. Halperin recently wrote that:

"The Sherrod story is a reminder — much like the 2004 assault on John Kerry by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth — that the old media are often swayed by controversies pushed by the conservative new media. In many quarters of the old media, there is concern about not appearing liberally biased, so stories emanating from the right are given more weight and less scrutiny. Additionally, the conservative new media, particularly Fox News Channel and talk radio, are commercially successful, so the implicit logic followed by old-media decisionmakers is that if something is gaining currency in those precincts, it is a phenomenon that must be given attention. Most dangerously, conservative new media will often produce content that is so provocative and incendiary that the old media find it irresistible."

Halperin is spot on here. As he explained, we've seen it time and again, and will likely continue to see the mainstream media duped and run wild with smear campaigns which originated from the conservative media entertainment industry.