Ideology in the U.S. Media

If you think that radio stations in the U.S. tend to be more and more politically biased these days and WAY MORE Conservative than ever before, you’re right and here is why:

Clear Channel Communications, the world's largest radio broadcaster, concert promoter, and billboard advertising firm owns approximately 50 percent of the U.S. radio stations, five times more than its closest competitors, CBS and ABC. The founder of C.C.C., Lowry Mays is a staunch Republican Texan and one-time George W. Bush business associate, and the company has a ‘clear’ political agenda as political contribution data can show. They have been repeatedly accused of being the biggest coporate censor in US history.

According to the director of the telecommunications project at the Center for Public Integrity, John Dunbar, “If you have a politically active CEO who is of a particularly ideological bent you become worried that if they control entire markets, which Clear Channel does, that ideology might make into some of the coverage,”

Given that the other media empire - that of Rupert Murdoch - with Fox News and the Weekly Standard, right-wing radio talk shows and the Wall Street Journal editorial page also clearly supports a neo-con ideology, it’s no wonder why so many people have no clue about what to think, and why there has been a growing divide between what Europeans and Americans believe about the world.

The only good thing is that Clear Channel profits seem to be sinking.