Newspapers generally blame television, radio, and the Internet for their declining circulations. These forms of competition may be playing a role, but there is a deeper problem driving away many readers: pervasive right-wing bias.

The press coverage of George W. Bush's confession in front of television cameras that he sent people to illegal secret prisons, where they have been routinely tortured in violation of US and international law, is a blatant example. This is being reported as either a policy story or a political story, when it should be reported as a crime story. The same media that will sensationalize crimes committed by middle-class people often refuses to report on crimes by the wealthy, the powerful, and the Republicans as crimes.

Of course, this is one of many examples of slanting the news to the right. Very few US papers even covered the Downing Street Memo which proves that the Bush regime provided fraudulent “intelligence” in order to lie us into their Iraq war. The corporate media still refuse to report on the theft of the 2000 and 2004 elections. I could go on for far too many paragraphs with more examples, but most people should already know that they are being propagandized to follow the right-wing line.

And, that is precisely the problem. Liberals tend to be more interested in reading newspapers, yet these same newspapers have abandoned their professionalism in order to act as corporate/GOP propagandists.

At a certain point, it just makes no sense to pay people to lie to you.