It's understandable that many progressives would like for MSNBC to be the liberal version of Fox News. After all, if there's a major network that has an obvious conservative bias, surely we would like this to be balanced by a major network on the other side of the political spectrum.
That's why so many on the left are deeply concerned and angry about the unfair, politically motivated suspension of Keith Olbermann, a fiery progressive who is MSNBC's most popular commentator. This seems to portend MSNBC moving away from being a liberal news channel and possibly taking a sharp turn to the right, as a result of the fact that Comcast, which is buying NBC, has a known conservative leaning.
In the long-term, however, it may be better for progressives not to hang their hopes on mainstream media such as traditional television channels. Instead, we should take the lead in the rise of alternative media.
Every day, fewer and fewer people are consuming traditional media such as TV news and printed newspapers. Even online news sources owned by major corporations have to compete with an ever-growing number of blogs, some of which provide superior quality reporting and analysis despite being unfunded or underfunded compared to the MSM.
We really don't need to worry too much about the future of cable TV news channels and whether they are liberal or conservative. The reason? In 10 or 20 years, hardly anyone will be watching them.
Cord-cutting continues: Cable loses subscribers in 3Q:
For the second quarter in a row, more consumers canceled their cable and satellite television subscriptions, according to analysts.
The closely watched third-quarter subscriber figure was attributed to the economic downturn that has some households rethinking monthly expenses. But the data also gives momentum to the questions over whether Internet television -- programs on Hulu.com and Netflix -- are cutting into the core cable business. ...
The cable and satellite industry lost about 141,000 subscribers in the second quarter -- a first for the industry. That statistic, combined with reports by Netflix of booming subscriber numbers for its streaming service, has some analysts saying users are canceling cable service and going all Internet.
MSNBC is not going to be the future of progressive media. The future will be blockbuster progressive commentators like Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and a long long tail of hundreds or thousands of others, having their own video programming available on the internet completely free of corporate oversight. People will be able to sit down on the couch in their living room, turn on their 8 foot wide, quarter of an inch thick wall-mounted TV/computer screen, type in the name of their favorite reporter or commentator, and up will pop Olbermann or whoever else -- saying exactly whatever they want to say without fear of being fired by some big business employer.
Similarly, the continuing rise and eventual total dominance of the blogosphere will make ridiculously biased corporate-written articles like this one about President Obama's supposedly too-expensive trip to India -- in which it takes five paragraphs before the lies in the headline and the lede are even called into question -- obsolete except among people who want to be misinformed. There will be so many better options that are just as easy to find, that people will only read the propagandistic "news" produced by huge media corporations if they are deliberately trying to remain within a bubble of pseudo-reality.
For most people, as the older generations die and are replaced, a free and unfettered multimedia internet will replace the traditional gatekeepers of TV and print journalism. Sure, there may still be some people who choose to watch Fox News, or other traditional corporate TV channels, or who read traditional newspapers, and so forth, but those will be niche markets, mostly reserved for people who like being retro or who are just very conservative in their personal habits and probably their beliefs as well.
So, what should progressives do about the problem of biased media? Just stop consuming it! If you don't like the fact that MSNBC is firing Keith Olbermann and is probably going to move in a more conservative direction, send them a quick email to let them know that you'll be one less set of eyes watching their programming -- and one more set of eyes migrating to the incredibly rich and ever-growing selection of high quality journalism that isn't even found on "TV" (that visual medium that's so 20th century) but instead is found on online streaming video, audio, and the blogosphere.
Nowadays, anyone can start a website and post videos -- and if they're good they'll get an audience quite easily, thanks to the power of search engines and social networking tools. Maybe that's what Keith Olbermann should do. Within 5 or 10 years, most people will be able to get the internet on the same video screen they watch TV on anyway (you already can!), so it'll be just as easy and comfortable for people to watch Olbermann or any other commentator on a website than on a traditional TV station.
Olbermann could be on the cutting edge of this trend. Progressives in general should be. We are, after all, the people who believe in progress, the continued advancement of science, technology, and human civilization. Let the people who want to keep watching the traditional boob tube have their Faux News -- and their MSNBC if its executives want to compete for the saturated market of conservatives -- just as the people who are wedded to the dead tree edition newspapers can have their ink-stinking Wall Street Journal broadsheet or whatever. It's all so outdated, just like conservatism itself.
Worrying about the "mainstream media" being too conservative is like worrying about horses and buggies being too slow in the 1920s. It won't be mainstream much longer, because it will be supplanted by something else, something better -- a new medium already arising and growing, in which free, progressive people can speak their minds unfiltered, uncensored, without needing millions of dollars to buy infrastructure and get an audience.
Let's turn off our TVs and be part of the future, rather than worrying about the degeneration of the media of the past.