Liberal bias isn't killing newspapers

“Good riddance to bad trash,” crows one conservative blogger, linking gleefully to Warren Buffett’s forecast of “nearly unending losses” for US newspapers. “Good Riddance” is likewise James Srodes’s message in the American Spectator, where he begins a column by “letting loose a small raspberry at the flood of hand-wringing going on over The Decline of the American Daily Newspaper.” His disdain is echoed by readers, one of whom snorts: “Their pages are full of liberal tripe, lies about science and misbegotten theories of life. It’s a wonder they sell any papers at all.”

Conservatives often accuse liberals, with reason, of clinging to emotion-based fantasies even when they are contradicted by real-world facts and results – of preferring to see what they believe, rather than believe what they see. But the right has its shibboleths too, and one of them is that liberal bias explains why so many newspapers are hurting.