More tales from the 'liberal media'

Note: this is part of an occassional series dedicated to countering the relentless canard that the media uniformly pushes a liberal agenda on consumers. While it's probably true journalists, as a group, tend to be more liberal than average, their employers tend to be large corporate conglomerates. Large corporate conglomerates tend to be conservative by nature; not necessarily pro-Republican or right-wing, but conservative in the sense of being wary of change and controversy. In fact, the corporate media is afraid of anything that might stir things up too much, is of afraid of going too much against 'conventional wisdom' or 'patriotic correctness.' Media conglomerates are businesses, not ideological machines; except for Fox News and magazines like The Nation for whom being an unabashed ideological machine is good business. I don't bemoan the fact that they are businesses. I don't object to Fox News and The Nation catering to audiences that feels itself unserved by the rest of the media; if they fill a void, so be it. I do wish people would correctly identify the issue. And I don't feel that most major media outlets are consciously trying to be liberal or conservative in what they call news reporting.

The Washington Post is one of many media outlets to report that: The CBS and NBC television networks have rejected an advertisement for the United Church of Christ that shows two beefy bouncers turning away a gay couple, a Latino woman and a disabled man outside a church.

Officials of the Cleveland-based denomination, which has nearly 6,000 congregations and 1.3 million members, said the 30-second ad is intended to emphasize its inclusiveness. "Jesus didn't turn people away. Neither do we," the ad says.

As if to demonstrate my point on cue, CBS' reported reason for denying the ad was: "Because this commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples and other minority groups . . . and the fact that the Executive Branch has recently proposed a Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast on the Networks."

The Post added: NBC's rejection notice simply called the ad "too controversial," without elaboration.

[And before anyone throws in the irrelevant diversion of the 1st Amendment, it's obviously well within the networks' constitutional rights to refuse to run the ad. Just as it's well within my constitutional rights to criticize the wisdom of that decision.]

I'm sure conservative Christians will be screaming bloody murder about this blatant anti-religious act by the networks.

Or maybe not.