The "Mainstream Media"

Way back when, news organizations actually took responsibility for their reporting. Now it seems, with the growing "memogate" scandal, the "mainstream media" no longer feels that this is necessary. Stanley Kurtz, at NRO, has an interesting theory on why CBS will most likely not take responsibility for airing forgeries, and Dan Rather will probably not be forced to resign or even admit error.

Why were we so wrong? Why did Dan Rather and CBS News, against all expectations, impeach their own credibility to defend the authenticity of memos that are almost certainly forgeries? The obvious answer is that they did it to save the faltering Kerry campaign from a final and decisive blow. If CBS were to admit that the documents were forgeries, it would have no grounds for protecting its sources.
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we may well be seeing the initial signs of a profound realignment of the media along more strictly and openly partisan lines. The mainstream media as a whole may be larger than the alternative outlets, but the mainstream audience itself is segmented. Looking at the CBS News audience alone, we are probably talking about the most self-consciously liberal part of the network audience pie. True, nowadays all the network newscasts are liberal. But CBS has had that reputation longer than the rest. Gradually, with the exit of moderates and conservatives to other networks and the alternative media, CBS's audience is probably now composed largely of liberal Democrats. In the middle of the most divisive presidential election in years, we have to assume that the CBS audience itself is far more interested in helping John Kerry than in getting to the bottom of the forgery issue. So as the country increasingly divides into two media camps, the "mainstream media" is becoming more openly partisan. And it's the audience that's driving this — not only, or even primarily, the journalists, liberal though journalists may be.