The effect of Murdoch's approach has been something like the last scene in the classic film musical Singin In The Rain. Remember how Gene Kelly and friends pull the curtain up to reveal that the famous actress's singing voice belongs to another woman standing backstage? Simply by telling the news straight, Murdoch revealed that it was the voice of the left speaking when the mouths of mainstream news readers moved. When they told us the war in VietNam was at a stalemate or that a conservative election result amounted to a tantrum or that the tea party was racist or--as this past week in the Los Angeles Times--they downplayed the Islamic motive of terrorists, they weren't attempting to do their job and convey information but were trying instead to guide us in right attitudes and thinking--attitudes and thinking to be determined by themselves.

Why would anyone but a slave pay for such a service? The fact is, we won't. Newspapers and network news are dying. And it isn't, as Bollinger would have us believe, because of the internet or any other new technology. If that were so, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal wouldn't be thriving as they are. Mainstream news outlets are dying because they distort the news in the name of leftism--and there's simply no reason to use a news source that lies.