A Liberal's Lament: This morning I read the story in the NYT of the AOL buy-out of and merger with Huffington Post, one of the most predominant liberal news sources and blogs in the country. (See link below for the story.) I believe the conservative giants are eating the progressive media for lunch and therefore the public is getting a toxic diet of news that not only represents right wing opinion but dramatically and often lies to convey it. I wrote to the NYT’s blog (with a few changes made) where it possibly will be posted. I said:

When I first read the headline of the AOL buyout of Huffinton Post, my heart sank. It says AOL is apolitical but I am not so sure I see AOL as that. Maybe it is simply my own progressive perception but I did not view AOL, with their “Today on AOL” subliminally skewed news headlines, as an entity that evoked the liberalism Arianna Huffington Huffington’s Post did. Again, I thought the right wing media is trying to gobble up the news market and neutralize what small amount of progressive opinion there is. First MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann appears to have vaporized after the Comcast buyout of GE and now Huffington Post is merging with AOL. Huffington Post and MSNBC are two of my moral compasses which seem to be disappearing before my eyes. If, as the article says, Arianna Huffington keeps control of Huffington Post’s editorial content then maybe my heart can stop skipping beats. We shall see.

I, of course, rabidly detest Fox No News News and the 95% control of the radio market by dozens of other right wing extremist media gargantuans. They make it impossible for intellectually cogent viewpoints on the left to be heard by an American public who has a paucity of well-informed historical knowledge and poorly formed political opinion based often on gross distortions if not boldfaced lies of Fox News and those like it.

I am still in mourning over Keith Olbermann. He was so much a part of my life. Both Huffington and Keith delivered a mighty wallop to the impact of so called "conservative news." We, as progressive consumers of news, need solid news reporting. Please, Ms. Huffington, secure this new venture's place so it never slides over to the right wing side of the aisle. And, by the way, if you see Keith Olbermann please tell him his voice is missed. Every night at 8:00 p.m. something important is missing from my life. It is this liberal’s lament.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/business/media/07aol.html