AG speaks out about news media

Attorney General Jim Hood spoke at the Stennis-Capitol Press Luncheon yesterday, and he had some interesting thoughts to share with the group of lobbyists and reporters. This morning, the only article I found highlighting his comments on corporate-owned media were from an AP story.

Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood said at a press luncheon Monday that he's not happy about corporate ownership of news organizations.

"Something what worries me more so than the war and Iraq and money in politics is freedom of the press," Hood said. "Is our press free anymore? The corporate ownership of the press nationally is a concern to me."

Several Mississippi newspapers, TV stations and radio stations are owned by out-of-state corporations.

"In the old days, you had the wire, so there was some centralization involved," Hood said. "But you had mom-and-pop printing presses out there and they printed what they wanted to and they had their own thought processes."

Hood said he wonders what will happen to the American media if news organizations become explicitly partisan.

He said he worries that newspapers' editorials are dictated by out-of-state corporate offices.

And he said he is bothered by blogs and their anonymous comments.

He praised public broadcasting, saying it provides an independent voice.

Conservatives Dominate In Mississippi Opinion Media

Conservatives and Republicans like to claim that the media is inherently biased against them. They adopted this strategy several decades ago to explain why Americans didn't agree with their ideas and because they needed to discount things like Iran Contra and science.

We already know that Conservatives absolutely dominate in talk radio with American Family Radio political programs reaching statewide and SuperTalk nearly doing so. In addition there are other stations throughout the state that also carry conservative opinion while others make it a staple of their morning programs.

Well, in addition to radio you can count newspapers in their column (a pun) also. Research by Media Matters, a media watchdog foundation showed the following breakdown in nationally syndicated opinion columns published in Mississippi newspapers.

This represents the total column impressions adjusted to reflect circulation:


This represents the total number of conservative, progressive, and centrist columnists:


This shows the columnists who appear most often with dark representing weekly and light representing at least monthly:


* In Mississippi, there are 23* daily newspapers with a total circulation of 310,695.
* Conservative syndicated columnists appear a total of 41 times per week in Mississippi newspapers. Centrist columnists appear a total of 5 times, while progressive columnists appear a total of 21 times.[1]
* Taking newspaper circulation into account, these columnists have the potential to reach Mississippi readers a total of 1,574,515 times each week.

* Our study includes 20 of the 23 daily newspapers published in Mississippi because The Brookhaven Daily Leader, The Clarksdale Press Register, and The Meridian Star did not return our inquiries about each paper’s lineup of nationally syndicated columnists, nor could each paper’s information be obtained through resources readily available in Washington, D.C.

** These data reflect only regular (at least once a week) conservative and progressive columnists, for the full report go to: www.mediamatters.org/op-ed and to view state-by-state or specific newspaper data go to: http://mediamatters.org/reports/oped/search