Posted 5:42 PM by Gene

Larry Kudlow has a long lost brother, and he writes for the glibertarian UnReason that MEDIA ARE BETTER THAN EVER! In the manner typical of Kudlow he cites Cheap Channel as a shining star of media diversity. "ON A NATIONAL BASIS," yells our intrepid writer, "IT OWNS LESS THAN 12 PERCENT OF ALL COMMERCIAL STATIONS!!!!!" And how much of market share? Can't answer that -- inconvenient. "SOME OF THE MOST BIASED NEWSPAPERS IN 20TH-CENTURY HISTORY -- MCCORMICK'S CHICAGO TRIBUNE, ANNENBERG'S PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, LOEB'S MANCHESTER UNION-LEADER -- WERE THE CREATIONS OF LOCAL OWNERSHIP!!!!!" Whoops -- weren't they all...CONSERVATIVE? (Oh, I forgot. Glibertarians aren't conservative.) This comes several paragraphs after, "HEARST['S] NEWSPAPER CHAIN CONTROLLED MORE LOCAL CIRCULATION [IN 1947] THAN ANY NEWSPAPER COMPANY DOES TODAY!!!!!" Ignoring that he probably controlled less of a percentage of circulation than GanNETT, wasn't he biased -- on a national scale? What about the continent-straddling Henry Luce? Whoops -- guess they're inconvenient too. Our hack uses arcane economic tools (the "Herfindahl-Hirschmann Index" sounds like something Groucho could have made up) when many of the most obvious behaviors of corporate concentration defy numbers, like the lockstep thinking of most NEWS HACKS and show-biz types. With their surpassing smugness, glibertarians defy REASON. Here is a solid-gold example.