  The "mainstream media" currently is in a death spiral. Their influence is fading. Their credibility is shattered. Their readership and viewership are falling like stones. In fact, regarding the latter point, the decline of the "mainstream media" almost is staggering. On a population-adjusted basis, the electronic political media has lost the overwhelming majority of its audience over the past 45 years. In 1960, 44 percent of the country's total populace watched one of the debates between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. On the other hand, in 2000, merely 13 percent of the population watched the debates between Al Gore and George Bush. Literally 70 percent of their viewership had tuned out in the interim. Print media is faring no better. Since 1970 -- again, on a population-adjusted basis -- newspapers have lost roughly 50 percent of their readers. Think about that: half their subscribers have gone away, in only 35 years! (Note: this data can be accessed by going urlLink here , urlLink here , then urlLink here (electronic); and then urlLink here (print).
) Now, here comes the fun part: watching the media cover their own grisly demise. As one might expect, the "mainstream media" is not assessing their own terminal situation with clear-eyed, reality-based logic. Nope. It's more along the lines of reality denial. The last major report on newspaper circulation showed a 0.3 percent, year-over-year decline in daily circulation, and a 0.4 percent, year-over-year decline in Sunday circulation. And, of course, those figures are not adjusted for population. So, in other words, following up their previous, shocking losses, they recently lost additional net readers; even without taking into consideration the larger decline, in percentage terms, of their influence on the public at large. So, how did the Associated Press "report" these facts? " urlLink Newspaper circulation stays level " Yep.
About as "level" as the Titanic, after it hit the iceberg. And, to take this from the absurd to the sublime, the Associated Press, in the course of trying to convince itself that everything is A-OK, managed to mine this gem of a quote from some brain dead financial analyst: It's not terribly different from the long-term trend, which is one of a slight decline every year for the last 20 years. (Emphasis added. ) Riiiight. That's true. They lose net readers every single year. And the population increases every single year.
So, what's the problem, Virginia? All is well. And this entire analysis of print media circulation does not even take into account the fact that much of their "circulation" urlLink is the product of blatant fraud . You know, guys and gals, this all reminds me of that scene from Monty Python's "Holy Grail," in which Graham Chapman's character severs the arm of the Black Knight, during a sword fight. The Black Knight's response? "It's just a flesh wound.
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