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Health & Fitness

Risking Life to Defend the Redlands Daily Facts

A former newspaper reporter risks his life to discuss and defend the Redlands Daily Facts on Redlands Tea Party Radio. Show airs Saturday, Dec. 22, 2pm-2:30pm, 590 AM The Answer.

Earlier this week, I risked my life while discussing the liberal media with Phillip Namen, my co-host on Redlands Tea Party Patriots radio.

After signing a medical waiver -- I'm kidding -- I went into the radio cage at AM 590 The Answer. We taped Wednesday of this week at its studio in San Bernardino. The show airs this Saturday, 2 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.

For the record, I share all of Phil's hostility about the liberal media and how biased it has been against the tea party movement.

Find out what's happening in Redlands-Loma Lindawith free, real-time updates from Patch.

But, as a former newspaper reporter for nearly 20 years, I wanted to explain why the media is liberal and what we conservatives could do about it.

Between roars, Phil stressed how we conservatives should ignore the Redlands Daily Facts and concentrate on media outlets that have been more fair, such as the Patch. Phil stressed how the Facts slants news coverage against us and won't print all of our letters to the editor.

Find out what's happening in Redlands-Loma Lindawith free, real-time updates from Patch.

While dodging Phil's claws, I explained how we must engage the Redlands Daily Facts and present our case the best way we can. I said I've had luck getting my letters published. I said, as far as tea party movements go, we get some decent coverage out of the Redlands Daily Facts.

I stressed how we must keep up the fight and keep writing letters and engage Facts editors and staff so we can get our points of view into the public. Yes, we can keep blogging in the Patch, but media reality is the Facts is the driver of public opinion in Redlands, so we have no choice but to engage.

The Facts' circulation has plummeted in recent years. Its subscribers now number almost 6,000, almost half of what it was just a few years ago. The paper can't afford to lose any more readers whether they're liberal or conservative.

The show is well worth the time. I don't want to give out too many spoiler alerts.But here's one point I didn't have time to make on the show: The media loves to whine how its losing readers and viewers because people get their news different ways now.

That's true to a point, but it's not the entire case why the media is losing followers. The media is losing viewership and readers because they are so abjectly leftist. I have crossed paths with hundreds of reporters in my career, and the average reporter, editor, copy editor and TV type is a hard-core leftist. Conservatives are giving up on the so-called media because they know they won't get a fair shake.

That's especially true for the Redlands Daily Facts. That paper, with a historically strong liberal bias, became cheerleaders for the short-lived Occupy Wall Street movement in 2010 and 2011 despite its Redlands chapter having just a few members. The daily and fawning stories that group got have permanently left a bad taste in the mouths of conservatives as wells many Redlanders in general.

At the same time, we had to fight to get news coverage despite events that were, well, actually newsworthy. We had congressmen speak at our meetings. We knocked on more than 8,300 doors in the city. We had straw polls. We had city council forums, yet the Facts skipped our events as a matter of routine.

So I understand Phil's fury and frustration. Stay tuned and tune in Saturday to find out how he really feels.

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