During an online discussion today, Washington Post television writer Tom Shales made this emphatic point about the media:

CONSERVATIVES DOMINATE THE BROADCAST AND CABLE MEDIA IN THIS COUNTRY. They have very little to complain about in terms of access to an audience.

That led to this exchange later in the discussion:

Atlanta, Ga.: Tom, I'm a big fan, but can you explain this sentence?

CONSERVATIVES DOMINATE THE BROADCAST AND CABLE MEDIA IN THIS COUNTRY

I think you meant to write that Liberals dominate the broadcast and cable media in the country. True, Fox News has the highest cable ratings, but other left-leaning outlets on cable and, certainly, network television are more numerous than right-leaning.

Do you have examples of the conservative dominance?

Tom Shales: Well now let me see. The networks are all owned by Big Business and Big Businessmen certainly tend to be conservatives. The Fox News Channel isn't a minor detail to be lumped in with other networks; it is a 24-hour-a-day conservative propaganda machine; MSNBC is liberal only during prime-time and late-night, don't you think? Phil Donahue is off the air and has been for years; he was too “liberal.” Perhaps with a liberal in the White House, the pendulum WILL swing the other way for a while. Chacun a son gout, n'est-ce pas? Yes nothing like some bad high-school French to end a chat. Thank you very, very much for joining in.

Shales forgot to mention the three hours a day that Joe Scarborough hosts on MSNBC, or the consistent tendency of MSNBC anchors like Andrea Mitchell and Norah O'Donnell to adopt conservative-friendly framing. And he didn't mention that CNN's only host with a clear ideological tilt is right-winger Lou Dobbs, he of the Birther conspiracy theories.

But that's picking nits: It's great to see a highly-respected employee of a massive media company acknowledge the conservative dominance on-air, as well as institutional factors like the tendency of news organizations to be owned by “Big Business.”