I’m not going that far. What I’m trying to convey is that sometimes in academic research, the “obvious” answer isn’t always supported by evidence, or sometimes the evidence doesn’t prove what you hoped it might. When that happens, you just have to develop a new hypothesis. But to be able to test something, as you put it, it can’t be too big a ball of string. That’s the limits of scholarship. It’s one of the reasons that conclusively showing what “caused” the Great Depression-—when you’re dealing with international gold flows, different nations diddling with tariffs and money supplies for their own ends, and just plain old nuts dictators-—is harder than one might think. The same is true with this. We developed what I thought was a pretty foolproof test with a TON of data, but it pretty much confirmed the obvious (the media moved left) without ever providing us sufficient details on the WHY.
Well ok. Would it be safe to assume you suspect it wasn't entirely happenstance? That while there's no apparent smoking gun that maybe your instincts, like mine, suggest otherwise? Just curious.
We developed what I thought was a pretty foolproof test with a TON of data, but it pretty much confirmed the obvious (the media moved left) without ever providing us sufficient details on the WHY.
A mixed bag then. Maybe putting too fine a point on it but aren't we actually talking about the decline and near demise of major conservative media and the ascension of leftist media? Which allowed the liberal media outlets to move even farther to the left. IMHO what caused these nearly simultaneous events is the most interesting question about the media out there.
An aside of sorts: how large a part if any, could the general decline and decay of our culture have played in hastening the movement of the media to the left? Or was it the other way around?