[munk-a]

I think a point you missed here though is that in a lot of countries "culture" doesn't control media - industry and commerce do. America has an extremely strong media tradition that isn't based in economic news - but in other parts of the world (and you can observe it in America by looking at WSJ for instance) a fair number of media sources will emerge from the fact that business folks need to know a wide breadth of business news - the political and opinion branches these news sources tend to grow into will almost without fail lean toward preserving the businesses status quo which generally aligns with the conservative side of the political compass. An interesting counter example toward that general lean is Victorian England where the conservative business community was traditionally oriented towards land exploitation and the industrial business concerns ended up joining with the more liberal block in opposition.