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The paper you are reading, The Albuquerque Tribune, is on the chopping block, apparently for financial reasons.

E.W. Scripps, which owns The Tribune has decided to end the joint operating agreement with the owner of the Albuquerque Journal, under which The Tribune is published even though that agreement lasts at least another 15 years.

Unless a proposed purchase of The Tribune by a local group — including an advertising executive — is successful, Scripps plans to cease publication.

Sadly, that would leave Albuquerque with only one newspaper print voice, the Journal.

On Oct. 2, The Tribune published an op-ed by Paul Waldman at Media Matters who reported on an exhaustive study of conservative and liberal voices in newspapers across the country.

Surprise! A huge majority of columnists in most daily newspapers are right-wing. Some of them are extreme right-wing.

What is the definition of right-wing? It is unquestioned control of every aspect of your life by corporate and military interests.

Republican President Eisenhower warned against this as he left office in 1960:

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes," he said. "We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

An alert and knowledgeable citizenry is impossible when only the rich, conservative allies of the government own the very means for distributing news and opinion.

What we are seeing now reminds me of the book "1984" by George Orwell. If you have never read it, I recommend it. He was way ahead of our time.

When you hear the same phrases from TV, newspaper articles and columnists, consider the sources. Rupert Murdoch owns Fox News and many newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal. Only five or six major corporations, including some in the defense industry, control a majority of national media outlets.

They distract us ad nauseam with stories about celebrities, like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, instead of providing us with the information we need to make informed choices in a democracy.

Ever heard a word about how much of the Iraq war funding goes to Blackwater and Halliburton? Or how much weapons systems actually cost, even when they don't work? Bush's wars are being financed by debt to foreign governments like China and Saudi Arabia.

White House press mouthpieces and conservative talk-radio flacks use the exact same words. They all get the same memos. That is propaganda.

In 2005, Bush said at a sales pitch event for "privatizing" Social Security: "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."

His friends have a very profitable stake in Iraq; his friends control most of what you hear and see on broadcast radio and TV; his friends are the activist judges he has appointed to courts nationwide. His friends are the U.S. attorneys who were not fired last winter and continue to do the bidding of his administration.

You say you didn't know that? Not a surprise. After all, he has catapulted the propaganda very effectively. And many of those talking points are shown to be lies. "We don't torture," he told us, even though torture was secretly authorized by his attorney general.

But the paper you are reading, which does publish the truth, will die a quiet death because money speaks louder than words.

What happened to "the pen is mightier than the sword"? Have any of the owners of media empires ever read the U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment?

As for broadcast TV and radio, we the people grant the owners their right to use our airways — many at low cost and without regulation when they renew their licenses to spin the truth.

We are not dealing with honest Americans in this administration. Instead, we have a crisis on our hands, and Congress seems unwilling to stop it.

Please contact the Federal Communications Commission and your representatives to demand diverse ownership of the media. It is time to reclaim the news and the truth. Demand both.

Woodard, an Albuquerque resident who works in marketing at the University of New Mexico, is a longtime political observer and avid reader of The Albuquerque Tribune.