The mainstream media should embrace the epithet of 'liberal'. The article makes two points in favor of this.
1) Conservative readers/viewers have effectively siloed themselves off into conservative media. Conservatives get the vast majority of their news from few conservative sites while non Conservatives read a wide variety, so trying to avoid being called liberal by appealing to Conservatives doesn't work, they're never going to read or regard your media as legitimate regardless.
2) Conservatives are increasingly looking towards and emulating non small l liberal traditions such as Paul Ryan's love for Ayn Rand and Bannon's love for fascist philosophers so Conservatives aren't playing on the same field as other small l liberal parties do. Queue up the GOP is an extremist conservative party. I don't know if I buy that as a reason to exclude Conservatives from the liberal tradition fully though.
https://crooked.com/article/mainstre...beral-embrace/