hen it comes to contract negotiations and/or arbitrations — anything to do with the city’s treasury or a New York City police officer’s paycheck — the editorial writers of the local tabloids constantly hammer the PBA. Despite the logic of our arguments, the reality of the recruiting problem and even the findings of independent arbitrators, we can count on Bloomberg’s yes-men and women parroting the mayor’s party line in their personal opinion columns. Often, their own news pages belie the logic of their editorial positions by reporting rising crime and the NYPD’s staffing crisis in same edition that editorials deny the recruitment and retention problem.

Why does this happen and what can we do about it?

I believe it has more to do with who owns the newspapers than the merits of our arguments. The American public, including those of us riding around in RMPs, have been told that the news media are benevolent operations that serve the public interest by exposing corruption, waste and injustice. Many of us are raised with the attitude: If it’s in the papers, it must be true. Well, the truth is that the news media are not only institutions of public service. They are first and foremost businesses, owned by business people with enormous wealth and power and operated by people who understand their owners’ concerns and politics.

If you suggest this to the editor of a newspaper, he or she will insist that the editorial content of the paper is completely separate from the owner’s personal opinion and personal interests. And in some cases that may be true. But what the editorial writers (on some occasions, they are the owner) cannot deny is that if the paper’s proprietor has well known political or business interests, then it is only human not to want to upset the person who signs one’s paycheck.

Even the way editorial pages operate varies. The Daily News always make a phone call soliciting the union’s side of an issue, then listen carefully to what we have to say — and then write an editorial taking Bloomberg’s side. That’s because Bloomberg and Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman are fellow members of New York’s billionaires club. The believe that what’s good for the city’s coffers is good for them and their wallets, ignoring the fact that a police recruitment and retention problem is not good for business.

The Post doesn’t bother calling and takes Bloomberg’s side because its editors feel that what’s good for Bloomberg is good for media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

To be fair, the Post — and usually the News — slam the PBA mostly on contract issues. They are the first to give our members the benefit of the doubt when we get into a tough on-duty situation. And while we appreciate that support, their non-support in salary disputes lessens the credibility of their support in battlefield issues, in my mind.

Newsday doesn’t seem to care about New York City police matters any more, and the only major non-tabloid, The New York Times, will actually listen to the PBA’s arguments and write an editorial that, at minimum, acknowledges our argument, and at times even supports our side. The only problem is, The Times doesn’t do it often enough.

And even the Chief-Leader, that so-called civil service weekly established to provide a voice for municipal employees, has fallen into the disturbing habit of espousing Mayor Bloomberg’s party line and that of his minister of propaganda, Labor Commissioner Jim Hanley. Because of that, we had to pay for a full page of space in that newspaper for a full year to get our message out to its readers.

In the final analysis, we don’t play this game on a level playing field. While we have considerable success getting our issues out in the news sections of the papers, the editorial pages are still going to be dominated by the billionaires. Pat Lynch is not going to find himself dining in Bermuda with Mort Zuckerman or Rupert Murdoch like Bloomberg does. So the best the PBA can do is to continue to arm its members with the truth so those editorial lies will roll off of us like water off a duck.