"Doug McDonald" wrote in message
...

It's actually true. There are of course conservative
talk shows. But no actual "news channel" that is
consistently substantially to right of center. That's
exactly what the previously quoted showed.

Yes, you are correct: while Fox is extremely right-wing, it is not a "news
channel". Rather, it is Republican propoganda in the guise of entertainment
loosely disguised as "news". Sort of like a neo-conservative Saturday Night
Live, minus the humor. Or at best a political Jerry Springer or Howard
Stern, with politicians etc. as the dysfunctional guests/entertainment.

All except Fox and MSNBC are very far left of center.

True, if you are looking at things from the point of view of John
Poindexter, Dick Cheney, or John Ashcroft (or the point of view of Rupert
Murdoch or Roger Ailes). Some years ago one of the initiators of the
"liberal media" myth essentially admitted that the media was "liberal" only
because all of society was liberal form that person's point of view. These
people wanted a definitively right-slanted media in order to influence
society, not to reflect it. And they came up with the scam (which they are
fully conscious of, even admitting publicly that it's a wonderful racket) of
accusing mainstream media, which strives not to be biased, of being biased,
when it is they, the accuers, that are actually biased and making no attempt
to be fair. But if you keep saying it, people will believe it, right?

People who say things like "Fox is right wing" are
simply WRONG. They are weong because they are using
a cloud cookoo land definition of center. That is, they
simply assign themselves ... quite left wing people ...
as center.

Whe you ACTUALLY look at the real world, for example,
the Congress, Fox is very close to the center. If you
look at all the people, same result.

You are naive enough to believe that Congress is a good reflection of the
real world?

In the "real world", the large majority of the population disagrees with
actual Republican policies in virtually every area, when they are each taken
in isolation and stripped of rhetoric: universal health care, abortion,
welfare, taxes, gun control, separation of church and state, education,
drugs and crime, media ownership, environment, labor relations, workplace
safety, civil rights, corporate accounting abuses, etc. But the right wing
have become masters of deception and framing the issues in such a way that
their bad positions are made to look good and their opponents are forced to
debate on their terms. Continual mudslinging and misdirection of blame onto
their opponents only helps their cause.

They also have their own right-wing "news" outlet in Fox, which doesn't
bother with fact checking or even trying to tell the truth, freely mixes
editorializing with "reporting", gives no time at all to balancing
progressive points of view, and generally plays out the Republican
leadership's philosophy that politics is war, to be won at any cost (get all
the spoils and kill your opponents). There is nothing in the current
Republican philosophy about building a better world or country, about
benefitting the population as a whole, about accommodating different points
of view, or about reasoned debate about policies. It is all about winning:
disparaging and degrading your opponents and discrediting them and their
points of view. Then you can get all the spoils.

And the mainstream media have played along: despite being "liberal" (if
that's really the case: a 1998 study showed that the Washington press corps,
at least, were more conservative than the general public on issues such as
trade, taxes, Social Security, health care and corporate power, and the
majority of newspapers have endorsed Republican candidates in virtually
every election this century), individual reporters have been unable to
provide accurate and meaningful information in the face of this propoganda
blitz, largely as a result of their rules of proper journalism: since most
of what Bush and his cronies say has a tiny grain of truth mixed with
subjective opinion and gross exaggeration, they can't be called the liars
they so clearly are (it's also not in the nature of journalists to make such
accusations: rather, they try to present the facts and let the reader or
viewer decide for him or herself; the Republicans know this very well). All
journalists can do is put such statements up against what Kerry (or whoever)
says in return, and hope the reader can judge. But with all the noise,
misdirection, deception, outright lies, continual repetitions of untruths,
accusations, and false impressions, it's difficult for anyone to tell what's
true or not, and at best they may come away confused and not knowing whom to
believe. See: http://www.fair.org/press-releases/swift-boat.html

Also, due to the massive, well funded and organized letter/email/phone/fax
attacks the stations or papers receive any time anyone says or writes
something not quite conservative enough, they've been cowed into taking a
right-of-center view much of the time. (Not all of the time, but moreso than
they would naturally.)

Even when they can do meaningful reporting, it often gets drowned out. See:
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/c...documents.html

Another reason reporting glosses over many issues is that the media is far
more concentrated now than it used to be, and owned by major corporations.
This is something that's happened without most people being aware of: most
media in the U.S. are now owned by a small number of major corporations, due
to relaxations in media ownership rules by the likes of Michael Powell (but
starting many years earlier). Clearly there are many potential conflicts of
interest when, for instance, NBC covers news about GE, ABC about Disney, or
CBS about Viacom. (see
http://www.fair.org/extra/best-of-extra/ge-boycott.html for one old example.
There are plenty more, and the situation is certainly not getting better.)
But in addition, large corporate media are concerned about keeping large
corporate advertisers happy, and also about keeping the recipients of large
political donations happy so that policies will move in the direction of
unrestrained profit-making. "News" is really about profit, by way of being
entertaining enough to hook an audience and hence major advertisers. None of
this creates an atmosphere conducive to reasoned and penetrating reporting
in the best interest of U.S. citizens.