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"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. |
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