The demonstrated disconnect exposes the pushy nature of the Alpha-bet networks, ABC-CBS-NBC-CNN-NPR as they continue to move to the 'Left' of a cross-section of the viewers they are supposed to serve.

I am guessing they won't grow up anytime soon... their ego's won't allow them to emotionally grow out of their assumed 'moral superiority'. What I believe is that a truly 'RightWing' leader will emerge to exploit the underserved market demonstrating FoxNews to be 'middle-of-the-road'.

Call it the "Good Ole Boy" network which will provide it's mostly male audience with all the beer, tire and auto commercials the big advertisers want to push... instead of Leftist agenda.

wow

have to give america credit, instead of CNN.

I think fox will tone it down and take over the ever growing "I hate goddamn sensationalist bullshit" nitch.

I believe CNN more than I do Fox News. There constant stories of discoveries of wmd after the invasion were sickening

Yup, I still trust fox a little more than CNN. You know to take their sensationalist stories with a grain of salt. I think fox is a lot more likely to see the problem and do something about it than CNN.

Wanna see the media "elite" really blow their tops? Include Instapundit in that poll and start comparing numbers...

The fun begins when the media finally realizes that they're sitting on the horns of a dilemma: do they maintain the slowly failing status quo of the mass media, or blow the whole thing up and suffer the growing pains associated with developing and building a new model for journalism, (as well as rebuilding audience and credibility)?

Either way, the age of big network mass media has passed. The bet isn't on whether it will survive, the bet will be on what replaces it.

The good thing about the blog world is that it provides source links and quickly makes corrections. The bad thing is that its easy to get stuck in a rut and only visit the blogs you agree with.

But it seems to me that this poll really does show that for Big Media the light at the end of the tunnel is in fact an oncoming
train. More at http://www.di2.nu/blog.htm?20040609a

Did you see the Drudge link about how Rather and Brokaw were complaining that there was too much Reagan coverage. As if they weren't the ones doing the covering!

Will,

Great post. I have some thoughts on it in a long post here.

It's time for the "mainstream media" to ask "why do they (the US public) distrust us so much?" :-)

I shouldn't be as surprised as I am by the results. We get an absolutley horrible selection of news here in Afghanistan on the Armed Forces Network - PBS, NBC, CBS, etc. I started by yelling at the TV, then by turning it off, now I don't even turn it on...I use the Web exclusively for news now.

The rubes are tuning them out.

Or did I read it wrong, that conservatives watch more TV?

MSNBC # were very interesting, I like to watch it now and then.

A perfect example was this evening on Aaron What-his-names CNN Newsnight. As Americans are queing up to view Reagan in the Rotunda, he's leading a pannel discussion with liberal "historian" Haynes Johnson of the WashPost as they disect the hysteria of naming things after Ronnie and replacing Hamilton on the ten spot. The whole tone was "my, the natives are restless". What do they think normal Amerivans take away from that.

My God, WHY was I watching CNN!

Again, you are missing the point. The sheeple need the alphabet networks to tell them what is right, wrong, true or false. We're incapable of figuring it out ourselves. This is why we need folks like Ted Rall, "America's BS detector" Because we are too dumb to do it ourselves.

And they wonder why people ain't listening to them any longer. If you insult your audience, you lose your audience.

I think this is just a sign of the times. There's no such thing as a political 'discussion' anymore, where people try to convince other people of their views, there's just political arguments, where people of persuasion A insult people on the B side (and vice-versa).

I recall CNN (and many of the 'alphabet' news sources) beating the war drums a year or so ago & following the Fox footsteps quite closely. You didn't think they were 'untrustworthy' then. But now that you don't like what they're saying, they're back to being scum?
Hey, there are plenty of incompetent reporters on both sides of the aisle. I just wish some reporters (or even whole news agencies) would just try to, you know, REPORT instead of feed me their organizational slant. Sigh.

CNN never beat any war-drum if they could avoid it. It was all "war demonstration" this and UN that. 50 hippies throwing around old slogans was news to what was once the worlds largest news network.

I never trusted them then, nor will I ever trust them in the future. What do you expect when 90% of the journalists vote democrat.

71% of Republicans don't trust Fox News. Which means they're either very perceptive, or incredibly stupid.

I remember during the OJ trial that the only news organisation to get all the details right and not sensationalise the story... was the National Enquirer!

Maybe that's because they don't look down on their readers.

It is very disturbing to learn a pillar of our democracy is hollow. Can alternative news sources supplant the incumbents? Let's hope so and fast.

The chickens are finally -- and permanently -- coming home to rest. The history of journalism is the history of partisanship. Newspapers were born as party organs, they were published by local party bosses, and our 18th and 19th century forbears would never dream that the press consisted of anything more than party hacks. Indeed, our ancestors probably liked it that way: they got to read stories written by people they agreed with, and they probably trusted what they read.

I suppose things started to change when the yellow journalists discovered you can actually get rich selling papers. These guys weren't shills for party bosses. But they were never coy about their own partisan interests -- progressive, reformist, imperialistic -- and readers certainly didn't think they were reading dispassionate, scholarly articles. But that was okay: these readers agreed with the progressive, reformist ideology of the publishers. And they trusted their news.

But then Adolph Ochs bought the Times and thought he could make it a professional, clinical, nonpartisan newspaper. And I suppose he did the best he could. But that was a time when the elite shared alot of the same values: faith in democracy, skepticism about markets, patriotism, religiosity, modernism. It was pretty easy to claim to be nonpartisan when all that meant was that you don't take sides in elections.

But the 1960s and the culture divide since tossed that social consensus into the toilet. How to maintain a dispassionate, professional, nonpartisan newspaper when practically every story -- from foreign policy to parenting -- concerns issues that set people at each others' throats?

It was only a matter of time when the myth of professional, impartial journalism would collapse. And now it practically has. My prediction: With the success of FOX (and blogs), watch other formally dispassionate newspapers and news outlets suddenly discover that partisanship equals ratings -- and trust. FOX viewers trust that network because they're all on the same wavelength. They share the same values. And when the viewers are happy, FOX gets rich. Others will notice, and it'll be 1872 redux.

And that's good. Since news reporting has never been nonpartisan, who can argue that it's a bad thing if it becomes explicitly so again?

Does it seem to anyone else that Fox is biased, but that they accept that someone out there might have a different opinion? I don't like O'Reilley, I don't like Hannity - they are loud and obnoxious. But they don't pretend they have the only opinion going - they just think (as we generally do of our own opinions) that they are right. Brit Hume consistently acknowledges other viewpoints. I know where he is coming from and I trust him to give that point of view fairly and be civil to those that disagree. He is not a blowhard. He thinks.

This can seldom be said for the other networks. Aaron Brown, Judy Woodward - when they give stories they leave out huge chunks. They have not had to work against the dominant point of view and so they just assume that theirs (and the NYTimes and NPR and CBS, NBC, ABC) are the right views.

The difference is that even the worst blowhards on Fox have had to occasionally deal with another interpretation than theirs. This seldom seems true of those on the other networks.

I might also ask, how dare CNN after Eason Jordan's letter describing their 10 years of kowtowing to Saddam Hussein nor NYTimes after the Blair scandal even pretend to veracity - and what kind of fools are we if we still accept them as honest conduits of information?

For what it's worth, I haven't watched network news in four years - I watch primarily Fox and CSPAN, and sometimes MSNBC (Imus and Chris Matthews) and hardly ever CNN. Then there's the Blogosphere. The internet surely deserves some of the credit for the collapse of the old guard.

For what it's worth, I haven't watched network news in four years - I watch primarily Fox and CSPAN, and sometimes MSNBC (Imus and Chris Matthews) and hardly ever CNN. Then there's the Blogosphere. The internet surely deserves some of the credit for the collapse of the old guard.

I would like the channels to change in that I'd like for them to be able to record a few minutes or a discussion from another channel and thien critique the commentary. Meaning: show a clip of Judy Woodruf then let Brit Hume critique her ass.

This topic really comes to light when you know the facts behind a story seen on TV 'news'. CBS recently did a piece on small airplane security at a residential airpark. They arranged the interview using the false pretense of doing a story on living in an airport community, but it was hacked up by the editors and reporter to scare the sweeps month audience into thinking there was an unreasonable danger from light aircraft.

The people at the airpark know their neighbors and who gets in the plane with them. They didn't even speak with anyone from the TSA or anyone who has been working with small plane security for the past three years.

Reference: http://www.aopa.org/whatsnew/newsitems/2004/04-1-034x_letter.html

This is why I actually prefer the British press -- it IS partisan, makes no bones about it, so they air their biases right out (other than the BBC, which claims to be non-partisan).

Everyone should read the whole Pew report, it is really telling. And Pew leans left, so ya can't blame it on the conservatives.

One interesting point was that the same % (68) of people who called conservatives say they could identify a real conservative and a real liberal media source. Of the journalist who say they are liberal, like 80% said they identify a real conservative media outlet, but many less could ID a real liberal outfit (hard to believe, you don't have to look far). This suggests, conservatives at least know the difference.

The Pew survey supports the current meme sweeping the blogosphere - that people don't trust big media. It's hard to argue against facts supporting what people already seems to believe, especially from a respected organization like the Pew Center, but I'm sceptical of the results have been presented.

The question asked was "Please rate how much you think you can BELIEVE each organization on a scale of 4 to 1. On this four point scale, '4' means you can believe all or most of what the organization says. '1' means you believe almost nothing of what they say."

For almost every organization (for some odd reason people don't trust the National Enquirer), "3" was the most popular choice. Now the question is, what do "3" and "2" mean? I know it is not in keeping with the question asked, but I think a lot of people surveyed, especially around the twentieth organization when the question can't have been fresh in their minds, treated 4 as "I believe almost everything," 3 as "I believe most," 2 as "I disbelieve most", and 1 as "I disbelieve almost all." That is the way, in my experience at least, this type of question is usually asked. I'd like to see the results of a survey where the question was asked in this way. I'd be a lot more people would believe all or most of what organizations report.

I think another question from the Pew survey supports this. Only 15% of people completely agreed with the statement "I often don't trust what news organizations are saying" (38% mostly agreed, 34% mostly disagreed, and 9% completely disagreed). If 43% don't mostly not trust news organizations (awkward enough phrasing for you?), it doesn't make sense that only 33% of people mostly believe the most trusted news show (60 Minutes).

The trust numbers for news organizations is not good, and it is declining for almost all of them (aside from NPR, strangely), but I'm not sure the picture is as grim as the Pew Center study paints it.

Finally, can someone tell me how someone who is not paranoid can believe almost nothing of what, for example, the New York Times says? (10% of people disbelieve the Times, pretty much the same as the other name brand news organizations.) A large chunk of what they report is what I would regard as being either unambiguously true or a complete fabrication. Stuff like "the President is on Sea Island for a G8 meeting," or "Alan Greenspan said he might raise interest rates or he might not." Do people think they are making these things up?

Did you see the look on Judy Woodruff's face when Saddam Hussein was captured? She looked like Kennedy had just been shot.

It seems to me that increasingly the media are becoming participants in the headlines, as opposed to reporting them. When you have camera crews aiding and abetting terrrorists so they can get a good picture of the Bad Guys shooting a missile at an airplane taking off, that is creating a story -- not reporting.

Ginny
Great post. Just a few comments, O'Reilly, Colmes, and Hannity, a populist, a liberal, and a conservative all do opinion and commentary, not straight news. Hume does "Network News" in a long story format giving opposing views there due. Lively civil debate and news with more that one opinion, it only sounds biased when compared to the truly biased screed of the Old Media. It may just be that Fox deals with the news in a very American, or even Fair and Balanced way.

I will never forget the beginning of April, 2003. I turn on CNN (and MSNBC, for that matter) and all I hear is that we're bogged down in Iraq, the sandstorm has stopped the invasion, the Saddam Fedayeen are turning out to be too tricky, blah, blah, blah.

Then I turn on FOX and see our tanks rolling into Baghdad.

CNN is full of it, and anyone who is not a brainwashed partisan Democrat can see it. They are particularly inept and biased when it comes to military matters; I am in the military, and it about drives me crazy when they present a 5 minute expose on anything military and somehow manage to fit in a dozen inaccuracies or myths into the story...

I still turn it on every once in a while just to count the lies. When I reach ten I change it - usually happens within an hour.

I remember when I used to trust the network news, say 15 years ago. But ever since the internet started fact-checking their asses, it's been a real struggle to look at them as even remotely competent, much less "unbiased". Same for most of the newspapers. I'll still read them for the local news, but it's the blogosphere for me when I want the real story.

"The nationwide poll of 3,000 adults, conducted April 19-May 12, 2004, finds that the audiences for Rush Limbaugh's radio show and Bill O'Reilly's TV program remain overwhelmingly conservative and Republican. By contrast, audiences for some other news sources notably NPR, the NewsHour, and magazines like the New Yorker, the Atlantic and Harper's tilt liberal and Democratic, but not nearly to the same degree."

Could it be that more conservatives and Republicans listen to both sources, while more liberals and Democratics only listem to liberal and Democratic sources ?

"The nationwide poll of 3,000 adults, conducted April 19-May 12, 2004, finds that the audiences for Rush Limbaugh's radio show and Bill O'Reilly's TV program remain overwhelmingly conservative and Republican. By contrast, audiences for some other news sources notably NPR, the NewsHour, and magazines like the New Yorker, the Atlantic and Harper's tilt liberal and Democratic, but not nearly to the same degree."

Could it be that more conservatives and Republicans listen to both sources, while more liberals and Democratics only listem to liberal and Democratic sources ?
---------------------------
It could be why, but another question suggests that is not the case. It asked whether it was important that news share ones point of view. 45% of Republicans and 43% of conservatives said yes, versus 36% of Democrats and 33% of liberals. This suggests, although certainly not conclusively, liberals are more likely to listen to conservative sources than conservatives are to liberal ones.

I would suggest the explaination is that Limbaugh and O'Reilly are more partisan/opinionated than NPR or the category of so-called "literary magazines". This is, I think, supported by the fact that only 5% of liberals listen Limbaugh (versus 20% of conservatives) while 13% of conservatives listen NPR (versus 33% of liberals). Both differences are striking, but less so for NPR. (The previous numbers are only for those who care about a news source sharing their point of view.)

I 'm an expatriate visiting my son in Florida and have had access to domestic TV for a couple of months. I hate it. There are some moments I can stand...Russert had Saffire on alongwith a female WaPo reporter and they disagreed in interesting fashion. And yes Bret Hume is doing something better than most and I can handle a bit of Chris Matthews - sometimes. But what really hits me is that I like CSPAN because it isn't so artificially produced and moulded to twist my emotions and manipulate my mind. I noticed I liked watching the Regan funeral for the same reason...it was just what was in front of the camera like CSPAN. When Nancy Reagan touched the flag on the coffin the silence in the rotunda was palpable...even on TV. It was one of those moments in human life...terrible and wonderful at the same time....even on TV. Later the scene was repeated as part of the 'news' and some MF (that means Media Flunky children) had put music behind it.

I'd like to see how Brit Hume would do on a nationwide 1/2 hour against Tom, Dan and Peter.

"This suggests, although certainly not conclusively, liberals are more likely to listen to conservative sources than conservatives are to liberal ones."

It doesn't mean that to me. When I was a liberal I used to think it was important to listen to all views and certainly would have answered that way. It's just that 'all views' meant what I thought was mainstream and didn't include conservative views because I believed they were fringe. Sad, but true.

I do think that conservatives listen to liberal media much more than liberals do conservative media - though because of this, the liberals deny that their media is liberal.

I listen to NPR and somtimes watch CNN, PBS, and network news, including 60 minutes with my father - until he gets frustrated with my corrections and pointing out what is being intentionally withheld or pushed.

He may not vote for Bush this time because he hates him. Why? Because of Ashcroft, the Patriots Act, abortion, Rumsfeld, Iraq, his stupidity, etc. Sound familiar? I ask what he knows about Kerry, and it is little. But he must be better, right?

Am I the only one noticing that Bushs approval rating is about double that of the medias?
I think that it is fairly safe to conclude that if you dont trust the media, you dont really approve of the way they do their job...

Bush has an approval rating that is about double that of CNNs "trust rating"...
A month ago, the media called 46% really low approval rating...

CNN's interpretation of these data that they are "the most trusted" is sufficent explanation itself why exactly the opposite is true.

However, I recognize that alot of people don't like to parse and cross-check the news the way I do, and seem quite accepting of the network news presentation. For example, the economy has been expanding, yet people don't hear about it, and Bush remains in a slump. I suspect someone's listening to CBS, even if not me.

Contrast these results with the very encouraging survey data on the new US-backed pan-Arab TV and radio stations.

I forget the exact data, but majorities of Arabs "trusted" the news and information from these sources. Contrast that with the US and their own media.

Basically, Arabs trust US news media (a surprise in itself) more than the US trusts its won.

When these media institutions' bottom lines begin to suffer is when they will begin to listen. The Pew survey means little to these institutions as successful businesses.

I have not watched a minute of CNN since it was revealed they were paying off the Iraqi dictatorship to maintain access and agree to disseminate propaganda from Saddam as their own news. I have not listened to NPR since they put the idiot Ann Garruls in Baghdad to report on the war from her hotel room. These are not professionals by any definition, and they deserve only contempt.

There are a couple of unnamed distinctions under the surface of this debate as it usually unfolds. People of all political stripes can usually agree there is no such thing as freedom from bias, but that shouldn't end the conversation. One kind of bias is the deliberate manipulation of the audience which seems pretty obvious in the product of NPR, for instance; another kind is what happens when a person more or less opinionated, and more or less well-informed tries his best to get it right, and inevitably fails, and knows it, and keeps trying. The latter seems to be the intention of most bloggers. The first kind is elitist, insidious, dangerous; the second kind is respectful of the audience, frank about its intentions, and useful. The defects of the first kind are dealt with by turning it off, or laughing it to scorn. The defects of the second kind are dealt with by reading more and more various sources.

What we are going through is reminiscent of Philip Roth's description of the debasement of language in Czechoslovakia. In "Return to Prague" (New York Review of Books, April 12, 1990). He describes it as "a very hopeful sign that so many ordinary men and women should be able to recognize that the offense against their language had been as humiliating and atrocious as anything else. Ivan [Klima] told me [Roth] that at one point during the revolution, a vast crowd had been addressed for a few minutes by a sympathetic young emissary from the Hungarian democratic movement, who concluded his remarks by apologizing to them for his imperfect Czech. Instantaneously, as one voice, a half million people roared back, 'You speak better than [the party apparatchik] Jakes.'”

But it isn't only propaganda, overt or subtle, that is choking us. Consider what Roth has to say to Klima further on in the same article:

"As Czechoslovakia becomes a free, democratic consumer society, you writers are going to find yourselves bedeviled by a number of new adversaries from which, strangely enough, repressive, sterile totalitarianism protected you. Particularly unsettling will be the one adversary that is the pervasive, all-powerful archenemy of literature, literacy, and language. I can guarantee you that no defiant crowds will ever rally in Wenceslas Square to overthrow its tyranny nor will any playwright-intellectual be elevated by the outraged masses to redeem the national soul from the fatuity into which this adversary reduces virtually all of human discourse. I am speaking about that trivializer of everything, commercial television—not a handful of channels of boring clichéd television that nobody wants to watch because it is controlled by an oafish state censor, but a dozen or two channels of boring, clichéd television that most everybody watches all the time because it is entertaining. At long last you and your writer colleagues have broken out of the intellectual prison of Communist totalitarianism. Welcome to the World of Total Entertainment. You don’t know what you’ve been missing."

Americans, maybe especially we who think of ourselves as relatively clear on these matters, still have much to learn about freedom from the men of Prague, Budapest, and the rest of Eastern Europe who fought for theirs more recently than we for ours. I haven't owned a television since 1973. The difference in point of view due to this fact alone can scarcely be imagined.

Anybody notice that Republicans have little trust in all news sources, including Fox? Democrats have more trust in all news sources and completely fall for CNN.

Could you say that Republicans are skeptics and Democrats are credulous dupes?

Instead of, as liberals like to say, Republicans are getting fed the party line, its the other way around.

---Summed up, folks that are liberal will deny they are, thus using names as 'progressive'; same as their responses, skewed toward moderate category responses when they would be classified as liberal in reality---my guestimate that the anti-Fox bias would be bared more.

When these media institutions' bottom lines begin to suffer is when they will begin to listen. The Pew survey means little to these institutions as successful businesses.

This would imply that there is a real trust number that would get the network's real customers (advertisers) to pull out on this issue. I know, let's ask them? We know who they are because they show themselves in the form of commercials. I'd love to see the results of that survey?

Typical left wing Katie KouriK couldn't wait to steer the conversation with Tim Russert away from Reagan to how bad things are for Bush in Iraq. Its a shame that other views don't get equal time on free broadcasts.

I not only ignore the mainstream media, I absolutely loathe it. I reprogrammed my TV the other week to ensure I'll never make a mistake a land on CNN again. I refuse to listen to NPR any longer (I've been a daily listener for 15 years), and I cancelled my subscription to the Washington Post after 5 years.

Since I've cancelled the leftist trash, I feel much happier and I no longer feel a need to scream at the radio or write a Letter to the Editor to correct the latest obvious Dana Milbank distortion.

Sick of media bias? If enough of us ignore it, it will go out of business.

There is no liberal media. That is a meme that was introduced about 4 years ago to divert attention from the failures or our government. The media reports policy failures. Whichever side made the error would rather attack the press for revealing their incompetence than address the incompetence itself.

The concept of a liberal media is a myth.

Maybe we'd have more faith in news media if Fox hadn't gone to court to establish their right to lie. Just sayin'.

>When these media institutions' bottom
>lines begin to suffer is when they will
>begin to listen. The Pew survey means
>little to these institutions as successful
>businesses.

Ah but that is the real point here.

Exactly what options do mass market advertisers have instead the main stream media?

Face facts, mass market advertising as we know it is dying. As people use the internet more and more for entertainment and information, people can selectively _screen out_ mass market advertising.

Search engines like Google or Amazon's purchaser preferences ranking system serve the purpose of providing market information to people that mass advertising does. Pop up ads and other such mass market tools like banners on the internet are rapidly being screened out by pop up stopping software.

So it matters less and less that the main stream media's viewership is tubing since the mass market advertisers have not found a successful paradigm to deal with the market shift to the internet as the primary provider of entertainment and news.

Fox's success should be viewed for what it is. They are gaining market share in a dying market niche. Being the top typewriter producer in the era of desk top publishing will not have a long future.

"So it matters less and less that the main stream media's viewership is tubing since the mass market advertisers have not found a successful paradigm to deal with the market shift to the internet as the primary provider of entertainment and news."

And the amount of money they can ring out of advertisers will decrease as the advertisements will reach less and less people. So, yes, the niche is in real trouble. If they don't start providing what the public wants, they won't have the money to run their networks.

Ach,

The Advertisers are becoming less and less cost effective for each dollar spent on the mainstream media. The problem is that they have no alternative place to spend the money.

The main stream media will not respond to price/performance signals until producers of good and services use something other than mass market advertising. There is nothing else remotely close in reaching large numbers of people with a marketing message.

Until that comes to pass the main stream media will remain the 'self-licking ice cream cone' we know today.

The fragmentation of the media audience has two contradictory effects on advertisers' willingness to pay for TV ads. On the one hand, as many posters have noticed, the shrinking "mass" audiences reduce the value of network ads for advertisers of mass-market products. On the other hand, the increasing scarcity of opportunities to reach a mass audience means that even the networks' shrinking crowds are worth more on the margin. This latter effect is usually ignored. But in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, and in the land of fragmented audiences, the decent-sized crowd is king.

I think it's the War on Terror and the defeatist attitude that Big Media adopted that's done them in.

Cast back your mind to what happened after 9/11. We went into Afghanistan. The Media adopted the Vietnam War as their template for reporting & evaluating the battle, even before it began, and decided we'd lose. And it turned out that the template was flat out wrong.

But the Media continued to use it during the runup to the war in Iraq. Wrong again.

And even now, they continue to use the Vietnam template - even though it should be clear that most people know that whatever's going on in Iraq, it's not Vietnam.

It is always said that the generals fight the last war, but it's pretty clear to me the the Media is reporting the last war. But the last war is not what we have, and unless they wake up and realize that, they are going to become more & more irrelevant.

It might be too late. Credibility is like virginity, you know. You lose it, it's gone.

I get the newspaper for the sports & the comics. I stopped reading the movie reviews way back in the seventies, when the critics utterly blew Silver Streak - check it out!

If I have to watch TV for news, I watch Fox. At least they're not a bunch of defeatists.

And I'm voting for Bush, and Victory!

With very few exceptions major media centers all come from the to largest concentrations of liberal thought. For the areas they come from they are representing the centrest view point. Half of the population lives in the center of the country. If they ever thought to talk to us, instead of looking at us for some homey human interest stories, they might realize that hayseeds are smarter then they realize.

I usually read blogs, newspapers and TV. If you track the same story you see it played differently on all three. You almost have to compare, contrast and reason (taking into account their biases) to get at least a blurry picture of the issues involved. I do not see how a one source news consumer could get any decent picture at all.

>There is no liberal media. That is a meme
>that was introduced about 4 years ago to
>divert attention from the failures or our
>government.

ROFLMAO!

Rongo, the news media has been tilting liberal -- and being called on it -- for FORTY years, not "four."

If you're going to make assertions of fact like that, Rongo, first lengthen your historical horizons beyond last Tuesday, hmmm?

No one has mentioned that the abandonment of the Major Media has accelerated and exacerbated the split between liberals and conservatives. We are reading/listening to entirely different stories and viewpoints. No wonder it is no longer possible to have discussions; we have no common values upon which to frame arguments that resonate with the other side. Maybe the split in values came first, then the comfort level with the choice of news information, but either way, we have a disaster in this country.

Hey - Main Stream Media ---
HERE'S YOUR TRUST!