Jake22 writes:
quote:
Some people praise FOX News for covering all sides of the issues (i.e. Hannity and Colmes, a show with one host from each end of the political spectrum).
Um, Colmes is not a liberal. He's a centrist.
There is no Left in the United States of any importance.
quote:
Others demonize it as being right wing, just as many accuse most American media of left-wing biases (the last estimate I heard said that 3% of those producing news broadcasts on CNN, NBC, etc. identify themselves as conservative whereas 34% of the American public does so).
The problem with this, of course, is that it confuses the reporters with the editors. While it is true that the reporters tend to skew to the Democrats, the editors skew to the Republicans.
The New York Times, for example, that supposed bastion of liberalism, couldn't bring itself to use the word "gay" except when making a direct quote of somebody until somewhat recently. Instead, it always used the term "homosexual."
Another example is the press coverage of Bush Sr., Clinton, Dole, Gore, and Bush Jr. Clinton received the most negative press of any president in history. When Clinton ran against Dole, he again received much more negative press and less positive press than Dole. When Gore was running against Bush Jr., Gore received more negative press and Bush Jr. received more positive. Take, for example, Gore's alleged illegal fundraising at a Buddhist temple and compare it to Bush's alleged going AWOL from the military. Gore's actions were covered much more in depth and for a greater amount of time than Bush's.
There's an interesting book from Eric Alterman called
What Liberal Media? that points out just how false this impression is. I'd have to go look it up, but there's a site that details all of the errors in fact that Coulter made in her best-selling book,
Slander, which supposedly exposed the liberal media (if I recall correctly, she didn't make it past the first page before stating something that wasn't true.)
Fox, being the upstart broadcast network in the US (having to fight the well-established NBC, ABC, and CBS), is mostly concerned with ratings and will do anything outrageous in order to generate it. You know all these "reality marriage" shows such as
The Bachelor and
For Love or Money? Fox started it all with
Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? Thus, following the trend we see in Right-dominated radio, they have skewed to the Right.
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Rrhain
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