4UH8SIMBKAGN said:
ricksegers said:
What's funny is how there is now a great cry about bias in the media. There was a time in this country when the accepted method was to select your media based on its bias. Col. McCormick in chicago, Hearst everywhere, Ochs in NY, Kaltenborn, Ed Murrow and Walter Winchell nationally. They all had a bias and people loved them for it. There was a balance in that if you didn't like one go to the other. I guess it became a problem within in the last fifty years when people started going into journalism to "change the world" rather than report on someone else changing it and most of the media practitioners took a left turn. What was interesting to me was I recorded newscats off of each network. Not a personality show like Hannity or King but news. I compared the two of them as to stories covered and information provided and they were virtually identical.
When there were just three evening network newscasts, there was no "balance". They all leaned to the left and hid the truth as they pleased (for the left as they still do - NBC to the extreme left today, of course). We did not have much talkradio or many other sources of information except newspapers, most of which also leaned and continue to lean to the left (the ones that haven't folded yet), so how would we know? We were in the dark. But we're smarter today thanks to cable news, talkradio and the internet.
Today we have much more information available at our fingertips from hundreds of thousands of sources. Everyone in the government is under much more scrutiny today. Deservedly so. We need even more of a microscope put on politicians and thankfully it won't be done by the "old media".
Fox News Channel has more Democrats and Independents watching it than Republicans. So all those in this thread who think it's right leaning, you are off balance yourselves. Fox News is the TRUE meaning of "fair and balanced". Embrace it and get over your own bias.
There's probably no point having this argument...people perceive bias based on their own political viewpoints. So FoxNews seems
"fair and balanced" to those with conservative views, while CNN appears left-wing. Liberals see Fox as outrageously right-wing and CNN as unbiased.
My own feelings as a liberal - I perceive Fox to be on the right, and I don't think anybody is trying to hide it. Roger Ailes was the major force in the creation of FoxNews. He was a media consultant and advisor to Nixon, Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Rudy Giuliani. Ya think he might be a conservative??
Rupert Murdoch stated quite explicitly a number of times that the network was designed as a conservative alternative, and it's been very successful doing so. He's also hinted around that he's not personally as conservative as his network. Remember that Murdoch got his start with British tabloids featuring female naked boobs on the front page. The regular Fox network runs more risque and bold programming than the other 3 networks. Original FX programming features more profanity, nudity, sex, and violence than any other basic cable network.
It's all about the money, folks.
