-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > Just wondering if you have read Al Frankin's new > book. As you know he pretty much takes apart Hannity > and O'Reilly. You should know that Colmes was hired > by Hannity to be his "liberal" foil. Colmes is more > centrist than anything else and for the most part he > is nothing at all. If this is the bes you can up > with as "balance" at Fox it is pretty much proof > that Fox is biased. As to other outlets, I have > heard you say this before and I would like to see > examples of the supposed bias of CNN and the major > networks. Frankin had students at your old school > research things like the number of negative stories > about Bush and Gore and basically George got a free > ride and Al got bashed. Let us also be clear that > Fox is owned by Rupert Murdoch a avowed conservative > whose other outlets include The New York Post. Roger > Ailes is (oh excuse me was) an operative of the > republican party and Brit Hume has let his personal > feelings be publically known in conservative > publications (the Standard?. Where is CNN's bias. > Does a liberal own NBC? Do the major newreaders on > these networks make their political beliefs as > apparent as Hume? By the way in Frankin's book a > survey of journalists found them to be slightly more > liberal than the public on some issues and more > conservative on others.
See, people who make this argument just have no experience in the business world. I heard Joe Conason say this a couple of days ago, claiming that the fact that NBC is owned by GE - which was run by Jack Welch, a Republican - means that NBC can't have a liberal bias. That mainly reveals the self-importance of the press. Jack Welch has _much more important_ things to do with his time than control NBC. Who gets hired by NBC doesn't even come across his radar screen. Only someone _in_ the media would think that the owners of the media would bother with influencing news coverage. But as for CNN - Ted Turner is much farther to the left than Murdoch is to the right. He thought the September 11th terrorists were "brave" and claims that Israel commits "terrorism" against the Palestinians. Find something like that from Murdoch some time. Dick Parsons might be a conservative, but you know, he's not Turner - he's got better things to do with his time than manage CNN's news reports. But if you want CNN bias, pure and simple, how about CNN covering up information for Saddam Hussein? Eason Jordan _publicly admitted in the New York Times_ than CNN did not report stuff that the Hussein regime didn't want them to report. If CNN was half as concerned about anti-American bias as pro-American bias, the reporting out of Iraq would have been a lot different. That's just for starters. Franken's study is so totally at variance with anyone who deals with anyone _in_ the press that it's a joke. I mean, I'm dating a producer at ABC News, and she claims they're totally unbiased - and will also admit that she doesn't think there's a single person she knows there who would describe themselves as conservative. Not even one. You _couldn't be hired there_ if you were, in my opinion, just like most universities. Most surveys say that upwards of _90%_ of reporters vote Democratic. What does that say? Of course Gore got slammed more than Bush in the 2000 campaign. Every Democratic professional I know agrees that Gore ran the most incompetent Presidential campaign since Bush 1992, while Bush ran one that was a model of focus and competence. The media is obsessed with process - they usually can't understand the issues, after all - and the Gore process was pathetically inept. So he got negative coverage. If a Republican had ran Gore's campaign (like, say, Bush 1992) he would have been destroyed by the press. Again, Bob, what you can't handle is that - for the first time in the last 30 years or so - people like me get to participate in the media process now. You can't shut us out of the dialogue anymore. And because of that, because the _people_ agree with us now that they get a chance to hear us, we're winning. Between Fox, the Internet, talk radio, and (most importantly) the people, there are two sides to the conversation now. ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
