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Are you disputing the above legal opinion? Would you rather that it was illegal to lie, and let the courts/juries be the arbiter of all facts (not just the facts relevant to a particular case)?

You're are misreading. The precedent is that news organisations can intentionally lie. Get it? They don't even have to pretend that they didn't know they were lying!

I'm also suspicious of the study itself, because it depends on the selection of facts chosen. If you collect all of the test questions from PBS, and then quiz FNC viewers on those facts, it doesn't surprise me that FNC viewers might score lower.

Congratulations, you've impugned the methodology of the study, without investigating the methodology of the study. That raises the bar for being credulous, but perhaps that's what conservatives look for in their media.

And here's a study from FAIR which shows that NPR is extremely biased: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1180

Actually you don't even need a study. Just think about NPR and PBS and ask yourself, "When was the last time either of these interviewed a libertarian, or otherwise presented a 'less government is better government' viewpoint?" As far as I know, never. They haven't even interviewed Congressman Ron Paul, the most visible small-government proponent out there.

NPR/PBS are pro-big government statist organizations. (See my other comments about NPR one page below)

So are they're upset because of the "dont ask dont tell" policy with regards to killing civilians?
If the graphics are quite real in COD6 then shouldn't the content be real too?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/14/AR2009091403262.html
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/iraq-journalists.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6046950.stm
http://www.newssafety.org/index.php?view=article&catid=314%3Apress-room-news-release&id=3786%3Airaq-war-toll-rises-with-killing-of-tv-reporter&option=com_content&Itemid=100077

While I am at it, it is very hard to take seriously a group that makes up statistics about domestic violence and the Super Bowl Sunday. And, once the lie was exposed, the group has defended and justified the lie.

And, it is hard to take seriously a group that has been complaining about the wage-gender gap when a female economist showed the gap to be, 2% when experience, education, and number of years on the job are taken into account. And, when a former head of the National Organization for Women New York City shows it is actually false. The reason men tend to make more in many professions is because men do harder and more dangerous jobs. Men are more likely to do the nastier jobs, to work later, to work overtime, work odd hours, to travel for their job, and do all the most difficult things in a job than women. Women are also more likely to choose jobs that are personally rewarding but pay less, such as working for non-profits. The reason men make more than women is because men sacrifice more of their happiness, health, and self to their jobs than women do.

Feminists are their own worst enemy.

That's quite a trick considering the net was created in 1969, and Al Gore did not join the Congress until 1977. Maybe he borrowed an Omni from Time Voyager Phineas Bogg and zipped back to the 1960s.

So the Internet, where millions of people and businesses could communicate online, sprung fourth, wholly formed in 1969? Or maybe it was a bit of a process, starting with two computers and ending up with millions? A process that...might have been given a shove (and government funding)...by a politician from Tennessee?

You don't have to take my word for it. Vint Cerf, inventor of TCP/IP:

Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development.

No one person or even small group of persons exclusively "invented" the Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among people in government and the university community. But as the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time.

Too bad you suckers of Satan's cock were so busy trashing Gore in 2000 that you completely ignored the fact that Bush took credit for patients rights legislation that he fucking vetoed as governor of Texas.

Google UN Inspectors in Iraq and take the first result.

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1123

The inspectors were denied access time and time again for 12 years. The UN passed security resolutions finding Iraq in violation for refusing access to the inspectors. When Iraq did allow inspectors, they were only allowed on certain days and to certain sites. You call that free run.

You are a flat out liar.

http://www.casi.org.uk/info/scriraq.html

...as most in the media, including Internet media, are liberal...

Fallacy. Some media is liberal. Some is conservative.

A study from a few years ago concluded that the media favors whatever party is in the White House:

92 percent of all U.S. sources interviewed were white, 85 percent were male and, where party affiliation was identifiable, 75 percent were Republican.

*62% of all partisan sources were administration officials; George Bush alone accounted for 33% of the total. When these are set aside, the remaining partisan sources were 51% Republican and 48% Democrat, suggesting a strong advantage overall for the party that held the White House.

[admittedly liberal organization conducted the study, but their writing is logical and balanced]
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1109

The problem is that news needs to be critical information, and not just entertainment, in order for democracy to work. Even a truly free market requires critical analysis of products, because it only functions if consumers are making informed decisions.

Let's say we just let the chips fall where they may and cable news becomes the de facto standard for journalism. When you have a handful of corporations whose job is to sell advertising to another handful of corporations, the amount of self-censorship would skyrocket. Common sense tells you that outing your highest paid advertiser for having a sweatshop or poisoning a creek that's giving children cancer is a bad business move.

Imagine this scenario: two journalists approach their editor with a story. One is a fluff piece about a local sports star getting arrested for hiring a prostitute. The other is an investigation into alleged union busting at a major local employer, who also happens to be one of their biggest advertisers. In a purely capitalist model, which journalist gets the green light? Does the editor who cranks out huge profits for less money get the promotion?

A book was written about the subject, with a nice summary on Wikipedia:

According to the book, the pressure to create a stable, profitable business invariably distorts the kinds of news items reported, as well as the manner and emphasis in which they are reported. This occurs not as a result of conscious design but simply as a consequence of market selection: those businesses who happen to favor profits over news quality survive, while those that present a more accurate picture of the world tend to become marginalized.
Manufacturing Consent, by Herman and Chomsky

For a concrete example, check this out this article on the coverage of the genocide in East Timor.

Basically, if you let market forces totally control news media in any form, you will end up with entertainment that distributes what is popular but not what is true. It's the difference between the BBC and Fox News. Both are biased, but as far as the quality of news they provide, Fox isn't even in the same dimension.

Payola commentary has been around for a while. Why would Twitter be different from big shot pundits?

I am curious what percentage of journalists are left vs right leaning,

See for yourself.

Does this mean that news organizations are, on average, to the left of the general public

No, in point of fact journalists and news orgainzations are to the right of the general public. They favor the interests of, and act as mouthpieces for, big business and the investing class.

The problem is that the the terms "left" and "right", which properly refer to labor and capital, have been misused to refer to social issues. Journalists (and other professionals) tend to be more socially liberal, because they tend to be more educated and live in urban areas, while on most issues the "socially conservative" position reflects either a rural viewpoint or a flat-out ignorant one.

The media is just as leftist as the major corporations that own it -- or, in the case of NPR, that sponsor it.

these might interest you if you haven't found them already:

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3612&printer_friendly=1
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1658&printer_friendly=1

these might interest you if you haven't found them already:

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3612&printer_friendly=1
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1658&printer_friendly=1

It's utter nonsense. Doctrow is a self important blowhard who, for reasons unknown, people think is actually relevant.

It's hard to see how your criticism is correct. Doctorow hedges a lot in this essay (one's "favorite medium" will be "devoured, transformed, or destroyed". That covers a lot of possibilities). But even if he's wrong in this essay, your criticism is unjustified and overly harsh: Doctorow is a writer making his money from selling books one can download free, something long thought impossible in the 'why pay for what you can get for free' philosophy. He is walking the talk showing us through his example how one can license liberally, make a living with a huge online component to one's work, and sustain this for years on end. Perhaps there's a message in there for the proprietors of movies, newspapers, TV, and music.

That the Internet can't ever replace newspapers and proper reporting.

One hopes the lecturer didn't conflate such different things as you just did. There's nothing categorically improper about the reporting going on online, and there's nothing categorically proper about reporting in print. Newspapers can switch to online publication and offer the same caliber of reporting they offer now. It's not the quality of reporting that prevents newspaper publishers from losing their print publications. The New York Times, for instance, can continue to lie about the most important issue of the day while punishing authors of far less important articles in ridiculous public displays (Judith Miller versus Jayson Blair) whether they do it in print or online. The medium can change and the reportage can remain the same.

"How many bloggers are embedded in Falujah?"

That doesn't strike me as nearly important as asking: How many reporters are independent? How many are not embedded with the military? How many are failing to present a "difficult public face for [their media organization] in a time of war" or judging their effectiveness by comparing to competitors who are "waving the flag at every opportunity"? Phil Donahue's CNBC show was cancelled for the reasons quoted in these last two quotes, according to a leaked internal memo. I don't recall most of the major news outlets telling us much about the millions on the streets of the world protesting the US invasion of Iraq before it began. I recall them getting head counts wrong and ignoring well-spoken war critics lest their contrary views gain mainstream exposure and thus legitimizing them in the views of those who consume nothing but corporate news. I don't recall good corporate news analysis of the run-up to the war before or after Col. Powell's lies to the UN. Instead, I recall seeing a strong imbalance of views on-air favoring pro-war voices. Some of the most valuable journalism about this war has come from unembedded independent journalists on far less-widely seen shows like "Democracy Now!". It seems to me that the medium isn't the critical factor here, what the news organization says is.

Humanity produces but ~2% of it, the rest is produced naturally by volcanoes, forest fires and such.

You probably want to stop reading Fox and Rush, esp. 14 years after their lies have been debunked: July/August 1994
The Way Things Aren't
Rush Limbaugh Debates Reality

unpleasant, perhaps. violent? i have yet to see any evidence of that. i think the activists in question went a little too far and perhaps let their emotions cloud their judgment. but conducting vivisection like the draize test on live animals is more violent and "unpleasant" than phone harassment, graffiti, and bomb hoaxes. violence implies doing physical harm to someone. and in this case, HLS merits that term more than the convicted activists.

in any case, Indymedia is merely an independent news outlet and online forum. you don't confiscate a newspaper company's documents, proofs, and printing equipment just because they report on someone who is "violent or unpleasant." CNN, Fox, NBC, ABC, etc. report on violent criminals all the time. but you wouldn't consider shutting down those news networks.

you've also neglected to show any evidence that Indymedia posted any information that could be used to make threats against the judge. it is more likely that a commenter posted some private info and/or made threats, but that it was quickly removed by the editors. in any case, that does not warrant seizing Indymedia's servers (and backup servers).

regardless of your political views, this recurring pattern of unwarranted police harassment and seizing of web servers targeted at Indymedia should be disturbing to anyone who believes in free speech and the right to dissent. currently, right-wing elements within the political establishment are capitalizing on these targeted groups' unpopular political views (and their perceived affiliation with radical groups by the public) to encroach on civil liberties under the guise of fighting "terrorism." but if these increasingly routine abuses of power are accepted by the public, then it won't be long before any public forum can be shutdown and have their servers seized just because a guest posts someone's private information or makes a vague threat against a public figure.

law enforcement regularly use agent provocateurs to incite riots and arrest otherwise peaceful activists. do you think they'd even think twice about posting an anonymous threat to an independent news site or liberal-leaning forum to get it shut down?

if such abuses of power are tolerated by the public, the end result will be that online forums & message boards will require all guests to register with their real name, eliminating any shred of internet anonymity, and all messages will have to be pre-approved by site moderators before they are actually posted on the site, destroying free speech. after all, if site owners are going to be held responsible for all messages posted on their site, then that's the only way they can keep their site up. part of the reason Indymedia and ThePirateBay's servers keep getting seized is because they don't keep longterm logs of user activity. so i guess all site owners will have to log everyone's IPs and retain those logs for however many years law enforcement demand.

Let's start here:

White House Vandalized In Transition, G.A.O. Finds

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CEFDE163CF931A25755C0A9649C8B63

That doesn't confirm much. It doesn't even say how many keyboards, out of the 62 replaced, were missing W keys. It could be just a few. But I'm guessing zero. Who has claimed to have personally seen the supposed vandalism? I find it odd nobody ever took pictures of it. The GAO interviewed 100 people, which is enough to get several people to report rumors they had heard as truth. I wouldn't be surprised if there were even a few people who had developed false memories of the events after the rumor had gone around a while.

Check out the following links:

http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/05/23/vandals/print.html
http://dir.salon.com/story/politics/feature/2002/06/13/scandal/print.html
http://www.fair.org/activism/vandal-update.html

the guy has gotten a big pass

Obama got a pass from the media?

During the 2000 campaign, McCain used a racial slur that would have ended the career of any other politician, a Macaca moment. His fans in the press let it slide.

The media loved McCain: Chris Matthews famously said, "We're his base."

McCain might have room to complain about the fickleness of the media's bias, but that's all.

We get quotes from people around the world like 'There is the feeling that for the first time since Kennedy, America has a different type of leader'

That's what people's attitude is. It's their job to report people's reactions to events.

Look at how he has run his campaign, indeed, without holding to his promise to use public funding (which McCain did, and has been polling close up until recently).

Wrong:

Despite the media outrage over his "broken promise" (Washington Post, 6/20/08), Obama's stance on public financing has actually been much more qualified; he pledged in a 2007 questionnaire only to "aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 2/18/08). Similarly, Obama stated at a February news conference (New York Times, 2/15/08): "If I am the nominee, I will make sure our people talk to John McCain's people to find out if we are willing to abide by the same rules and regulations with respect to the general election going forward."

By doing a fair job at shaking off all of the baseless right wing smears of associations he has had with crazies.

Fixed that for you. Playing the "associations game" is for fools and tools, because there isn't a person on this planet that can't be connected to an unsavory individual in one or two steps.

The only reason that he has made it this far is the lack of a critical eye on the part of the media.

Another tired lie that was debunked months ago. Yes, Obama got much love from the media - just ask anyone who supported John Edwards in the primaries - but that all changed when he passed Hillary Clinton. The media spent two months obsessing over Rev. Wright while Hillary's Bosnian Sniper Rifle fable was a one day story.

If you don't already know, that's when Gibson asked Obama why he would raise Cap gains to 28, when revenues from the tax increased when Clinton lowered it to 20, and again when Bush lowered it to 15. Revenues, for your edification, means the money the government took in. His answer: to make it more fair.

The reason revenues go up after tax cuts is simple: the population keeps growing. But the budget has to grow to meet the needs of that increasing population, so while revenues may go up after a tax cut, they don't go up enough to make up for the loss in revenue. Or, more simply, this talking point was debunked when Clinton raised taxes and revenues went way, way up, not down.

The guy is a lunatic.

You're wrong about everything.

Despite that we still found missiles filled with Sarin gas, documentation for WMD, storage facilities for WMD, training manuals for WMD, etc.

Could you please provide a citation? Also most importantly those weren't the WMDs you were looking for ("But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.").

Also note that the U.S. actually supplied or played a significant role in acquiring these weapons during the Iran-Iraq war and from what I know the leftover weapon caches that were found weren't actually usable any more (also there was no clear intent on the part of the Iraqi regime to use them).

Though obviously we should not forget about the role others, such as Singapore, France and Germany and many many others, played in supplying Saddam (the obvious aggressor) with weapons.

Here's an interesting statement from Iraqgate: Confession and Cover-Up, though these aren't the weapons you mentioned.

But on Jan. 31, this bipartisan dike finally sprang a leak. Howard Teicher, who served on Reagan's National Security Council staff, offered an affidavit in the Teledyne case that declared that CIA director William J. Casey and his deputy, Robert M. Gates, "authorized, approved and assisted" delivery of cluster bombs to Iraq through Cardoen (In These Times, 3/6/95).

The Wikipedia article is a good start, follow the sources given.

And yet every poll shows that more and more people see a very liberal bias in the media

When you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes widely believed.

The far right has been spreading this "liberal media" bullshit since the late 1960s, as an excuse for Nixon's problems.

Mainstream media is owned by large corporations. It is unabashedly capitalist. Its journalists are center to right on economic issues, and go to business leaders for their information - almost never do we hear from labor leaders or from consumer advocates in the mainstream press.

The corporate media is firmly on the right.

On foreign policy, the way the MSM rolled over during the Iraq invasion shows that again, they go with the conservatives, loving that aggressive and militaristic policy. War makes good stories, you know?

However, mainstream media is based in cities, and journalism is (or at least used to be) practiced largely by educated professionals. Its perspective is therefore more cosmopolitan, and less likely to follow the stream of ignorance and bigotry that constitutes most of "social conservatism" - the homophobia, the racism, the sexism, the preference for superstition over science. So if you're a social conservative, you see the media as biased against you.

Of course, if you're a conservative, you see reality as biased against you. Sorry.

And yet every poll shows that more and more people see a very liberal bias in the media

When you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes widely believed.

The far right has been spreading this "liberal media" bullshit since the late 1960s, as an excuse for Nixon's problems.

Mainstream media is owned by large corporations. It is unabashedly capitalist. Its journalists are center to right on economic issues, and go to business leaders for their information - almost never do we hear from labor leaders or from consumer advocates in the mainstream press.

The corporate media is firmly on the right.

On foreign policy, the way the MSM rolled over during the Iraq invasion shows that again, they go with the conservatives, loving that aggressive and militaristic policy. War makes good stories, you know?

However, mainstream media is based in cities, and journalism is (or at least used to be) practiced largely by educated professionals. Its perspective is therefore more cosmopolitan, and less likely to follow the stream of ignorance and bigotry that constitutes most of "social conservatism" - the homophobia, the racism, the sexism, the preference for superstition over science. So if you're a social conservative, you see the media as biased against you.

Of course, if you're a conservative, you see reality as biased against you. Sorry.

I am the first to admit that conservatives tend to hyperventilate about media bias more than they should (in many cases, the bias of the mainstream media has been only mildly left, no worse than Fox's bias rightwards). But even a broken clock is right twice a day, and this is one of those times.

Ah ha. Ah ha. Ha. After the last decade, still claiming that the media has a liberal bias is as laughable as Nader continuing to say that there really wouldn't have been a difference between a Bush presidency and a Gore presidency. As laughable as a Miramax exec still thinking passing up on Lord of the Rings was a good decision, after Peter Jackson brought New Line eleven oscars and a few billion dollars.

If the media has such a liberal bias, why did they hate Al Gore's guts back in 2000, while giving Bush a free pass on his business failures, especially Harken Energy (a mountain next to the molehill of Whitewater)? They were so busy inventing Gore "fib factor" stories they didn't pay any attention to when Bush took credit for passing HMO legislation that he actually vetoed as governor of Texas:

Touting his support for a patients' bill of rights in the third debate (10/17/00), Bush said: "As a matter of fact, I brought Republicans and Democrats together to do just that in the state of Texas, to get a patients' bill of rights through." In fact, Governor Bush vetoed the Patients' Bill of Rights the Texas State Legislature passed in 1995. When it was passed again in 1997, the bill's support was strong enough to withstand his threatened veto (New York Times, 10/18/00).

If the media has such a liberal bias, why was it so gung ho on the Iraq war? In 2002-2003, the media conversation was dominated by neocons and pro-war hawks. What has changed since then, long after the public has turned against the war? Now the conversation is dominated by pro-war hawks, some of whom now think "mistakes were made" in the occupation, not that invading was a mistake in the first place. Those who were right that the war would be a disaster are as excluded from the media narrative today as they were in 2003.

And finally, just to put this turd to bed once and for all, compare representatives Gary Condit and Joe Scarborough. In May 2001, Gary Condit's aide, Chandra Levy, went missing. For months, the press obsessed over it, the allegations that he was having an affair and that he might have had something to do with her disappearance. Her body turned up in a park, and while no connection to Condit was found, he eventually admitted to having an affair with her.

In July 2001, Joe Scarborough's aide Lori Klausutis turned up dead, in his office, of blunt force trauma to the head. Dead. In his office. OF BLUNT FORCE TRAUMA TO THE HEAD. No scandal, no media obsession.

Now, try and tell us again with a straight face that the media has a liberal bias.

No - they attacked McCain for supposedly running a racist ad (apparently you can't mention close associations with corrupt CEOs if they happen to be black).

Um, because it was? The CEO in the ad has no connection whatsoever to Obama, but is black. The CEO that did actually have a connection to Obama is white, but was not in the ad. So do, please, explain how that ad was not racist. McCain's ads are littered with code and dog whistles. Watch his "The One" ad and pay attention to the subtext of Obama being a false prophet - aka the anti-Christ. No, I'm not kidding. Or his celebrity ad, which juxtaposes footage of Obama, two pretty white girls (Britney Spears and Paris Hilton) and phallic symbols like the Washington Monument and the Tower of Piza. Now, you might be able to make a case for the Washingto

Ah, yes, nice way to slip in the old, oft-repeated chestnut about the "liberal bias" of the American media. There have been many rebuttals to this claim, such as this one, but even studies that ostensibly support the idea of a "liberal bias," such as this one from UCLA, include surprising nuggets that contradict conventional wisdom. (The UCLA report, for example, claims the Drudge Report is slightly left-leaning, despite its conservative reputation, while public television news reporting trends conservative, despite a widely-held belief that PBS news is left-leaning.)

You just say that because you're a far-(right/left) radical NUT.

Liberal and Conservative have no definition and are therefore useless as argumentation techniques. Watch:
National Journal voted Obama the most liberal senator in office. This is bullshit on face, because Obama is still tied to the democratic party line; Bernie Sanders is probably the most liberal senator because, and get this
HE'S A FUCKING SOCIALIST. THE ONLY FUCKING SOCIALIST.
Oh, but National Journal can place an actually fairly moderate senator (dennis kucinich and his friends were far more liberal than obama) on the "most liberal" side, because you can't argue with it. Most in the republican party simply call someone Liberal if they disagree with them, but then again, republican leaders inserted that definition into their heads, so you can't blame them too much.

National Journal, therefore, is a rag.
Liberal and Conservative mean nothing.
Left and Right are names for your arms and legs, not political associations.

The caimpaign contributers and lobbyists aren't the factor here, but that's not to say the media isn't subservient to big business (music industry) in this instance. The mass media get's the loyalty of politicans because it dictates what the people think. If politicians don't submit to the demands of the media establishment they're just not going to get elected again. It's as simple as that. It may not even take any lobbyists at all if the music industry has any professional connections with the journalists in a country (not so unlikely, they could be owned by a common parent company for example). Alternatively, the music industry makes up a significant advertising force, and the media makes its money off of advertising. If a company refuses to advertise while the messages of a political opponent are being broadcast those messages are likely to be marginalized (read: not broadcast at all in exchange for broadcasting a more profitable message) the same effect is acheived as with direct influence over the mass media (via parent company example or lobbyists).

There's not even anything to blame the politicians for in their behavior, it's what any person could be expected to do. The mass media on the other hand, in particular the music industry pushing for this legislation are to blame. They're visibly trying to force laws onto a people without democratic consent to those laws (this is a good example of fascism btw). That's morally inexcusable, and in response to legislation like this the opposition, and anyone who values democracy for that matter, should be protesting the media conglomerates that are responsible, if not flat out boycotting them for their fascist ways. This sort of behavior makes me want to download and distribute as many copywrit things as I can. It would be a very effective form of protest. All the power of a boycott and more (because data distribution actually promotes the spread of the boycott) without sacrificing anything as the consumer.

Companies need to be told who's boss and it's not their CEO's or boardmembers or shareholders. It's the consumer. If we don't want to pay for their product we're not going to, and they can't make us do so against our will. They need to be sent this message loud and clear, and maybe then there will be some convergence between the desires of the market (those who are downloading illegally) and what the market actually provides (e.g. iTunes is a step in the right direction).

The market clearly needs to be restructured and digital rights clearly need to be redefined to accomodate for the desires of the market (music piracy constitutes a significant portion of the market, which testifies to the need for reform to coopt that market), but that's not going to happen until we show the music industry that they can't bend us to their will through legislative loopholes and tricks.

We did not actually conclude that NPR is skewing more to the right than it did when we studied it in 1993. We compared the tilt toward Republicans in 2003 (61 percent to 38 percent) with that found in 1993 (57 percent to 42 percent) to indicate that the tilt is not based on which party is in power--with control of the White House and both houses of Congress reversed, the imbalance remains.

This discussion just reminded me about the bias study that fair has conducted a few times with regards to NPR. Thought I throw out a quote from fair's website which addresses this topic. Point being, bias exists in all media no matter how unbiased they may claim to be; in the end it often comes down to a subjective perceptual issue. People use their own experience as a measuring stick of moderation and slant one way or the other is given undue weight as relative to that perception. Neo-Cons often route NPR for being a liberal new clearing house with a strong left wing slant, when the numbers seem to indicate the opposite. Likewise lefty liberal viewers tend to have the opposite opinion of Fox's "news" coverage, without necessarily backing their claim with anything quantifiable to back up their claims. Perhaps we should all be critical thinkers and weigh the message along with the messenger and arrive at our own conclusions about where to stand on issues of any given topic, political, lifestyle, sports, etc... Bias will exist whether it be by design or by accident, to expect that any source will provide you with "the facts and just the facts" depends on the naive notion that there exists some impartial basis by which reality can be distilled into fact.

Feel free to light up the amber alert signs as soon as you've figured a way to make the truth manifest itself in a solid universally acceptable form.

Sure we voted for the wrong guy, but his administration's gross mismanagement of this country showed very clearly that the two parties are not by any means identical, and that your vote for a president can have a very real impact on the policies that are put into place.

Regardless of which party is in power, the goal of dominating the Middle East is the same.

"Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force."

That might sound like Bush but those words were uttered by alleged humanitarian Jimmy Carter. The history of both corporate parties shows they have enthusiastically pursued the nation's imperial ambitions abroad.

Conventional liberal wisdom dictates that Al Gore wouldn't have invaded Iraq, but we'll never know for sure what might have been. We do know that Gore didn't oppose the crippling sanctions the Clinton administration enforced on Iraq, resulting in over one million innocent Iraqi deaths. To them the price was worth it. We know that Gore also supported the "Iraq Liberation Act" and accused Saddam Hussein of supporting terrorism.

Currently Barack Obama is pulling the wool over everyone's eyes with his talk of withdrawal. But examining his policy proposals shows a much different picture. He wants to increase the size of the military. He wants to keep a number of troops in Iraq and has no plans to withdraw any of the so-called contractors. He wants more troops in Afghanistan and he is arguing the same discredited lies about Iran as Bush. He's not anti-war, he's anti-losing-Iraq and he's trying to find a way to salvage the US empire.

Voting Democrat is not necessarily going to lead to a hastier exit from the occupations. They promised that in 2006 when they took over Congress and they have abrogated that promise. They won't even impeach Bush. Why would they do anything different after Obama is elected? Besides, it was under the Republican Dick Nixon that the Vietnam war was ended (this time started with lies by a Democrat).

The Vietnam war was finally ended when large sections of the military refused to fight the war. Mutiny, killing of officers and widespread breakdown of command meant that the US government could no longer count on the military to fight the war. They had no choice but to end the war. The GI resistance was made possible by a large, vibrant and supportive civilian antiwar movement at home.

In Vietnam the stakes were "credibility" in the face of the US's chief imperial competitor, the USSR. Today the stakes are far higher for the US ruling class. They need to control the flow of oil in the Middle East for leverage over their emerging competitors around the globe. They are not going to just walk away from what the US State Department once called "one of the greatest material prizes in world history." We're going to have to force them to leave.

Would things have turned out differently had Gore become President? I concede the point: had things been different then they would be different. But would the US still be attempting to dominate the Middle East and use every means at its disposal to do so? It would be naive to believe that Gore is somehow different in this respect.

This headline assumes that the pro-war faction brought onto the corporate so-called "news" were analysts to begin with and didn't just gain the "analyst" label by the fact that they were featured on the corporate news. They were not impartial experts. They were merely pundits, sent to lie to drum up popular support for an illegal and immoral war. As Peter Hart from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting explained on today's Democracy Now! (transcript, video, high-quality audio, smaller size audio):

One of the most shocking things in the story is that in early 2003, these guys got a briefing about WMDs, and the government said, "We actually don't have hard evidence right now that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction." Did any of them go on the air and say that? No. The Pentagon, I think, had total control and total faith that these guys would deliver the message that they intended to deliver to the public, and that's exactly what they did, and the media did very little to counteract this overwhelming propaganda campaign from the Pentagon.

What the Pentagon did is conspire with the media and over seventy-five retired military officers to spread lies about the invasion and occupation of Iraq; propaganda which continues to this day. The pundits weren't being manipulated, the public was. The pundits participated with their consent. Since one expects the Pentagon to get their story out (I don't excuse it, I merely expect it), one might wonder why the media didn't do their job and challenge those in power to justify their case for war? It would be far better to headline this story a failure of media to do their job as reporters. Again, Hart explains:

I think the extent of the briefings was somewhat shocking and the blase attitude from the networks. They didn't care what military contractors these guys were representing when they were out at the studio. They didn't care that the Pentagon was flying them on their own dime to Iraq. Just basic journalistic judgment was completely lacking here. So I think the story is really about a media failure, more than a Pentagon failure. The Pentagon did exactly what you would expect to do, taking advantage of this media bias in favor of having more and more generals on the air when the country is at war.

The New York Times didn't cover the media aspect of this problem probably because the Times was a willing participant in the lying. Apparently it still is.

You give consent to be governed by the government by not leaving the country. It is the political process and how it works

No I don't, I specifically refuse to be governed by a government I do not like by supporting those candidates that share my political views. And that is how it's supposed to be.

If your guy didn't win, you might have been able to do more to ensure his victory, but by participating and staying in the country, you have given consent.

No you don't if you leave you've given up. I'd rather fight than roll over and die. I don't know about you but I served in the military when I thought I would be sent to fight. I did because I support liberty.

This isn't a looser opt out system. You actually have to move or cause someone else to be elected change your consent.

Moving is opting out, which is litle better than rolling over.

People have attempted to claim the mujahadeem included Al Qaeda and the taliban but it didn't.

,/i> You're dead wrong. The mujahedeen was made up of different groups with different objectives. Check the Wiki article. After the Soviets left Afghan the mujahedeen split broke down into the various groups it was to begin with. As for al Qaeda, they were in Afghan to support the mujahedeen. Afghan is where the al Qaeda started, in support of the fighting against the Soviets.

The taliban wasn't even an organization until 1994 or so, well after the soviets bailed out and we stop our support of the mujahadeem.

Perhaps you should let the wiki editor know this as they date the Taliban from the early '80s: there is "some basis for military support of the Taliban was provided when, in the early 1980s, the CIA and the ISI (Pakistan's Interservices Intelligence Agency) provided arms to Afghans resisting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the ISI assisted the process of gathering radical Muslims from around the world to fight against the Soviets."

Are you sure your not thinking of John Kelly arguing before congress in 1990 and not during Reagan's administration?

Yes, I saved articles from the NYT and The Washington Post dated 1989, unfortunately I didn't have a backup and the disk was reformated and I haven't gotten around to recovering the data that was on it. Back then they both also supported Saddam. Check out "Rumsfeld's Handshake Deal With Saddam" and "The Washington Post's Gas Attack Today's outrage was yesterday's no big deal".

As you can see, Bush Senior supported sanctions on Iraq.

According to NYT support for sanctions were "an abrupt shift from the policy of the Reagan Administration, the Bush Administration said today that it would accept legislation to impose economic sanctions on countries that use chemical weapons and on companies that assist in the production of such weapons."

You also have to understand, Kuwait was still paying Iraq for protection and we where still "bent" over their coup in the 50's.

A coup the CIA helped with, just as they did in Iran which overthrew a democratic government and replaced it with Shah. Unfortunately the US has a history of supporting coups which overthrow democratic governments, a US president and Secretary of State even supported the invasion of a democratic nation by a dictator.

Finally, did you read the link you posted? We gave the taliban 43 million dollars because they stopped opium production and were supposed to address their support for terrorist, civil rights violations, and a couple of other things like free and open elections and a final resolve to

You give consent to be governed by the government by not leaving the country. It is the political process and how it works

No I don't, I specifically refuse to be governed by a government I do not like by supporting those candidates that share my political views. And that is how it's supposed to be.

If your guy didn't win, you might have been able to do more to ensure his victory, but by participating and staying in the country, you have given consent.

No you don't if you leave you've given up. I'd rather fight than roll over and die. I don't know about you but I served in the military when I thought I would be sent to fight. I did because I support liberty.

This isn't a looser opt out system. You actually have to move or cause someone else to be elected change your consent.

Moving is opting out, which is litle better than rolling over.

People have attempted to claim the mujahadeem included Al Qaeda and the taliban but it didn't.

,/i> You're dead wrong. The mujahedeen was made up of different groups with different objectives. Check the Wiki article. After the Soviets left Afghan the mujahedeen split broke down into the various groups it was to begin with. As for al Qaeda, they were in Afghan to support the mujahedeen. Afghan is where the al Qaeda started, in support of the fighting against the Soviets.

The taliban wasn't even an organization until 1994 or so, well after the soviets bailed out and we stop our support of the mujahadeem.

Perhaps you should let the wiki editor know this as they date the Taliban from the early '80s: there is "some basis for military support of the Taliban was provided when, in the early 1980s, the CIA and the ISI (Pakistan's Interservices Intelligence Agency) provided arms to Afghans resisting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the ISI assisted the process of gathering radical Muslims from around the world to fight against the Soviets."

Are you sure your not thinking of John Kelly arguing before congress in 1990 and not during Reagan's administration?

Yes, I saved articles from the NYT and The Washington Post dated 1989, unfortunately I didn't have a backup and the disk was reformated and I haven't gotten around to recovering the data that was on it. Back then they both also supported Saddam. Check out "Rumsfeld's Handshake Deal With Saddam" and "The Washington Post's Gas Attack Today's outrage was yesterday's no big deal".

As you can see, Bush Senior supported sanctions on Iraq.

According to NYT support for sanctions were "an abrupt shift from the policy of the Reagan Administration, the Bush Administration said today that it would accept legislation to impose economic sanctions on countries that use chemical weapons and on companies that assist in the production of such weapons."

You also have to understand, Kuwait was still paying Iraq for protection and we where still "bent" over their coup in the 50's.

A coup the CIA helped with, just as they did in Iran which overthrew a democratic government and replaced it with Shah. Unfortunately the US has a history of supporting coups which overthrow democratic governments, a US president and Secretary of State even supported the invasion of a democratic nation by a dictator.

Finally, did you read the link you posted? We gave the taliban 43 million dollars because they stopped opium production and were supposed to address their support for terrorist, civil rights violations, and a couple of other things like free and open elections and a final resolve to

Then how do you explain the huge failure (failure from the public's perspective not the business perspective) of the mainstream media coverage on the invasion and occupation of Iraq (failures which persist to this day) and the continued narrowing of debate on health care, both of which are incredibly important issues of the day? The failure to adequately report on the war is all too evident (particularly today as the mainstream media ignores an important weekend war panel where soldiers were speaking out); Jeff Greenfield's "analysis" is an example of the failure to convey what Americans want in health care. The McNeil-Lehrer News Hour tried a similar scam years ago with Dr. Steffi Woolhandler when she spoke about single-payer universal health care (if you have access to Lexis-Nexis you can probably get a complete transcript of the charade). There aren't that many news sources, the media ownership is shrinking and they're all multinational corporations with largely compatible ends. Not that you accused anyone of saying so, but one apparently doesn't need any smoke-filled room conspiracy to get them to behave in such a way that they all profoundly misreport. Chomsky's analysis of this (quoted elsewhere in this /. discussion) seems far more accurate to me.

You should try it sometime. It is called diversity of ideas

No, it's called blatant propaganda. You're entitled to your own opinion, but you aren't entitled to your own set of facts. Fox doesn't care about facts, their mission in life is being a tool for the Republican Party.

So far the Fox hosted debates have been dramatically more useful to me, as a Republican primary voter, in deciding on a candidate.

They've been great for two things: fisticuffs between Romney and McCain, and seeing who has the biggest hate on for brown people.

I suspect, had the Democrats the courage to appear

They've had the courage to boycott a blatant propaganda outlet. You can complain about Democrats refusing to debate on Fox once the Republican candidates attend a debated hosted by Al Jazeera.

Don't judge the quality of Fox's journalism by the blowhards they run in primetime.

Local Fox outlets can be quite good. Until the reporters piss of the wrong sponsor and get fired anyway.

I can't stand Bill either, but I guess neither of should be arguing against the highest rated talking head on the air since it is obvious somebody likes to watch his gimmick.

It's called being a big fish in a small pond. CNN is packed to the gills with right wing blowhards, but if you really want your fascist fact-free news, Fox News is the place to be.

No, that's not why TV news is soundbites. When you reduce the amount of time in which someone is allowed to make their point, you reduce what they can say. When one has little time to speak, one can only make the same old points we've heard a dozen times before. Reframing the issue to talk about new ways of thinking takes time. Explaining more significant points that help the audience understand larger patterns takes time. The corporations that own so many TV channels all benefit from keeping tight control over the ends of allowable debate. For instance, when there's war analysis the corporate news will invite a military official (current or former) and someone else who is pro-war, so at best the debate is sure to never bring up any of the lies that were repeated by the corporate media. Instead, as so many news clips show, you get a weapons hardware show (complete with 3-D graphics of tanks, missiles, etc.). Very rarely will someone with an anti-war perspective get on-air, according to FAIR in a study of news shortly after the US invaded Iraq:

Nearly two thirds of all sources, 64 percent, were pro-war, while 71 percent of U.S. guests favored the war. Anti-war voices were 10 percent of all sources, but just 6 percent of non-Iraqi sources and 3 percent of U.S. sources. Thus viewers were more than six times as likely to see a pro-war source as one who was anti-war; with U.S. guests alone, the ratio increases to 25 to 1.

When a network is owned by a military contractor (like NBC which is owned by contractor General Electric), it's all too clear who benefits from the status quo and why this is the way it is.

Democracy Now! is a daily TV news hour that gives people a chance to speak (audio and video archives on archive.org in a variety of formats, transcripts of a lot of their segments are on their website gratis). They cover important stories, not the fluff (celebrity goings-on, daily weather reports, sports, and traffic reports) and they cover many stories the corporate news won't touch or won't discuss from a perspective not favored by corporate lobbyists (independent and lesser-known candidates in big elections, "third rail" issues like the death penalty, Israel/Palestine conflict, Texaco/Chevron/Coca-Cola killings around the world, corporate media control, universal health care).

Shortly before the launch of the "war on terror," an unnamed Pentagon war planner seemed to warn journalists everywhere when he told Washington Post reporter Howard Kurtz: "This is the most information-intensive war you can imagine... We're going to lie about things." (9/24/01)
In February 2002, the New York Times reported that the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) was "developing plans to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations" in an effort "to influence public sentiment and policy makers in both friendly and unfriendly countries."http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1983

Gore lost Florida, period.

Except that if the recount had been forced to be statewide, Gore would have won. Had Bush managed to force the count to his own rules, Gore would have won. In fact, pretty much the only way Gore would have lost was by sticking to his four-county plan.

The recount: http://www2.norc.org/fl/articles.asp
The study: http://www.aei.org/docLib/20040526_KeatingPaper.pdf
The analysis: http://law.usc.edu/academics/centers/cslp/papers/cslp-wp-027.pdf
The outcome: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1095

I'm sick of people bitching that the Supreme Court decided the president

I'm sick of pedants dodging the fact that the US Supreme Court forced the election to be halted when they could have remanded the case back to the state court with instructions, or at least refused to take the case which would have forced Florida to deal with it themselves which would have properly kept it a state issue for Florida to wring their hands over without dragging the rest of the country into the mess. Did the SCOTUS "literally" decide who was president? No, of course not... in exactly the same way the person who pulls the trigger doesn't "literally" kill the victim (the bullet did, duh!). The SCOTUS pulled the trigger on the recount, the result is on their hands.

I am sorry, but can't let this go by. 20/20 is trash and John Stossel is a fucktard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stossel

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=19&media_outlet_id=19

http://www.crooksandliars.com/category/abc/john-stossel/

The man comes off like he is working for the little guy, nothing gets him more sprung than private enterprise. Mo money! Mo money! Mo money!

A beginner's course in deceptive reporting, http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2894

I am sorry, but can't let this go by. 20/20 is trash and John Stossel is a fucktard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stossel

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=19&media_outlet_id=19

http://www.crooksandliars.com/category/abc/john-stossel/

The man comes off like he is working for the little guy, nothing gets him more sprung than private enterprise. Mo money! Mo money! Mo money!

A beginner's course in deceptive reporting, http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2894

The Lichters' study of PBS is notable for what it leaves out: It excluded talkshows such as William F. Buckley's Firing Line and Morton Kondracke's American Interests, news reports like the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, and business programs like Louis Rukeyser's Wall $treet Week. The Center claims this is to ensure "a group of programs that were similar in style and content, to maximize the comparability of judgments."

The study's focus, however, removes those PBS shows most often criticized for having a conservative slant--programming that takes up more of the PBS schedule than the documentaries that the Center's study is limited to. Firing Line and American Interests--programs underwritten by the Center's biggest funders--provided approximately 50 hours of programming a year between them.

"who was pushing for the sanctions to come off and why"?

Actually, a lot of human rights groups were pushing for that as early as 1996. That's the reason Madeline Albright got hammered for saying the alleged deaths of half a million Iraqi children was worth it.

I think Bush and Bill Kristol both are tools, but this was definitely a hot topic on the left pre-9/11.

"Fox News' second most popular program is a show that features both a conservative and a liberal commentator debating current issues."

Fox's second most popular show is Hannity and Colmes. Calling it a liberal versus conservative show Fox's laughable disinformation.

Shawn Hannity is a loud-mouthed arch-conserative; Colms is a moderate. ("I think I'm quite moderate" - Alan Colmes to USA Today, 2/1/95). Or to paragraph Al Frankin, "Image a game of political see-saw with one person sitting on the far right end of the see-saw and someone sitting in the middle. See? That's fair and balanced on the Fox News channel"

What else could we expect from a right-wing think tank.

Please cite references for your assertions. IF you read the real ISG report you will see that until 1995 there is substantial evidence thet until 1995 they had continued development (expanding the facility including extensive anti-air installations) at the Al-Hakam facility. Sometime in 1995 Hussain had an "Oh Shit" moment and was about to get caught with his pants down and decided to stop working at that facility. If you recall there are a lot of odd incidents between the UNSCOM folks and the Iraqi military whenever they tried to inspect the facility. All that came about, then suspect because of the defection of the scientist/general and Hussain's worry about what he might say. Even though the defector, Hussein Kamal, never admitted to anything that would have incriminated Iraq (really himself), Hussain didn't know what he said. Put Bush's statement in perspective and it make sense.

By the way, just thought you'd like to know the station did not incite the coup, it merely became its puppet, along with a few others. I quote:

On April 11, 2002, the day of the coup, when military and civilian opposition leaders held press conferences calling for Chávez's ouster, RCTV hosted top coup plotter Carlos Ortega, who rallied demonstrators to the march on the presidential palace. On the same day, after the anti-democratic overthrow appeared to have succeeded, another coup leader, Vice-Admiral Victor Ramírez Pérez, told a Venevisión reporter (4/11/02): "We had a deadly weapon: the media. And now that I have the opportunity, let me congratulate you."

What I find amazing is that you find anything to bitch about here since you seem like you'd be just as upset if the stations involved were immediately sacked, rather than allowed to function until the end of their run. Damned if you do and damned if you don't, people are always going to think Chavez and socialism are some big bogeyman.

GP is correct - RCTV has a history of overstepping their boundaries and acting counter to the common interest, and therefore as a regulatory matter their license was not renewed. Read this: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3107

the airwaves are a publicly regulated resource and the democratically elected Venezuelan government is exercising their right to regulate it, particularly when a station acts significantly counter to the common interests, such as actively participating in an attempted coup of a popularly-elected government and suggesting that their elected president be assassinated, etc. The govt is under no obligation to facilitate that kind of speech by granting them spectrum.

That commercial TV outlets including RCTV participated in the coup is not at question; even mainstream outlets have acknowledged as much. As reporter Juan Forero, Jackson Diehl's colleague at the Washington Post, explained (1/18/07), "RCTV, like three other major private television stations, encouraged the protests," resulting in the coup, "and, once Chávez was ousted, cheered his removal." The conservative British newspaper the Financial Times reported (5/21/07), "[Venezuelan] officials argue with some justification that RCTV actively supported the 2002 coup attempt against Mr. Chávez."

As FAIR's magazine Extra! argued last November, "Were a similar event to happen in the U.S., and TV journalists and executives were caught conspiring with coup plotters, it's doubtful they would stay out of jail, let alone be allowed to continue to run television stations, as they have in Venezuela."

When Chávez returned to power the commercial stations refused to cover the news, airing instead entertainment programs--in RCTV's case, the American film Pretty Woman. By refusing to cover such a newsworthy story, the stations abandoned the public interest and violated the public trust that is seen in Venezuela (and in the U.S.) as a requirement for operating on the public airwaves.

While the suppression of dissent is always dishonourable, the fact remains that RCTV actively supported the coup against Chavez a few years back. FAIR has some details. Now I'm no expert, but I'd imagine that if, some TV network in the United States tried to incite the masses to revolt against George W. Bush, and the revolt was put down, the broadcast licences for that network would be cancelled. At least Chavez isn't doing what the Russians have been doing lately.... "not" killing reporters. While I still have deep concerns over issues of freedom of speech and the press in Venezuela, I still applaud Mr. Chavez in taking strides to combat poverty in his own country, and in the United States through his heating oil donations.

and how the cease-fires are anything but on the paleoswinian side and how israel is mysteriously the only on ever to "break" the cease fire.

What world have you been living in? Palestinian deaths tend to go almost completely unreported unless there are dozens at once. My favorite New-Speak-ish phrase is "A period of relative calm", meaning "only Palestinians are dying".

Of course, thank you for keeping the level of discourse up by your spelling of "Palestinian".

It's April 2007. Anyone who believes the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen (or not) isn't going to change what they think now.

Nothing "changed" or was "transferred". http://election.sos.state.oh.us/ is a special web site in operation for elections. Otherwise, it points to http://www.sos.state.oh.us/ as it does now. It appears that the State of Ohio contracted with SmartTech for hosting, processing, and dissemination of the election results via the special elections web site, when it is in operation.

That probably won't be a good enough answer for people, though. Regardless, it appears that SmartTech has obvious ties to the Republican Party, and hosts many sites for various Republican political interests. The Secretary of State of Ohio is a partisan political position. This doesn't mean there aren't questions that can be raised or points to be debated.

Witness the decades-old joke from Democratic stronghold cities: "Why did the Democrat walk into the cemetery? To thank his voters."