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http://www.fair.org/extra/0205/lynxgate.html

Contrary to most news reports, the biologists did not "plant" fur in national forests, and they were not trying to--nor could they have--use the Endangered Species Act to "shut down" the forests for human use. The actual story, according to a U.S. Forest Service investigation, is that biologists for the U.S. Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service and the state of Washington--studying where (not whether) lynx live in the state's national forests--sent unauthorized "control samples" of hair obtained from captive lynx and a stuffed bobcat to a DNA lab in 1999 and 2000. The biologists were skeptical that the lab would produce accurate results; they were suspicious of test results, ironically enough, because another lab had found more lynx than the biologists thought was likely.

The growing media popularity of nuclear power as a solution to global warming and energy woes is not about the environment, says Diane Farsetta of the Center for Media and Democracy, but the result of a well-funded and stealthy corporate campaign to promote the flagging US nuclear energy industry. We'll talk to her about her new report, "Moore Spin: Or, How Reporters Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Nuclear Front Groups."

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3065

No offense, but if you'd rather hear from policy makers and experts, they already have dozens of media outlets that serve your needs. The United States needs more diversity of voices. We need more diversity of "experts". We need commentary from more people that are impacted from policies - rather than "expert" that have nothing at stake.

As for your claims of arbitary categories, it's not too hard really. Politicians and "experts" are typically "official sources". "Students" and the "general public" are not. You, yourself, make these distinctions in your own post saying that you prefer to hear "experts" rather than "some Joe" - and when they president farts (a politician, last I checked), it's news. It seems strange to me that you suddenly find the distinction arbitrary when someone else uses it.

Which brings us to what constitutes an "expert". We live in a culture where "experts" are people that write books on topics but don't know the first thing about them from the perspective of lived experience. Military experts who have never been in the military. Policy experts who aren't impacted by and don't know anyone who is impacted by their policies. Politicians than then go into the industries they regulated, or vice versa - because of their "expertise".

Being an expert is a rigged game that many people play for profit. If you like listening to experts, you should first read a book describing how the industry works:

Public relations firms and corporations have seized upon a slick new way of getting you to buy what they have to sell: Let you hear it from a neutral "third party," like a professor or a pediatrician or a soccer mom or a watchdog group. The problem is, these third parties are usually anything but neutral. They have been handpicked, cultivated, and meticulously packaged to make you believe what they have to say--preferably in an "objective" format like a news show or a letter to the editor. And in some cases, they have been paid handsomely for their "opinions."

Let's assume NPR is "slightly left-of-center". How does it get "left-of-center" when it follows the party line more than 60% of the time? Is it because other media outlets are following it 70%, 80%, 90% percent of the time? What does this say about the range of discourse we have in the media?

FAIR also has a good discussion of What is Wrong With the News? that identifies the problems as: corporate ownership, advertiser influence, official agendas, telecommunications policy, the PR industry, pressure groups, narrow range of debate, censorship and sensationalism. I think the narrow range of debate is most relevent for our discussion here:

Given that most media outlets are owned by for-profit corporations and are funded by corporate advertising, it is not surprising that they seldom provide a full range of debate. The right edge of discussion is usually represented by a committed supporter of right-wing causes, someone who calls for significantly changing the status quo in a conservative direction. The left edge, by contrast, is often represented by an establishment-oriented centrist who supports maintaining the status quo; very rarely is a critic of corporate power who identifies with progressive causes and movements with the same passion as their conservative counterparts allowed to take part in mass media debates.

This problem should be addressed everywhere. However, it should first be addressed in public formats - given their mandate and reason for existing, which is to represent alternative voices that don't get heard in mainstream media and to broaden the discourse.

No offense, but if you'd rather hear from policy makers and experts, they already have dozens of media outlets that serve your needs. The United States needs more diversity of voices. We need more diversity of "experts". We need commentary from more people that are impacted from policies - rather than "expert" that have nothing at stake.

As for your claims of arbitary categories, it's not too hard really. Politicians and "experts" are typically "official sources". "Students" and the "general public" are not. You, yourself, make these distinctions in your own post saying that you prefer to hear "experts" rather than "some Joe" - and when they president farts (a politician, last I checked), it's news. It seems strange to me that you suddenly find the distinction arbitrary when someone else uses it.

Which brings us to what constitutes an "expert". We live in a culture where "experts" are people that write books on topics but don't know the first thing about them from the perspective of lived experience. Military experts who have never been in the military. Policy experts who aren't impacted by and don't know anyone who is impacted by their policies. Politicians than then go into the industries they regulated, or vice versa - because of their "expertise".

Being an expert is a rigged game that many people play for profit. If you like listening to experts, you should first read a book describing how the industry works:

Public relations firms and corporations have seized upon a slick new way of getting you to buy what they have to sell: Let you hear it from a neutral "third party," like a professor or a pediatrician or a soccer mom or a watchdog group. The problem is, these third parties are usually anything but neutral. They have been handpicked, cultivated, and meticulously packaged to make you believe what they have to say--preferably in an "objective" format like a news show or a letter to the editor. And in some cases, they have been paid handsomely for their "opinions."

Let's assume NPR is "slightly left-of-center". How does it get "left-of-center" when it follows the party line more than 60% of the time? Is it because other media outlets are following it 70%, 80%, 90% percent of the time? What does this say about the range of discourse we have in the media?

FAIR also has a good discussion of What is Wrong With the News? that identifies the problems as: corporate ownership, advertiser influence, official agendas, telecommunications policy, the PR industry, pressure groups, narrow range of debate, censorship and sensationalism. I think the narrow range of debate is most relevent for our discussion here:

Given that most media outlets are owned by for-profit corporations and are funded by corporate advertising, it is not surprising that they seldom provide a full range of debate. The right edge of discussion is usually represented by a committed supporter of right-wing causes, someone who calls for significantly changing the status quo in a conservative direction. The left edge, by contrast, is often represented by an establishment-oriented centrist who supports maintaining the status quo; very rarely is a critic of corporate power who identifies with progressive causes and movements with the same passion as their conservative counterparts allowed to take part in mass media debates.

This problem should be addressed everywhere. However, it should first be addressed in public formats - given their mandate and reason for existing, which is to represent alternative voices that don't get heard in mainstream media and to broaden the discourse.

What is "left" or "right" very much depends on where you stand. The problem with comments like this one is that what gets called "left" in the United States would count as some form of "right" in most other places in the world.

Want proof? Think about the last time you turned the dial to the socialist, communist, anarchist media outlets? Oh, yeah, that's right - those outlet's don't exist in the United States. You think that happened by accident?

Further, some people have done an analysis of NPR's guest list that stated the following:

Elite sources dominated NPR 's guest-list. These sources--including government officials, professional experts and corporate representatives--accounted for 64 percent of all sources...Workers, students, the general public, and representatives of organized citizen and public interest groups accounted for 31 percent of all sources..organized labor were almost invisible, numbering just six sources, or 0.3 percent of the total. Corporate representatives (6 percent) appeared 23 times more often than labor representatives.

Not only is it biased toward "official sources" and "corporations", it is sexist as well:

Women were dramatically underrepresented on NPR in 1993 (19 percent of all sources), and they remain so today (21 percent). And they were even less likely to appear on NPR in stories as experts--just 15 percent of all professionals were women--or in stories discussing political issues, where only 18 percent of sources were women.

You keep mentioning this East Timor, I never really paid to much attention to it because I didn't think the US was involved in it outside of not protesting it. You seem fixated on it so I brushed up a littlw and it seems that I'm once again correct. Wikipedia often gets rewriten to support one cause or another. So when I confirmed my position with the link you gave to the wiki as well as followed it to the same conclusion from other links in the site, I checked a few other placed too. It apears the the US didn't support anything at all. They just didn't object to it. You make it sound like we were directly behind it and ford was the most evil president until Bush.

I call BS. Ford and Kissinger encouraged or gave green light to Suharto to invade East Timor:

From the National Security Archives at George Washington University: Ford and Kissinger Gave Green Light to Indonesia's Invasion of East Timor, 1975: New Documents Detail Conversations with Suharto
Finally, according to the State Department, 90 percent of the weapons used in the invasion came from the United States. Two years later, as the atrocities in East Timor were reaching a peak, President Jimmy Carter authorized an addition $112 million in weapons sales to Indonesia.
Coverage of the fall of Suharto reveals with startling clarity the ideological biases and propaganda role of the mainstream media. Suharto was a ruthless dictator, a grand larcenist and a mass killer with as many victims as Cambodia's Pol Pot. But he served U.S. economic and geopolitical interests, was helped into power by Washington, and his dictatorial rule was warmly supported for 32 years by the U.S. economic and political establishment. The U.S. was still training the most repressive elements of Indonesia's security forces as Suharto's rule was collapsing in 1998, and the Clinton administration had established especially close relations with the dictator ("our kind of guy," according to a senior administration official quoted in the New York Times, 10/31/95).
But Suharto is a U.S. ally, and has conducted his atrocities with either the approval or the active participation of the U.S. government.
Despite the atrocities and numerous U.N. resolutions condemning the invasion and occupation, the U.S., Japan and a number of Western European countries continue to provide the invader with about $5 billion in annual economic assistance.
The Indonesian dictator (pdf) then raised the Timor issue, saying, "We want your understanding, if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action." Ford replied: "We will understand and will not press you on the issue. We understand the problem and the intentions you have."
Suharto needed Washington's go-ahead due to a 1958 agreement that prohibited Indonesia from using U.S.-origin weaponry, which made up 90 percent of Jakarta's arsenal at the time, except for "legitimate national self-defense." (2) For this reason Kissinger suggested that the invasion be framed as self-defense, thus circumventing any legal obstacles.
Ford, Kissinger and 1975
East Timor was ruled by Portugal for about 3 centuries. During World War II, thousands of East Timorese lost their lives helping Australia forces fight against the Japanese. East Timor was then invaded by Indonesia shortly after Portugal abruptly left, in 1975. This was the day after U.S. President Ford's visit to Indonesia, with what people have suspected as being a "green light" to invade. At that time, Indonesia had military, economic and politica

You keep mentioning this East Timor, I never really paid to much attention to it because I didn't think the US was involved in it outside of not protesting it. You seem fixated on it so I brushed up a littlw and it seems that I'm once again correct. Wikipedia often gets rewriten to support one cause or another. So when I confirmed my position with the link you gave to the wiki as well as followed it to the same conclusion from other links in the site, I checked a few other placed too. It apears the the US didn't support anything at all. They just didn't object to it. You make it sound like we were directly behind it and ford was the most evil president until Bush.

I call BS. Ford and Kissinger encouraged or gave green light to Suharto to invade East Timor:

From the National Security Archives at George Washington University: Ford and Kissinger Gave Green Light to Indonesia's Invasion of East Timor, 1975: New Documents Detail Conversations with Suharto
Finally, according to the State Department, 90 percent of the weapons used in the invasion came from the United States. Two years later, as the atrocities in East Timor were reaching a peak, President Jimmy Carter authorized an addition $112 million in weapons sales to Indonesia.
Coverage of the fall of Suharto reveals with startling clarity the ideological biases and propaganda role of the mainstream media. Suharto was a ruthless dictator, a grand larcenist and a mass killer with as many victims as Cambodia's Pol Pot. But he served U.S. economic and geopolitical interests, was helped into power by Washington, and his dictatorial rule was warmly supported for 32 years by the U.S. economic and political establishment. The U.S. was still training the most repressive elements of Indonesia's security forces as Suharto's rule was collapsing in 1998, and the Clinton administration had established especially close relations with the dictator ("our kind of guy," according to a senior administration official quoted in the New York Times, 10/31/95).
But Suharto is a U.S. ally, and has conducted his atrocities with either the approval or the active participation of the U.S. government.
Despite the atrocities and numerous U.N. resolutions condemning the invasion and occupation, the U.S., Japan and a number of Western European countries continue to provide the invader with about $5 billion in annual economic assistance.
The Indonesian dictator (pdf) then raised the Timor issue, saying, "We want your understanding, if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action." Ford replied: "We will understand and will not press you on the issue. We understand the problem and the intentions you have."
Suharto needed Washington's go-ahead due to a 1958 agreement that prohibited Indonesia from using U.S.-origin weaponry, which made up 90 percent of Jakarta's arsenal at the time, except for "legitimate national self-defense." (2) For this reason Kissinger suggested that the invasion be framed as self-defense, thus circumventing any legal obstacles.
Ford, Kissinger and 1975
East Timor was ruled by Portugal for about 3 centuries. During World War II, thousands of East Timorese lost their lives helping Australia forces fight against the Japanese. East Timor was then invaded by Indonesia shortly after Portugal abruptly left, in 1975. This was the day after U.S. President Ford's visit to Indonesia, with what people have suspected as being a "green light" to invade. At that time, Indonesia had military, economic and politica

You keep mentioning this East Timor, I never really paid to much attention to it because I didn't think the US was involved in it outside of not protesting it. You seem fixated on it so I brushed up a littlw and it seems that I'm once again correct. Wikipedia often gets rewriten to support one cause or another. So when I confirmed my position with the link you gave to the wiki as well as followed it to the same conclusion from other links in the site, I checked a few other placed too. It apears the the US didn't support anything at all. They just didn't object to it. You make it sound like we were directly behind it and ford was the most evil president until Bush.

I call BS. Ford and Kissinger encouraged or gave green light to Suharto to invade East Timor:

From the National Security Archives at George Washington University: Ford and Kissinger Gave Green Light to Indonesia's Invasion of East Timor, 1975: New Documents Detail Conversations with Suharto
Finally, according to the State Department, 90 percent of the weapons used in the invasion came from the United States. Two years later, as the atrocities in East Timor were reaching a peak, President Jimmy Carter authorized an addition $112 million in weapons sales to Indonesia.
Coverage of the fall of Suharto reveals with startling clarity the ideological biases and propaganda role of the mainstream media. Suharto was a ruthless dictator, a grand larcenist and a mass killer with as many victims as Cambodia's Pol Pot. But he served U.S. economic and geopolitical interests, was helped into power by Washington, and his dictatorial rule was warmly supported for 32 years by the U.S. economic and political establishment. The U.S. was still training the most repressive elements of Indonesia's security forces as Suharto's rule was collapsing in 1998, and the Clinton administration had established especially close relations with the dictator ("our kind of guy," according to a senior administration official quoted in the New York Times, 10/31/95).
But Suharto is a U.S. ally, and has conducted his atrocities with either the approval or the active participation of the U.S. government.
Despite the atrocities and numerous U.N. resolutions condemning the invasion and occupation, the U.S., Japan and a number of Western European countries continue to provide the invader with about $5 billion in annual economic assistance.
The Indonesian dictator (pdf) then raised the Timor issue, saying, "We want your understanding, if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action." Ford replied: "We will understand and will not press you on the issue. We understand the problem and the intentions you have."
Suharto needed Washington's go-ahead due to a 1958 agreement that prohibited Indonesia from using U.S.-origin weaponry, which made up 90 percent of Jakarta's arsenal at the time, except for "legitimate national self-defense." (2) For this reason Kissinger suggested that the invasion be framed as self-defense, thus circumventing any legal obstacles.
Ford, Kissinger and 1975
East Timor was ruled by Portugal for about 3 centuries. During World War II, thousands of East Timorese lost their lives helping Australia forces fight against the Japanese. East Timor was then invaded by Indonesia shortly after Portugal abruptly left, in 1975. This was the day after U.S. President Ford's visit to Indonesia, with what people have suspected as being a "green light" to invade. At that time, Indonesia had military, economic and politica

You keep mentioning this East Timor, I never really paid to much attention to it because I didn't think the US was involved in it outside of not protesting it. You seem fixated on it so I brushed up a littlw and it seems that I'm once again correct. Wikipedia often gets rewriten to support one cause or another. So when I confirmed my position with the link you gave to the wiki as well as followed it to the same conclusion from other links in the site, I checked a few other placed too. It apears the the US didn't support anything at all. They just didn't object to it. You make it sound like we were directly behind it and ford was the most evil president until Bush.

I call BS. Ford and Kissinger encouraged or gave green light to Suharto to invade East Timor:

From the National Security Archives at George Washington University: Ford and Kissinger Gave Green Light to Indonesia's Invasion of East Timor, 1975: New Documents Detail Conversations with Suharto
Finally, according to the State Department, 90 percent of the weapons used in the invasion came from the United States. Two years later, as the atrocities in East Timor were reaching a peak, President Jimmy Carter authorized an addition $112 million in weapons sales to Indonesia.
Coverage of the fall of Suharto reveals with startling clarity the ideological biases and propaganda role of the mainstream media. Suharto was a ruthless dictator, a grand larcenist and a mass killer with as many victims as Cambodia's Pol Pot. But he served U.S. economic and geopolitical interests, was helped into power by Washington, and his dictatorial rule was warmly supported for 32 years by the U.S. economic and political establishment. The U.S. was still training the most repressive elements of Indonesia's security forces as Suharto's rule was collapsing in 1998, and the Clinton administration had established especially close relations with the dictator ("our kind of guy," according to a senior administration official quoted in the New York Times, 10/31/95).
But Suharto is a U.S. ally, and has conducted his atrocities with either the approval or the active participation of the U.S. government.
Despite the atrocities and numerous U.N. resolutions condemning the invasion and occupation, the U.S., Japan and a number of Western European countries continue to provide the invader with about $5 billion in annual economic assistance.
The Indonesian dictator (pdf) then raised the Timor issue, saying, "We want your understanding, if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action." Ford replied: "We will understand and will not press you on the issue. We understand the problem and the intentions you have."
Suharto needed Washington's go-ahead due to a 1958 agreement that prohibited Indonesia from using U.S.-origin weaponry, which made up 90 percent of Jakarta's arsenal at the time, except for "legitimate national self-defense." (2) For this reason Kissinger suggested that the invasion be framed as self-defense, thus circumventing any legal obstacles.
Ford, Kissinger and 1975
East Timor was ruled by Portugal for about 3 centuries. During World War II, thousands of East Timorese lost their lives helping Australia forces fight against the Japanese. East Timor was then invaded by Indonesia shortly after Portugal abruptly left, in 1975. This was the day after U.S. President Ford's visit to Indonesia, with what people have suspected as being a "green light" to invade. At that time, Indonesia had military, economic and politica

I'm sure that there are equally egregious examples from "right wing" media, but since I can't actually point to any "right wing" media outlets, I'm stumped at actually describing one.

Surely you jest.

Mainstream media outlets owned by publicly traded corporations are the "right wing" media outlets. As for journalists themselves, they are mostly centrist, with a right-wing bias on economic issues.

(It is true that, like most educated and cosmopolitan people, journalists tend to be more liberal on social issues. Yes, I'm saying that conservative social positions correlate with provincialism and ignorance.)

It is the control of media by right-wing corporations (a large publicly traded profit-seeking corporation is, by definition, a right-wing entity, favoring capital over labor) that shuts off alternative viewpoints, and makes people wonder if a "fairness doctrine" might be the answer.

While the problem is real, the proposed solution sucks; a better idea is to restrict corporate ownership of media, preventing concentration of the control of information.

>We have a First Amendment for a reason

The supreme court disagrees with you. the fairness doctrine has been ruled not to violate the 1st amendment.

The big media (NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, NYT, etc) basically support the powers that be. 40 or 50 years ago, when liberals ran the country, there may have been some truth to claims of "left wing media bias". But conservatives have run the country since at least Reagan (arguably since Nixon), and so the media has actually had a right wing bias for many years. See, e.g., http://www.fair.org/index.php

If you want to read real "leftist" media, try The Nation http://www.thenation.com/ or The Progressive http://www.progressive.org/

> It's been fine for 2 centuries.

What do you mean? According to Michael Hayden, director of the CIA, formerly head of the NSA, said during a press conference that the fourth amendment does not mention probable cause. He should know--if there's anything he understands, it's the fourth amendment. He said so.

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2808

It's a list of claims that Chavez has lied about this or that. Some of them sound like reasonably serious issues, most of them strike me as small beans, and over all I have no sense of why I should believe what the fellow is saying.

He apparently used to work for the New York Times, but then quit to focus on more partisan writing: Financial Times Reporter "Can't Possibly Be Neutral"

As you might expect, there are people who are critical of his writing:

• Alek Boyd: Francisco Toro is Bizarrely Out of Touch
• Venezuela's Media Tycoons - The Anti-Chavez Echo Chamber

"The only WMD that have been found are the ones that nobody on earth doubted he had"

Nobody? I recall, and surely you do too, the large numbers of people arguing that all these old WMD were gone and all had been destroyed during the 1990s as required. Here is one such story from shortly before the second Iraq war.

"Inspectors were told "that after the Gulf War, Iraq destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons stocks and the missiles to deliver them," Barry wrote"

No, he didn't. Saddam went out of his way to frustrate their efforts. How many times were the denied access to sites? How many times were they kicked out?

Saddam denied access to weapons inspectors who he claimed were CIA spies rather than legimitate UN weapons inspectors.

And you know what? He was right. They were CIA spies. Of course, the US media weren't keen to remind people of that minor detail.

Well said, Citizen wizbit, and especially appropriate when one considers Operation Mockingbird and what passes for news lately....

And as far as the news goes, RT(his)FA and please RT(his)FA.

JFK did no such thing, LBJ ordered the US into the Vietnam War.

As for who "gave" us the Vietnam War, that appears to be a rather bit more muddled issue as the timeline indicates. You could say the French gave it to us, but perhaps their ineptitude was more at fault for allowing the situation to continue. It appears the real root lies all the way back at the defeat of Japan in WWII by the US and a number of failures after that. (French troops expected to fix Vietnam back then? France was just freed from Germany and had a country to rebuild, all jokes about the French fighting ability aside.)

The whole long argument you put forth boils down to the idea that governments get to kill innocent people because of the clothes they wear (a uniform). I suspect it matters very little to the relatives of a dead family (say in Lebanon) whether their murderers were wearing the uniform of the military of a state (say Israel), gang colors (another sort of uniform), or a tee shirt. Further it probably matters very little to them as well if the decsion to kill was made by a small band of people or a Republic in which leaders are elected from a small pool of rich men who use extensive propaganda to get elected and then are COMPLETLY unaccountable once elected. Dead is dead to the family of the victims.

Please note also that most of the things you responded to were written by Libertarian scholar Murray Rothbard, I'd ask you to respond to him but alas he's dead, the closest you might be able to come to is to write his biographer Justin Raimondo at the Libertarian web site, antiwar.com .

Here is another thing to keep in mind, the state ALWAYS claims it's under attack and often lies about this fact for example Nazi Germany for example claimed it was under attack by Polish "terrorists." The U.S. in the Gulf of Tonken incident lied that it was under attack by the Vietnamese:

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2261

Further the U.S. most likely allowed the Japanese to attack us at Pearl Harbor to get us into WWII despite already having broken Japan's Naval code.

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id =127

Regardless of whether we should have entered WWII or not the repeated use of deceit by the government regarding WWII and Vietnam is certainly damning in trying to decipher whether the governments estimate of the terror danger ought to be trusted. Anyone who believes the state when it says it's under attack is an utter fool who is most likely buying lies from the one institution in human history that it is known for certain has killed tens of millions of people. Our government alone for example killed AT LEAST two million people based on a fraudulent casus belli in Vietnam alone:

"The lowest casualty estimates, based on North Vietnamese statements (now discounted by Vietnam), are around 1.5 million Vietnamese killed. Vietnam's Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs released figures on April 3, 1995, reporting that 1.1 million fighters--Viet Cong guerrillas and North Vietnamese soldiers--and nearly 2 million civilians in the north and 2 million in the south were killed between 1954 and 1975. Robert McNamara, in his regretful memoir of the war, references a figure of 3.2 million. The number of wounded fighters was put at 600,000. It remains even more unclear how many Vietnamese civilians were wounded."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War#Casualtie s

Considering how often governments lie I'll take my chance with chances with the rag tag band of people with boxes of box cutters and I'll take back the bill of rights, 400 billion dollars, 30,000 + dead Iraqi civilians, and 2500 hundred dead Iraqis all so we could create a civil war that far from fighting terrorism is in fact acting as training ground for car bombers and other killers of innocents.

The terrorists scare me very little, certainly less than taking a drive in my car, or eating a cheese sandwich with mayonnaise. A president who uses singing statements that blatantly disregard Congress's intentions in passing laws based on the (false) idea that we are at war, on the other hand terrifies me.

I suppose there are a few outfits down there trying to deconstruct the propaganda http://www.fair.org/ [fair.org] for example.

"...It is a non-issue in the news..."

I thought you yanks got rid of all your news shows and replaced them with infotainment years ago. Wasn't it in the eighties during Reagan's time that a bill was passed that removed the requirment for NEWS programs to offer balanced reports and present opposing views. Once that pesky requirement was out of the way your News shows were alot more entertaining and a whole lot less informative.

Up here in Soviet Canuckistan our state run news on CBC seems allot more balanced then the slhock coming from your Theo-Coporatocracy.

I suppose there are a few outfits down there trying to deconstruct the propaganda http://www.fair.org/ for example.

Clinton went over to China, lessened tariffs and gave them favored trading partner status, which hurt our economy. He also took campaign money from Chinese officials which was against the law, and then a Chinese official was found buried in Arlington National Cemetary. The guy sold out our country to one of the worst regimes on the planet.

That was a direct decision on Clinton's behalf. Under Bush's presidency, some soldiers attempting to gather information that may be necessary to save lives humiliated Muslim men by interrogating them nude in front of women.

American soldiers have killed Iraqi civilians, Iraqi soldiers have not killed American civilians.

It seems you are defending Bush and his war by using the You-Forgot-Poland line of argument.

The subject came up when reporter Jonathan Landay of Knight Ridder attempted to preface a question by stating that "the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution specifies that you must have probable cause to be able to do a search that does not violate an American's right against unlawful searches and seizures." Hayden interjected: "Actually, the Fourth Amendment actually protects all of us against unreasonable search and seizure. That's what it says." Landay politely corrected him, saying, "But the measure is 'probable cause,' I believe." But Hayden insisted: "The amendment says 'unreasonable search and seizure.'" When Landay continued, "But does it not say probable--" he was interrupted by Hayden, who said, "No.... The amendment says 'unreasonable search and seizure.'"

Expecting Rush Limbaugh to "prove" or "document" anything that doesn't have a pro-Republican slant merely shows how deeply you've drank the Kool-Aid.

Just one example: Limbaugh's Liberal Media Proof: Too Good to be True

However, if you look at the country-by-country breakdown from the poll, it starts to make more sense. According to Globescan, CNN has almost the same trust numbers as FOX News, at 11 percent, with the other three major networks adding up to another 11 percent. Take that figure against the poll numbers in other countries and the American news market seems much more fractured than it at first appeared. Surprisingly, the poll also shows that most Americans still trust their local newspapers more than they trust national television news, by a margin of 81 percent to 75 percent. I suspect, but I can't confirm, that what we're actually looking at is ratings numbers in this category, not who the public really trusts more. Since FOX News has the highest ratings in the American market, the network comes out ahead of the competition when Americans are asked to name a single national news source. Tellingly, other poll numbers indicate that Americans are much more skeptical about their news sources than respondents in most other countries, with nearly 9 out of 10 Americans reporting that they look to multiple sources for their news. That fits the hypothesis. Internationally, according to the original Reuters article, CNN is the second most trusted news brand, right behind the BBC. That also seems about what I'd expect if you translate 'trust' to 'ratings' in the poll.

In any case, regardless of the poll numbers, I guess it shouldn't surprise me that many Americans prefer to get their news from sources who share their own political and social views. If I thought that Bush could do no wrong, and that the Republican Party was the greatest thing since sliced bread, I imagine I'd find it very believable too when FOX News reports on the latest victory in Iraq, followed by a story on how Republicans will bring about an economic Golden Age through more tax cuts for the wealthy.

This is from fair.org, quoting a 1998 report by the Committee to Protect Journalists:

The plight of independent journalists is also serious in Cuba, where the government controls every media outlet. "Although the methods of repression are not as violent in Cuba as elsewhere in Latin America -- no journalist has been murdered in Cuba in the last decade -- the effect is the same. Journalists who publish outside Cuba can be prosecuted for a variety of crimes, from defamation to aiding the enemy."

I agree that only the left takes FAIR seriously. Only the left thought Saddam didn't have WMD, and only the left thought it might be a mistake to invade Iraq.

You know where I stand on NPR, and I don't have much love for PBS, either. I don't park my kids in front of Sesame Street, and I could do without Elmo, Barney, or the Teletubbies in my life. I don't mind Arthur. Have you noticed that they're really the only toys on the shelves for kids under 5 in Target, K-Mart, and Walmart? Real lefties only let their kids play with wood blocks from sustainable tree farms.

There's some evidence that NPR has a conservative bias. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting periodically studies the NPR guestlist to determine if NPR "promote[s] personal growth rather than corporate gain" and "speak[s] with many voices, many dialects" as it purports to do. FAIR has a page dedicated to NPR that includes all their criticism of NPR programming. Was FAIR fair to NPR in their study of conservative bias? NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey A. Dvorkin says "The FAIR study seems about right to me with a couple of exceptions."

Long before podcasting, I ripped NPR programming from their RealAudio streams and crunched it down to MP3s. I stopped giving money to NPR when they killed low power FM. I felt that the corporate sponsors were (and still are) using NPR to greenwash their reputation, but I still enjoyed a lot of the programming. But NPR never strayed far enough from the administration's line for me when they covered the Iraq War, and when they "scooped" the rest of the media with their phony WMD claim, I gave up on them entirely. I turned to Democracy Now, and I use their podcast service. I also contribute more to them than I ever did to NPR, since they're free of corporate sponsorship.

There's some evidence that NPR has a conservative bias. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting periodically studies the NPR guestlist to determine if NPR "promote[s] personal growth rather than corporate gain" and "speak[s] with many voices, many dialects" as it purports to do. FAIR has a page dedicated to NPR that includes all their criticism of NPR programming. Was FAIR fair to NPR in their study of conservative bias? NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey A. Dvorkin says "The FAIR study seems about right to me with a couple of exceptions."

Long before podcasting, I ripped NPR programming from their RealAudio streams and crunched it down to MP3s. I stopped giving money to NPR when they killed low power FM. I felt that the corporate sponsors were (and still are) using NPR to greenwash their reputation, but I still enjoyed a lot of the programming. But NPR never strayed far enough from the administration's line for me when they covered the Iraq War, and when they "scooped" the rest of the media with their phony WMD claim, I gave up on them entirely. I turned to Democracy Now, and I use their podcast service. I also contribute more to them than I ever did to NPR, since they're free of corporate sponsorship.

There's some evidence that NPR has a conservative bias. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting periodically studies the NPR guestlist to determine if NPR "promote[s] personal growth rather than corporate gain" and "speak[s] with many voices, many dialects" as it purports to do. FAIR has a page dedicated to NPR that includes all their criticism of NPR programming. Was FAIR fair to NPR in their study of conservative bias? NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey A. Dvorkin says "The FAIR study seems about right to me with a couple of exceptions."

Long before podcasting, I ripped NPR programming from their RealAudio streams and crunched it down to MP3s. I stopped giving money to NPR when they killed low power FM. I felt that the corporate sponsors were (and still are) using NPR to greenwash their reputation, but I still enjoyed a lot of the programming. But NPR never strayed far enough from the administration's line for me when they covered the Iraq War, and when they "scooped" the rest of the media with their phony WMD claim, I gave up on them entirely. I turned to Democracy Now, and I use their podcast service. I also contribute more to them than I ever did to NPR, since they're free of corporate sponsorship.

and gee, I can't think of why that might be. Go here, about halfway down, to read up on poverty. Or, go here to read up on poverty and access to food.

Oh wait, I remember now how to deal with professional trolling organizations...

Hey, the NYTimes gets credit for publishing their story of Bush's domesting spying operation, even though they did so only to preempt the story in the reporter's book about to be published. James Risen, the reporter, had seen his story suppressed by the Times for over a year when his book finally forced the Times to publish its version, allowing the Times to control the "framing" of the explosive issue. A year that included the 2004 presidential campaign season, while the Times therefore skipped its responsibility to inform the public about the president who would be reelected by a slim margin.

But then, the Times allowed its frontpage cheerleader for the Iraq "WMD" War, Judith Miller, to avoid the August 2004 Federal subpoenas into her role outing Valerie Plame, the CIA/WMD agent debunking the Iraq WMD lies sending us to war. Her trial likely would have meant another few points less for Bush in November 2004.

After these yearlong delays escorting Bush through the 2004 election, their final revelations are met with Bush's highest disapproval ratings, now in the 40% approval / 55% disapproval range. A range which itself has been escorted by the Times managing the news for minimum damage to Bush.

With the Times telling the story, why shouldn't the newspaper look even better than Bush does?

Or maybe you're just slurring an entire profession based on the well publicized problems of a few.

I'm not talking about the deliberate deceptions that a number of journalists have been caught at, I'm talking about journalism itself. We have established minimal standards for how to report facts in the sciences, and journalists are not even close to following them.

Journalists are incentivized to sell newspapers, entertain, and make a name for themselves, not present reality objectively and accurately.

Intellectual rigour does not spring from generalizing from anecdotal evidence.

Journalists should take that to heart: "generalizing from anectodal evidence" is one of the more frequent journalistic devices in use.

So put up some numbers, or shut up.

Easy: go to fair.org.

The FBI and the military are spying on non violent politcal activists now. Given that we have Alito on the supreme court who supports the power of the "unitary executive," and given that Bush lied to us about always getting a warrant before engaging in phone tapping (in New Mexcio 2004 google it), it's utterly foolish to allow Bush to have the power to spy on anyone in violation of FISA. Lists of links showing Bush's FBI and military spy on domestic activists now from a post to William Arkin's excellent early warning blog at the Washington Post: http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2006/ 01/nsa_expands_its.html

American Media Dodging U.N. Surveillance Story By Norman Solomon Media Beat March 6, 2003 http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2226&printer_fr iendly=1

###

The unholy trinity of electronic snooping: Bolton, Negroponte and Hayden By Wayne Madsen Online Journal May 5, 2005

###

NSA spy program hinges on state-of-the-art technology By Shane Harris National Journal January 20, 2006 http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=33 212&printerfriendlyVers=1&

### NSA Gave Other U.S. Agencies Information From Surveillance Fruit of Eavesdropping Was Processed and Cross-Checked With Databases By Walter Pincus Washington Post Sunday, January 1, 2006; A08 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/12/31/AR2005123100 808_pf.html

### New Documents Show FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force Targeting Peaceful Protest Activity in Colorado ACLU Press Release December 8, 2005 http://www.aclu.org/safefree/spying/22884prs200512 08.html

### New Documents Show FBI Targeting Environmental and Animal Rights Groups Activities as "Domestic Terrorism" ACLU Press Release December 20, 2005 http://www.aclu.org/safefree/spying/23124prs200512 20.html

### Secret Pentagon Unit May Have Gathered and Kept Unauthorized Files on Thousands of Innocent Individuals and Organizations Newsweek Jan 23, 2006 http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/printer_3073 0.shtml

### Protesters Subjected To 'Pretext Interviews' FBI Memo Shows No Specific Threats By Dan Eggen Washington Post Wednesday, May 18, 2005; A04 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/05/17/AR2005051701 240_pf.html http://www.aclu-co.org/docket/200406/JTTF_file_sar ah_bardwell_08-02-04.pdf

### Battlespace America: The new Pentagon can peruse intelligence on U.S.citizens and send Marines down Main Street Peter Byrne Mother Jones May/June 2005 Issue http://www.motherjones.com/cgi-bin/print_article.p l?url=http://www.motherjon es.com/news/outfront/2005/05/battlespace_america.h tml

You cannot talk intelligently about politics because most discussions are framed around questions like "Do you support Democrats or Republicans?" instead of substantive commentary like these on the Iraq War or the U.S. use of torture around the world, ignorance of public officials, and ignorance of the American people about the facts of the current administration. I don't support either majority party, and even if I did, its not even the point.

It's like being in a crowd with half screaming "Less Filling!" and the other half screaming "Tastes Great!" - and neither side aware that there isn't a drop of beer in sight. Wake up folks.

CNN had until 2000 played host to members of Psyops who helped in the presentation of news for the U.S. Public. This has been characterized as a training program for Psyops and no more. While it is unclear whether they actually directed CNN to report the news in one way or another. Their role in "packaging" the news is. As such it represents a long history of such biasing work. See articles here and here.

That 20/20 piece was put together by that Solomon of objective journalism, none other than John Stossel. For those just tuning in, John Stossel is a shill for free-market fundamentalist pet causes. What he does is PR, not investigation.

By Doug Henwood

Don't get too far from the establishment.
--Walter Lippmann to Katharine Graham

File Lippmann's remark under the category of superfluous advice. Graham and the company of which she is "chairman"--she lists herself in the D.C. phone book as "Graham, Philip L. Mrs."--have never entertained a thought of straying from the establishment..

In 1933, when Graham's father, Eugene Meyer took control of the bankrupt Washington Post, it enjoyed only physical closeness to power. The paper badly needed the wealth and connections that Meyer had in spades: Over the years, he'd been a Wall Street banker, director of President Wilson's War Finance Corporation, a governor of the Federal Reserve, and director of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. And Meyer wanted a soapbox. "People like to be told what to think," he once said, happy to oblige.

After World War II, when Harry Truman named this lifelong Republican as first president of the World Bank, Meyer made his son-in-law, Philip L. Graham, publisher of the paper. Meyer stayed at the Bank for only six months and returned to the Post as its chairman. But with Phil Graham in charge, there was little for Meyer to do. He transferred ownership to Philip and Katharine Graham, and retired.

Phil Graham maintained Meyer's intimacy with power. Like many members of his class and generation, his postwar view was shaped by his work in wartime intelligence; a classic Cold War liberal, he was uncomfortable with McCarthy, but quite friendly with the personnel and policies of the CIA. He saw the role of the press as mobilizing public assent for policies made by his Washington neighbors; the public deserved to know only what the inner circle deemed proper. According to Howard Bray's Pillars of the Post, Graham and other top Posters knew details of several covert operations--including advance knowledge of the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion--which they chose not to share with their readers.

When the manic-depressive Graham shot himself in 1963, the paper passed to his widow, Katharine. Though out of her depth at first, her instincts were safely establishmentarian. According to Deborah Davis' biography, Katharine the Great, Mrs. Graham was scandalized by the cultural and political revolutions of the 1960s, and wept when LBJ fused to run for reelection in 1968. (After Graham asserted that the book as "fantasy," Harcourt Brace Jovanovich pulled 20,000 copies of Katharine the Great in 1979. The book as re-issued by National Press in 87.)

The Post was one of the last major papers to turn against the Vietnam War. Even today, it hews to a hard foreign policy line--usually to the right of The New York Times, a paper not known or having transcended the Cold War.

There was Watergate, of course, that model of aggressive reporting ed by the Post. But even here, Graham's Post was doing the establishment's work. As Graham herself said, the investigation couldn't have succeeded without the cooperation of people inside the government willing to talk to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

These talkers may well have included the CIA; it's widely suspected that Deep Throat was an Agency man (or men). Davis argues that Post editor Ben Bradlee knew Deep Throat, and may even have set him up with Woodward. She produces evidence that in the early 1950s, Bradlee crafted propaganda for the CIA on the Rosenberg case for European consumption. Bradlee denies working "for" the CIA, though he admits having worked for the U.S. Information Agency--perhaps distinction without a difference.

In any case, it's clear that a major portion of the establishment wanted Nixon out. Having accomplished this, there was little taste for further crusading. Nixon had denounced the Post as "Communist" during the 1950s. Graham offered her suppo

article here

I know, I know. Preview. I mis-clicked.

Oh man, fuck Christmas.

Seriously - are you kidding me with this "There's a war on Christmas" bullshit? FOX News wasn't raking in enough cash already from all the Christmas commercials for Kill 'em All Barbie and Girls Gone Wild Brand Toddler Gear ? They had to start publishing books about some bogus attack on Christianity? And who did they pick to lead this particular charge?

John fucking Gibson. This guy has wiener written all over him.

Bill O'Reilly gets all the credit as the biggest nutcase in FOXville, but Gibson really deserves his own special wing in the happy house. This motherfucker's embedded assignment reads "Up Karl Rove's ass."

What makes him such a dick? I mean, besides making a fortune by screaming hysterically about how oppressed Christians are by the other twenty percent? How about advocating bombing countries that don't vote the way we want in their own elections? Way to encourage democracy, fuckhead. And maybe he was kidding when he wished, on air, that the French had gotten the 2012 Olympics instead of the Brits so the terrorists would "blow up Paris," but it might have been just a touch over the top to call for it again on the day of the London train bombings. Classy move, asshole.

And really? That's just scratching the fucking surface. Anyone remember who was responsible for the bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma City? John does: Iraq. And speaking of Iraq, Gibson thinks Rove deserves a fucking medal for outing that CIA agent. And, like any good reporter, he wanted to burn the Florida ballots after his buddy Bush got "elected" rather than, I don't know, count them? "Is this a case where knowing the facts actually would be worse than not knowing?" That right there is why sometimes it's useful for journalists to go to, what do you call that fucking place? Oh yeah, journalism school.

And now he's all worked up about Christmas being stolen. What is this, the fucking Fairytale Network? It's a national fucking holiday and we're spending gobs of our hard-earned tax dollars on wreaths and lights for your special Santa day. But these bastards are all "But they call them Holiday trees!" Here's a clue: no, they fucking don't. Ok, maybe in a couple places, like on FOXNews.com and at the White House, but if Christmas is under attack, I'm Kris fucking Kringle.

And guess who's stealing Christmas, according to Gibson. Go on -- guess. "A cabal of secularists, so-called humanists, trial lawyers, cultural relativists, and liberal, guilt-wra

Oh man, fuck Christmas.

Seriously - are you kidding me with this "There's a war on Christmas" bullshit? FOX News wasn't raking in enough cash already from all the Christmas commercials for Kill 'em All Barbie and Girls Gone Wild Brand Toddler Gear ? They had to start publishing books about some bogus attack on Christianity? And who did they pick to lead this particular charge?

John fucking Gibson. This guy has wiener written all over him.

Bill O'Reilly gets all the credit as the biggest nutcase in FOXville, but Gibson really deserves his own special wing in the happy house. This motherfucker's embedded assignment reads "Up Karl Rove's ass."

What makes him such a dick? I mean, besides making a fortune by screaming hysterically about how oppressed Christians are by the other twenty percent? How about advocating bombing countries that don't vote the way we want in their own elections? Way to encourage democracy, fuckhead. And maybe he was kidding when he wished, on air, that the French had gotten the 2012 Olympics instead of the Brits so the terrorists would "blow up Paris," but it might have been just a touch over the top to call for it again on the day of the London train bombings. Classy move, asshole.

And really? That's just scratching the fucking surface. Anyone remember who was responsible for the bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma City? John does: Iraq. And speaking of Iraq, Gibson thinks Rove deserves a fucking medal for outing that CIA agent. And, like any good reporter, he wanted to burn the Florida ballots after his buddy Bush got "elected" rather than, I don't know, count them? "Is this a case where knowing the facts actually would be worse than not knowing?" That right there is why sometimes it's useful for journalists to go to, what do you call that fucking place? Oh yeah, journalism school.

And now he's all worked up about Christmas being stolen. What is this, the fucking Fairytale Network? It's a national fucking holiday and we're spending gobs of our hard-earned tax dollars on wreaths and lights for your special Santa day. But these bastards are all "But they call them Holiday trees!" Here's a clue: no, they fucking don't. Ok, maybe in a couple places, like on FOXNews.com and at the White House, but if Christmas is under attack, I'm Kris fucking Kringle.

And guess who's stealing Christmas, according to Gibson. Go on -- guess. "A cabal of secularists, so-called humanists, trial lawyers, cultural relativists, and liberal, guilt-wra

Just because the NY Times, CNN, the LA Times, and the Washington Post dare to print something other than Undying Praise for the Fatherland does not make them left-leaning. It makes them journalists doing their jobs. I think the non-U.S. news coverage of the same events is more aggressive, such as the CBC, the Toronto Globe and Mail, and the BBC. I take the truth as an average of these sources, along with some help from FAIR and the Columbia Journalism Review.

If I want left-leaning, I can go to the Independent Media Center, the Alternative News Network, The Raw Story, or the Fifth Estate.

More on the Wingnuts and the media:

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/the_gops_wingnuts .php
http://www.fair.org/index.php

Kenneth Starr's successor, Robert Ray, released a report in September of 2000 that stated "This office determined that the evidence was insufficient to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that either President or Mrs. Clinton knowingly participated in any criminal conduct." Ray's report effectively ended the Whitewater investigation.

For the record, all my liberal friends tell me constantly that Fox News is oh-so-biased and CNN is oh-so-great, without EVER citing a single example for either case.

If you make any effort to look examples aren't hard to find. Here's a couple

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1072/
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1158/

And wikipedia has a summary of some of the same studies

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

There is also of course the documentary OutFoxed. It clearly has an agenda but it makes a pretty strong case with interviews with ex fox people.

The most frightening bit I remember from that was the survey of people's basic knowledge of current affairs. The results were split by the what the respondants cited as their main news source. I forget the precise figures, but huge percentages of fox viewers believed that WMD's had been found in Iraq and that Saddam was linked to 9/11.

The other easy source of examples of bias is Fox itself. I'm genuinely confused by all the posts questioning if fox news really is biased. I don't see much of fox, but when I do the bias just screams at you. How can you miss it? It's not subtle. They don't even try and pretend in any serious fashion.

For the record, all my liberal friends tell me constantly that Fox News is oh-so-biased and CNN is oh-so-great, without EVER citing a single example for either case.

If you make any effort to look examples aren't hard to find. Here's a couple

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1072/
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1158/

And wikipedia has a summary of some of the same studies

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

There is also of course the documentary OutFoxed. It clearly has an agenda but it makes a pretty strong case with interviews with ex fox people.

The most frightening bit I remember from that was the survey of people's basic knowledge of current affairs. The results were split by the what the respondants cited as their main news source. I forget the precise figures, but huge percentages of fox viewers believed that WMD's had been found in Iraq and that Saddam was linked to 9/11.

The other easy source of examples of bias is Fox itself. I'm genuinely confused by all the posts questioning if fox news really is biased. I don't see much of fox, but when I do the bias just screams at you. How can you miss it? It's not subtle. They don't even try and pretend in any serious fashion.

Here are incidences you can browse.. http://www.fair.org/

You raise a good argument that contentious issues are hard to cover but bad references are quickly removed. So the burden of proof is on the editor which can be quite hard sometimes.

For example - The reason why Clinton's trashing of the White house was not covered in the Clinton article is that the entire affair was fabricated. (reference below)

"According to statements from the General Services Administration that were reported on May 17, little if anything out of the ordinary occurred during the transition, and 'the condition of the real property was consistent with what we would expect to encounter when tenants vacate office space after an extended occupancy.'" (http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1689)

Further the Clinton article does have major scandals listed and many major scandals have entire pages of details dedicated to them. Clinton's impeachment is mentioned in the 3rd paragraph, scandals have an entire section in the table of contents, and the section on his presidency mentions shady business deals, marijuana use, and draft dodging. It really does not seem "Whitewashed".

The Bush article may seem overly negative to you but from a world and historical perpective Bush is really amazingly corrupt and disingenuous. As a result the article contains more detail on him. Part of this is because people feel that American media has really not reported on Bush's failing to the level that Clintons every move was analyzed.

(Try reading some media watchdog organization newsletters like http://www.cjr.org/ (only one remembered offhand) which critique papers for disinformation.)