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Fairness and accuracy in reporting

Flordia's constitution required a full recount and cert by x date,

I see nothing in the Florida constituion regarding this, though my look was brief. Citation, please?

the SCOTUS ordered flordia to obey its constitution.

State laws are a matter for state courts. The right of every voter to be counted trumps arbitrary deadlines anyway.

could Gore have won?

If by "won" you mean "received more votes in Florida", the answer is clearly yes. He did. A full statewide recount would have favored Gore. (Gore blew it by not demanding a full recount.)

That's not even considering the many voters - mostly black, and more likely to be Gore voters - illegal disenfranchised, or the illegal and self-contradictory Palm Beach "butterfly ballot", or the invalid absentee ballots that were counted. (I assume the later are the ones you're refering to. However, Gore didn't challenge such absentee ballots - if he had, the Bush team might have had a harder time committing their fraud. Another blown opportunity.)

More voters - in the U.S. as a whole and in Florida - went to the polls to cast their ballots for Gore than for Bush. The fact that in Florida, more Gore voters had trouble getting their votes counted shows the absence of equal protection when different methods of vote-counting are used in different areas. (With rich counties generally having more accurate tabulation.)

CIA is one of the most evil organizations in the last 50 years. Following in the footsteps of other similar spy organizations like the SS and the KGB, the CIA is responsible for hundreads of thousands of deaths and for torturing many more.

I would urge Americans to limit their agents to WITHIN their country. Overthrowing other governments, killing innocent people, and spreading torture techniques is not my idea of defense. You want to protect your country? Use the agents to track and monitor people WITHIN your country. Sending them off to cause troubles in other countries is neither moral nor effective.

Countries where CIA has been complicit in kiling or torturing more than 10 people include El Salvador, Guatemla, Chile, Argentina, Indonesia, Iran, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and many more...

CIA blowbacks include Iraqgate (money laundering to Iraq via Banca de la Franca), Iran-Contra (no comment), Usama bin Laden (contrary to US govt propaganda, he learned all his techniques off the CIA), and so forth. Then again, nothing out of the CIA should surprise anyone. I mean, this is the same organization that saved (and was influenced by) some of the most cruel Nazi war criminals. (another story here)

I guess I just got blacklisted for that...fuck the CIA and everything that it stands for :(:(:(

Sivaram Velauthapillai

I won't have time to discuss much this week, for obvious reasons.

That's cool... just respond when you feel like... if you feel like...

I'm going to quote all over the place. I am NOT going to be quoting chronologically. I think it is best to divide up up argument into different topics.

Democracy & Media

I'm not arguing that capitalist democracies are perfect, only that they are the best thing we have found.

First of all, I am not arguing against capitalist DEMOCRACY; I'm arguing against capitalism. Capitalism has nothing to do with democracy. If anything, pure capitalism and pure democracy are contradictory. You can just look around to see why this is so. As a matter of fact, democracy can even be traced back to Roman and Greek societies. Those societies were hardly capitalist. In addition, no country is a democracy. I refer to countries like USA as a PLUTOCRACY. Capitalists like yourself don't like to admit it but that's how I see it.

USA isn't a democracy? NY Times and Washington Post seems to unearth more scandals in the US president administration than the rest of the world's media do in all of the world's governments.

Do you think the intellectual elite created no scandals when monarchs ruled? You can even find the media reporting on "scandals" in a totalitarian country like China of all places!

Washington Post is a mouthpiece of the government. One day it is pro-Democrat; the next day it is pro-Republican. Its opinions and words are based on who is in power.

Although better than others, New York Times is an establishment paper. Sure it unearths hidden issues. But how many of these are important? Figure out how many US media covers the atrocities committed by right wing forces allied with the Colombian goverment, which is supported by USA! Or, try to find an article that talks about "iraqgate" ( another here). How about the Waco atrocity? I mean, people STILL have no idea what happened to President Kennedy! Or better yet, how come the media has said nothing about the Anthrax Assasin? The Anthrax Assasin killed more Americans than than Saddam Hussein! Where is your "democratic and free" media?

The problem is that you have no idea what is going on. It's not just you but the VAST MAJORITY of people are like that. They just take what is fed to them. When the media just regurgitates White House press releases, you just accept it. You also fall for propaganda and disinformation. It's just too bad that you don't realize that the New York Times (or for that matter, most media) are controlled by the government. How many US media had anti-war commentators or activists in the run-up to the war? Almost ZERO! That's not a free media! That's not a fair media! And it certainly isn't democratic either!

Just because the media is supposedly free, doesn't mean all is well. Similarly, just because someone can vote doesn't mean it is democratic. I mean, citizens were able to vote as far back as 150 years ago yet no one in their right mind would consider these countries very democratic at that time. In fact, if you went to government propaganda, almost 70% of the countries are democratic. Of course, nothing is further from the truth.

Premanent War for permanent Peace

Personally, I don't really care that much about the rights of dictatorships. The Iraq invasion was stupid -- but good for Iraq, I guess, since it was a Stalin-like dictatorship and probably couldn't have been overthrown in any other way.

So let me ask you this. If I invaded your country and killed 10,000 people to kill a dictator, it's ok with you? What if one of your loved ones--or even you--were killed? You live in a black & white world driven by the propagandists. To you, only the d

Rush gives a pretty good response for most (maybe all, I didn't check) of those. He admits at several points that he made an error or mispoke, something FAIR does not do once. I definitely do not see a single case where he was lying, not mistaken (Exagerating does not count as lying. If you listen to Rush often, you will know how often he exagerates, and can tell when he does. It is understandable that someone reading a quote from him can misunderstand that).

Well since you asked...

This is kind of old, but pretty well documented:

http://www.fair.org/press-releases/limbaugh-debate s-reality.html

Moreover, since when does a slanted piece by an unabashed liberal partisan complaining about the political opposition actually qualify as "stuff that matters

Your link for support to MediaResearch.org. This is the same media research.org that has the slogan:

The Leader in Documenting, Exposing and Neutralizing Liberal Media Bias

-- mark

BTW, a brief google search found media bias watchdog groups of the left and of the right. Anyone know a media watchdog group that is ostensibly non-partisan?

Lots of luck. Looks like it didn't make the ballot in 2K2. :-). Remember that Lani Guinier was denied a federal appointment for being a bit too innovative wrt electoral fairness. Not that the Democrats haven't pulled equally partisan shenanigans.

Bin Laden is evil too. As is anyone who purposely targets civilians.

Purposefully targeting civilians? You'll find a whole lot more evil closer to home if you use that definition...

In that vein, here's an interesting piece on the so-called liberal media.

This is a study of the bias of sources used by the major broadcast media in the run-up to the Iraq war. FAIR classified sources as pro-war or anti-war on the basis of their affiliation with the administration, publicly expressed opinions about the war, and so on.

What I found surprising was that not even PBS gave equal time to those who opposed the war.

An excerpt: "The FAIR study found just 3 percent of U.S. sources represented or expressed opposition to the war. With more than one in four U.S. citizens opposing the war and much higher rates of opposition in most countries where opinion was polled, none of the networks offered anything resembling proportionate coverage of anti-war voices. The anti-war percentages ranged from 4 percent at NBC, 3 percent at CNN, ABC, PBS and FOX, and less than 1 percent--one out of 205 U.S. sources--at CBS."

Ok, since this was initially modded OT (but seems to be moving up), I'll explain my reasoning:

The story is about a news site that has pulled an article that might embarrass the current president, so I provide links to "alternative" "left-wing" news sites that often have their own copy of the story because they've already posted it, or they have an editorial about the article in question. I remember this Bush Sr. article being fairly heavily discussed when it was first noticed well before the war started. If you look at the histories of some of those sites, you'll find it.

And while I'm at it, I forgot two of the most relevant:

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (more serious)
Take Back the Media (more rabid)

> wacko right wing-ness of papers like the Washington Times

Hey! That's "wacko right wing-ness of papers owned by the Moonies like the Washington Times", to you, Mr. Cynic.

What passes as a liberal slant in America is really only a liberal slant if you compare it to right-wingery that borders on fascism.

If you want to see how all major American media fails the readership, check out Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Fox is only the most flagrant violator. When push comes to shove, all corporate media is subject to your standard corporate editorial mandate, with few exceptions.

I've didn't see anyone calling Clinton a murdering terrorist when he sent cruise missles into Iraq after the inspectors were kicked out.

Well, you at least contest my examples here, although I'm still waiting for some counterexamples. Quickly:

The people of California watch the news, some of them even watch Fox.. Command came down from on high because the people on high at Fox wanted Arnold to win.

Regarding the press secretary request, I concede your point. It was Ari who suggested it first, I forgot. But Fox pushed it enthusiastically. Everyone else kinda said "WTF?" for the reasons I outlined in an earlier post. Your point is true, but the distinction is not really important.

The fact that you believe the Plame affair to be a minor issue is telling. It's a felony. I'm sure you've seen the Bush Sr. quote about revealing sources by now. But what bothers me is not so much that it happened, but that no one really seems to care if the felon is caught. If I were a true partisan this would please me; the Democrats can prove logically that there's a guaranteed felon in the White House and the only way to get rid of her is to elect a new administration. I mean, at least Poindexter had been pardoned.

Murdoch vs. Turner: Turner is no liberal. Nor is he married to Jane Fonda any longer. Besides, CNN has taken a giant step to the right to try to keep up with Fox's ratings. There was a FAIR study documenting this rightward shift on reliable sources; viewers can see it for themselves. I seek documentation to the contrary, that CNN, or NPR for that matter, is a liberal news outlet. You assert but do not prove this.

Which only proves the blindness of the left. While those of on the Right will concede you guys exist (but are hopelessly misguided, delusional, borderline anti-american, but you DO exist) you guys think the political spectrum goes from Joe Stalin to Joe Lieberman and anything to the right of there is only howling madness.

This is what I mean by calling names. You're not making an argument, you're calling me insane. This is not reasonable discourse, it's ad hominem attack. Besides, I, like you, have mostly libertarian leanings- I'm concerned foremost with an empirical basis for policy making. Clinton was quite good at this, the Bush Administration is famously afraid of it. I live in Pennsylvania, I've voted for Arlen Specter (but Rick Santorum scares the living daylights out of me). But you seem to think I'm some wacko because I don't see a communist conspiracy in the media.

• The Memory Hole

• Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

Here's a minor example of something those two sites didn't catch: Remember Iraq's so-called "mobile biological weapons factories"? A month after the story broke that they were for weather balloons, the CIA moved their report's URL.

An intriguing fact about this whitehouse.gov/*/iraq thing is that they do in fact cover some of the important statements which are apparently not duplicated in the press release, conference, and briefing directories. Perhaps there was a "unique urgency" to cover up some poor choices of words?

"200,000 person protest against War in Iraq. All marginalized in the news."

Plenty more than that was marginalised in the news

Now show us the stuff about "calling for the deaths of Jews". Please.

Howabout calling for the deaths of arabs. Does that count?

"The evening "News" is so corporate owned and supported that I don't really consider it a reliable source for information."

The link you seek is fair.org

The "Fairness" Doctrine (AKA Hush Rush) is back.

The Fairness Doctrine has been back for a while.

It was overwhelming passed by both houses in 1987, but vetoed by Reagan. Even Newt Gingrich and Jesse Helms voted for it.

It was passed by the House again in 1989, but Bush Sr. threatened a veto, so it didn't get to the Senate for a vote.

Rush is trying to make it seem that it is only back to silence him and conservatives (ergo "Hush Rush") but bipartisan support for the Fairness Doctrine has been around from before Rush was a big force in broadcasting.

Get the whole story here.

Even better information can be found here.

"How do you know the media are biased?

All the major media surveys for the past 20 years have shown that 80 to 90 percent of the mainstream media consistently vote for Democrats."

COMMON SENSE DISAGREES WITH AIM.ORG:

You can tell the media is biased based by actually measuring airtime they give to views/opinions/people categorized as conservative, centrist and liberal. There is no better method than this if you do your own measuring instead of relying on others unlike surveys which can easily be distorted (i.e. survey only well-known liberals while avoiding conservatives so we can say that the media are mostly Democrats or survey the idealistic journalists fresh out of college instead of the editors in charge).

As stated in an earlier post, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) have interesting reports like

Media Citations of Think Tanks in 2002:
- conservatives received 47%
- centrists received 41%
- progressives received 11%

Don't take their word for it, do your own measuring of airtime and see for yourself.

Gee, the media keeps telling us they are biased left while giving 400% more airtime to conservative views & guests. Do they think we're retarded?

Whether you are left or right, bias and distorted reporting hurts America. Fight fictional news even if it promotes your own views--if your views are sound, they won't need biased reporting as a crutch.

But if your views are not sound, they'll need to use biased reporting, ugly weirdos representing opposing views on TV, decent-looking people representing your views on TV and carefully worded survey/polling questions to make the masses think more people agree with you than them (and the few that disagree with you are ugly/weird/wimpy).

Check out the bio pictures on this page and ask yourself who you'd hire to represent your views and who you'd hire to represent your oppositions views. The confident jock or the wimpy/creepy Frankenstein mutant?

"How do you know the media are biased?

All the major media surveys for the past 20 years have shown that 80 to 90 percent of the mainstream media consistently vote for Democrats."

COMMON SENSE DISAGREES WITH AIM.ORG:

You can tell the media is biased based by actually measuring airtime they give to views/opinions/people categorized as conservative, centrist and liberal. There is no better method than this if you do your own measuring instead of relying on others unlike surveys which can easily be distorted (i.e. survey only well-known liberals while avoiding conservatives so we can say that the media are mostly Democrats or survey the idealistic journalists fresh out of college instead of the editors in charge).

As stated in an earlier post, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) have interesting reports like

Media Citations of Think Tanks in 2002:
- conservatives received 47%
- centrists received 41%
- progressives received 11%

Don't take their word for it, do your own measuring of airtime and see for yourself.

Gee, the media keeps telling us they are biased left while giving 400% more airtime to conservative views & guests. Do they think we're retarded?

Whether you are left or right, bias and distorted reporting hurts America. Fight fictional news even if it promotes your own views--if your views are sound, they won't need biased reporting as a crutch.

But if your views are not sound, they'll need to use biased reporting, ugly weirdos representing opposing views on TV, decent-looking people representing your views on TV and carefully worded survey/polling questions to make the masses think more people agree with you than them (and the few that disagree with you are ugly/weird/wimpy).

Check out the bio pictures on this page and ask yourself who you'd hire to represent your views and who you'd hire to represent your oppositions views. The confident jock or the wimpy/creepy Frankenstein mutant?

Since we repeatedly keep hearing from the media that the media has liberal bias, my bullshit detector won't stop sounding the alarm for me to wear rubber boots.

If you want to know if the media is really biased, find out which opinions/views/guests get the most airtime and you can quantifiably determine actual bias.

For example, make a list of current news anchors & TV personalities that have their own UNSHARED TV news/editorial shows and see if there are actually more liberals vs conservatives. Seriously, count them and see what you get.

Some sites like Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) have interesting reports like

Media Citations of Think Tanks in 2002:
- conservatives received 47%
- centrists received 41%
- progressives received 11%

If the media were indeed biased left, why would they keep telling us they are biased left while giving conservative think tanks over 400% more airtime than progressives? You'd have to be a moron to fall for that one and I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell to you.

Actions speak louder than words--this is precisely why smart citizens look at the actions of politicians rather than their highly agreeable platitudes to see where they actually stand on issues. The same goes with media bias--see which views/people they give more coverage to in order to determine their bias.

But again, don't take my word for it (or the media's) about bias--do your own thinking and examine factual evidence from a variety of sources rather than mere opinions to form your own conclusions. Good luck.

Since we repeatedly keep hearing from the media that the media has liberal bias, my bullshit detector won't stop sounding the alarm for me to wear rubber boots.

If you want to know if the media is really biased, find out which opinions/views/guests get the most airtime and you can quantifiably determine actual bias.

For example, make a list of current news anchors & TV personalities that have their own UNSHARED TV news/editorial shows and see if there are actually more liberals vs conservatives. Seriously, count them and see what you get.

Some sites like Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) have interesting reports like

Media Citations of Think Tanks in 2002:
- conservatives received 47%
- centrists received 41%
- progressives received 11%

If the media were indeed biased left, why would they keep telling us they are biased left while giving conservative think tanks over 400% more airtime than progressives? You'd have to be a moron to fall for that one and I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell to you.

Actions speak louder than words--this is precisely why smart citizens look at the actions of politicians rather than their highly agreeable platitudes to see where they actually stand on issues. The same goes with media bias--see which views/people they give more coverage to in order to determine their bias.

But again, don't take my word for it (or the media's) about bias--do your own thinking and examine factual evidence from a variety of sources rather than mere opinions to form your own conclusions. Good luck.

Since we repeatedly keep hearing from the media that the media has liberal bias, my bullshit detector won't stop sounding the alarm for me to wear rubber boots.

If you want to know if the media is really biased, find out which opinions/views/guests get the most airtime and you can quantifiably determine actual bias.

For example, make a list of current news anchors & TV personalities that have their own UNSHARED TV news/editorial shows and see if there are actually more liberals vs conservatives. Seriously, count them and see what you get.

Some sites like Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) have interesting reports like

Media Citations of Think Tanks in 2002:
- conservatives received 47%
- centrists received 41%
- progressives received 11%

If the media were indeed biased left, why would they keep telling us they are biased left while giving conservative think tanks over 400% more airtime than progressives? You'd have to be a moron to fall for that one and I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell to you.

Actions speak louder than words--this is precisely why smart citizens look at the actions of politicians rather than their highly agreeable platitudes to see where they actually stand on issues. The same goes with media bias--see which views/people they give more coverage to in order to determine their bias.

But again, don't take my word for it (or the media's) about bias--do your own thinking and examine factual evidence from a variety of sources rather than mere opinions to form your own conclusions. Good luck.

Underreported stories?

probably the best resource is FAIR anyway, just to check-up on the 'actual' newspapers

In truth, I have yet to see any media "watchdog" that did not appear to have some sort of agenda to push. Though they can provide some value, one just needs to be aware that they are only "watching" half of the picture and turning a blind eye to the other half. Though in their favour, since the main news stories these days come from the conservatives, being that they are in power right now, it makes sense that more conservative-related stories would be underreported since there are more conservative-related stories happening. If the Democrats had power then there ought to be more left-oriented stories going under-reported, like Republicans often whined happened regarding Clinton's business dealings and Democratic fund raising when the Democrats were in power. (Though you would unfortunately probably not see these many of these supposed media watchdogs like FAIR and company make any effort to expose those stories.)

Democracy Now is a Pacifica Radio program. Counterspin is produced by FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting - a left wing media watch group).

Both are carried by many NPR stations around the country. Both are considerably more progressive than NPR itself.

"Democracy Now" and "Sounter Spin" are some good NPR programs to consider if you want to keep track of underreported or sensored stories.
both are supperted by fiar.org
you can get a cool "Don't trust corporate medida" bumper sticker there...

Iraq was extremely uncooperative in every way with the UN and with the weapons inspectors.

Are you talking about these cloak-and-dagger UN weapons inspectors?

What commercials are you talking about?

The ones they run in between shows.

They have sponsor acknowledgements.

What's the difference?

There are pretty strict rules on these as well. The only one that comes quickly to mind is that they must not contain mention of specific products.

I didn't know about that, but apparently you're right on that point.

What they fail to mention is that most of the corporate money is CPB, which is funded totally by the fed.

You're right again. Thanks for the info.

You seem to be saying that the liberal welfare programs will bankrupt us all. According to a quick Google search, in 1994 there were 14.2 million welfare recipients, including 5.0 million families and 9.6 million children, and they spent, 2.8% of the federal budget. In 1999, there were 7.2 million, including 2.6 million families and 5.1 million children. This doesn't seem like a particularly worrying trend.

Meanwhile, the government spends something like twice as much on corporate welfare.

If you're talking about Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, who the hell can say with any certainty. There's this and this. But let's tackle a macro-scale assumption first: in the event that the economic equation is truly as you say it is, why would they allow the entire global economic order to collapse instead of simply reducing benefits and/or cutting costs? Americans are not particularly slaves to a welfare state. Why wouldn't politicians, being nothing if not self-interested, vote to save their own jobs and curtail benefits and maybe lose a few votes, instead of losing everything in a total economic collapse?

Osama bin Laden was among the Mujahiddin that fought against the Russians. Wahabis were running all over the place. If you can't see the connection between the Wahabi Muslims (Mujahiddin) fighting against the Soviet invasion in the 80s and the current al Qaeda and Taliban, then you're not paying attention.

Wrong. The only scenario where Gore came out in front is if all undervote and overvotes were counted in all of the Florida counties. The AP predicted that in this scenario, Gore would have won with a margin of 42 - 171 votes.

All other scenarios had Bush as the leader, including counting all overvotes and undervotes in only 6 counties, which is what Gore was asking the Supreme Court to do.

The problem is that the various frequencies that are used by NPR around the country are not bought and sold like the rest of the FM spectrum

On the surface that would seem correct. But the reality is much different. Why is this spectrum different? It exists to serve the public, not corporate, interest.

There are two areas of concern (in reality excuses). The main "primary" transmitter and all the thousands of "secondary" translators in use.

To say that a 10-100 watt LPFM station would "interfere" with a 100,000 watt primary station is laughably ridiculous at best. That would leave the "translators".

The purpose of translator stations was to fill in gaps in coverage for the existing transmitting signal, not to EXTEND coverage of a single station across large regions They originate no programming. That is why they exist under a "secondary" purpose, not as a "primary" station.

The problem is that the various frequencies that are used by NPR around the country are not bought and sold like the rest of the FM spectrum.

This has nothing to do with it. What gives NPR the right to transmit over the whole nation?? You are absolutely right when you said "This is the frequency range between 88 and 92MHz and are reserved for non-commercial use." What makes NPR so "special" that they need to have every frequency in the "non-commercial use" spectrum?? What makes them so "special" that they need to have coverage over large geographical areas that commercial stations don't have??" What makes them so special that they have to have a "monopoly" on public radio???

This also begs the question if NPR is really "non-commercial." Have you listened to NPR recently?? They are filled with station breaks giving acknowledgements to corporations that "sponsor" programs that predominantly contain promotional announcements. I really can't tell the difference between what they broadcast and a regular advertisement on a "commercial" radio station. At least alot of the religous stations don't have that nonsense.

Maybe NPR needs to be kicked out of the "non-commercial" section of the spectrum and let them compete honestly with regular broadcasting corporations. Oh wait, NPR's "corporation for public broadcasting" isn't really a corporation. I see.

Does NPR really serve the public interest?? According to this link, not really. Not only by not representing a variety of viewpoints, but also by hoarding translator frequencies that they really don't need. They seem to be representing increasingly commercial interests. There are others who are noticing this also. NPR has even tried putting a bandaid on it. As can be seen, NPR takes out the "community" in "community radio".

After NPR goes dark from drives like the unpledge, those that love it can pick it up on satellite radio. NPR is not an irreplaceable resource. There are thousands of people ready to put up LPFM transmitters in its place that are really non-commercial.

I know that there are alot of of people who listen on NPR on slashdot, but it is time to realize that NPR no longer represents community interests. Sure their programming is fun and interesting to listen to at times. But the same could be said of any

... and thus would effectively kill, the Terrorism Information Awareness program, ...

Anyone remember when the Bush administration planned for a media disinformation agency ? It was around the time USA was attacking Afghanistan and it caused such a uproar that it was decided that it wouldn't be done ..

Well, guess what ... The Propaganda disinformation program is alive and kicking ...

What ?? You don't want to belive that Uncle Sam is doing such a thing ?? Then take a look at FAIR

This might sound off-topic, but I am reminded of the FCC and its recent ruling in favor of giving the most powerful media companies even greater monopoly power. (Most Americans aren't even aware that Colin Powell's son heads the FCC.) The problem has even gotten to the point that the media was powerful and arrogant enough to censor anti-war broadcasts. Remember also when Dan Rather granted Saddam an interview just before this second war, but this so bothered a White House staff bent on coercive social engineering that they blitzed every major TV station with broadcasts of the Pres.

One just gets the feeling that more and more, law and government are in bed with the largest conglomerate corporations to control and screw the lowly individual. That is what unchecked capitalism brings, and what we are trying to force upon the entire world.

Excuse me Mr. FUD, Ashcroft and Bush have never passed one stinkin' law. Congress has passed every last one of them.

"Btw, The US also has censorship problems. Just look at how american news sources acted over Iraq - did a single mainsteam journalist criticize the government's plan?"

More info about media coverage: basically just an extension of the white-house press office.

The military is also worthy of attention, having deliberately killed several independant journalists

"Btw, The US also has censorship problems. Just look at how american news sources acted over Iraq - did a single mainsteam journalist criticize the government's plan?"

More info about media coverage: basically just an extension of the white-house press office.

The military is also worthy of attention, having deliberately killed several independant journalists

John Stossel (a very good journalist, IMO)
Check out: http://www.fair.org/media-outlets/stossel.html for a different view.

What does semblance of diversity when all these companies have representatives sitting on each others board of directors?

"While they're at it, maybe they should change the logo as well to something less sinister, and appoint someone who is not a convicted criminal to run it."

Is the 'seeing-eye' masonic logo not on the back of a US dollar bill?

Damned right about Poindexter though. Scandal? What scandal?

KrisplyKringle wrote: Well, they make up stories, but thats an exception (well, they and Fox).

And then newwave wrote: Is this just a swipe at a news channel simply because they actually include a conservative point of view, or do you have something to back this up?

And then I wrote: Fox doesn't make up stories, they just spread rumours that most other news sources would ignore. Oh wait a minute, Fox news does make up stories, but only when they support a conservative point of view. The rest of the time they are busy just manipulating the public. But of course, in the US, that is perfectly legal!.

Being able to back up your statements with fact ...'s something Rush does VERY well.

If by "well" you mean "without regard to the truth" -- for proof please see [Google cache of] www.fair.org/media-outlets/limbaugh.html

FAIR.org seems to be down today.

I asked:
"What defines a blog, anyway? "

Tablizer replied:
"How about: If it turns a profit, it is no longer a blog."

Well, there goes CNN.com, Alternet.org, Fair.org, ACLU.org, Kuro5hin, IMDB, the MIT Tech Review and everything on the BBC website.

On the other hand we'll now get authoratative hits from Amazon, Buy.com and Microsoft.

Woot!

More people might vote, but they'll still be the same people who don't care about it, and are more impressed by image than substance. Getting elected these days is more about showmanship than good ideas, integrity, or even politics. Money spent on advertising is _strongly_ correlated to election victory, which either indicates that advertizing works, or that people are more likely to vote for politician with rich allies. Given that political advertizing is all about image, and maybe some grandiose promises, it's a bad thing that people are so dependent on the ads they see to make their voting decisions. Online voting will make this worse, because now some of the people who don't care just don't bother voting at all. If they can vote online, they might be sitting at home watching TV, and see an ad (if ads are allowed to be shown during polling hours), or something about one of the candidates that makes them decide to vote for that person without knowing anything about what policies that candidate supports. After voting, they'll probably stop feeling guilty for not voting, like in the past, since they think they've done their civic duty just by voting. Of course, they haven't. They've diluted the vote of people who are familiar with the candidates. The media is a critical part of democracy, but biased media (check out FAIR) and flashy ads don't help.

A lethal combination of:

• Bread & circuses.
• Those that do not know history are condemned to repeat it.
• Current Question == Unpatriotic perception.

There's a great first hand account of the life of an embedded journalist in the SMH.

And there's an interesting blurb here about the US killing non-embedded journalists.