Quote:

D. McDonagh said:
Mind you, if the entire news media in America was written and performed solely by PJ O Rourke, whatsisface Buckley, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and Adolf Hitler the conservatives would doubtless still whine incessantly about it having a liberal bias.



I was going to stay out of this thread, but I've gotta speak up here.

I think that's going a bit far (especially comparing them to Hitler - that's crossing the line). But in all honesty, some people make it seem like the only people we get news and information from are liberals, and conservatives never get to express their opinion. There are many prominent conservatives out there who do get to express their views. What about:

Elliot Abrams, Kenneth Adelman, Gary Aldrich, Fred Barnes, Michael Barone, Robert Bartley, Gary Bauer, Tom Bethell, Tony Blankley, Linda Bowles, L. Brent Bozell, Richard Brookhiser, David Brooks, Tony Brown, Bay Buchanan, Pat Buchanan, William Bennett, Linda Bowles, William F. Buckley Jr., Tucker Carlson, Mona Charen, Steve Chapman, Linda Chavez, Lynn Cheney, Ward Connerly, Ann Coulter, Blanquita Cullum, Dinesh D'Souza, Midge Decter, Joe DiGenova, James Dobson, Lawrence Eagleburger, Larry Elder, Jerry Falwell, Andrew Ferguson, Suzanne Fields, Kelly Ann Fitzpatrick, Malcolm "Steve" Forbes Jr., David Frum, John Fund, Frank Gaffney, Maggie Gallagher, Rich Galen, David Gergen, Paul Gigot, George Gilder, James Glassman, Bernard Goldberg, Jonah Goldberg, Bob Grant, Ken Hamblin, Sean Hannity, David Horowitz, Britt Hume, Laura Ingraham, Reed Irvine, Terry Jeffries, Don Imus, Jack Kelly, Michael Kelly, Jack Kemp, Alan Keyes, James Kilpatrick, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Henry Kissinger, Morton Kondracke, Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol, Lawrence Kudlow, Donald Lambo, Michael Ledeen, Ernest Lefever, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Gordon Liddy, Glenn Loury, Rich Lowry, Frank Luntz, Michelle Malkin, Mary Matalin, John McLaughlin, Michael Medved, Dennis Miller, Susan Molinari, Peggy Noonan, Oliver North, Robert Novak, Kate O'Beirne Bill O'Reilly Norman Ornstein, P.J. O'Rourke, Kathleen Parker, Richard Pearle, Howard Phillips, James Pinkerton, Daniel Pipes, John Podhoretz, Norman Podhoretz, Richard Poe, Dennis Prager, Wes Pruden, Ronald Radosh, Michael Reagan, Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson, Abe Rosenthal, William Rukeyser, William Safire, Robert Samuelson, Debra Saunders, Phyllis Schlafly, Laura Schlessinger, Schnitt, Brent Scowcroft, Alan Simpson, Tony Snow, Joseph Sobran, Thomas Sowell, John Stossel, Andrew Sullivan, Cal Thomas, R. Emmett Tyrell, Ben Wattenberg, Caspar Weinberger, George Will, Armstrong Williams, and Walter Williams?

(Somebody sent this list to me a while ago, and I hung onto it just in case I ever needed it for anything.)

Of course there will always be some liberals with biases reporting the news. Just as there will always be conservatives with biases reporting the news. And there will always be moderates without bias reporting the news. But depending on what news sources you listen to and who's telling the story, you WILL end up hearing from both "sides" - even on the networks.

And to bring up an old argument, the words of a few do not represent the views of the entire media industry. The media is diverse, and people with all sorts of opinions are involved with it. Sticking a label on the media as a whole is no different than any other stereotype.

Also, there are some news stories where people see a bias that isn't there. I've heard people call articles on the Middle East anti-Israel, and others will call those exact same articles anti-Arab. So maybe our own perceptions (and maybe biases) shape the way we see the media? I brought this up in the thread about Mel Gibson's Jesus movie.

And one last point that I have to bring up: I've studied the media extensively, both in class and on my own. Whatever bias individuals may have, the media's bias is towards whatever will get them ratings. This country is mostly conservative, and for the media to stand against such a huge demogrpahic is pretty stupid, because people won;t listen to what they don't agree with. It would cost the media ratings and money to take a liberal-only stand and turn away the conservatives. It would be self-destructive. Which is why I've always been skeptical of the liberal media theory.

"Well when I talk to people I don't have to worry about spelling." - wannabuyamonkey "If Schumacher’s last effort was the final nail in the coffin then Year One would’ve been the crazy guy who stormed the graveyard, dug up the coffin and put a bullet through the franchise’s corpse just to make sure." -- From a review of Darren Aronofsky & Frank Miller's "Batman: Year One" script