[CLUE-Talk] Media outlets

[Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier]

On Thu, 19 Dec 2002, Sean LeBlanc wrote:

*snip*

> None of these are really "news" but NPR....
>
> Back when I had cable, I used to enjoy the O'Reilly Factor and Hannity and
> Colmes. Fox always gets called right-wing, and I'm sure that it *is* when
> you put it alongside the broadcast networks and the New York Times, but is
> there anyone who *really* thinks those do not have a serious skew to the
> left?

Yes. None of the major news networks skew to the left, in my opinion.
If they did, we'd be hearing a lot more criticism of Bush & company than
we are.

Fox is just much farther to the right than many other outlets.

I get tired of hearing the claim that the media is left-leaning, when
the fact is that the people who play the gatekeeper roles are almost
invariably right-wing. Reporters may be liberal, but they're typically
managed by right-wing people who are answering to even more right-wing
bosses.

With the increasing ties of news media to other corporations, we're
not hearing half of what we should be about the behavior of those
corporations.

There are certainly left-wing media outlets, but they are not the
mainstream media that most people go home and watch after they
get off work. Any study of stories that are studiously left unreported
shows that the stories would go against the conservative grain.

You might check out Project Censored: http://www.projectcensored.org/
to see some of the stories that SHOULD have been reported by mass
media, but weren't. Some examples:

#1 FCC Moves to Privatize Airwaves
#4 Bush Administration Hampered FBI Investigation 46 into Bin
Laden Family Before 9-11
#8 NAFTA Destroys Farming Communities in U.S. and Abroad
#24 Wal-Mart Takes Union Busting to the State Level

Those are just my favorites... found here:
http://www.projectcensored.org/stories/2003/cyearbook.htm

Any Fox News fans might find this article interesting:
http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/business/cnn/1002/07zahn.html

You might want to reconsider your viewing habits.

> As for news shows, I listened to NPR back when it wasn't AM (my car's AM
> doesn't work, and I'm not working right now, anyway, so I don't listen on my
> commute). I used to think NPR (some guy at Corning used to call it National
> Pinko Radio) had a real lefty slant, too, but if you pay attention, they
> have some pundits from the right come on, too. They also go much more in
> depth into stories, and don't just get the sound bite and move on. At work,
> I'd listen to www.cpr.org on occasion.

NPR is often accused of being left-wing, but I've found that they're
middle-of-the-road... I agree, they do much better at indepth reporting
than the average media outlet.

Ignoring the left vs. right debate for a second... televised news is
almost universally horrid. For anyone who is interested in this topic,
I recommend "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman. You cannot
get your "news" from television and consider yourself informed. Most
radio is little better, and newspapers are in sorry shape compared
to two decades ago, but they're a lot better than televised news...

> For reading, I love www.opinionjournal.com. It's the op-ed site for the WSJ,
> and as you would expect, it's conservative. Since I cannot afford a
> subscription, I can only read what they make available online, though.
> Again, not really "news", but opinions on the news.

I happen to like these sites for news gathering:

http://radiofreenation.net/
http://news.google.com/
http://www.unknownnews.net/
http://www.alternet.org/ (Admittedly left-wing)
http://www.tompaine.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/
http://news.findlaw.com/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
http://www.law.com/
http://research.yale.edu/lawmeme/

Take care,

Zonker
--
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier
http://www.dissociatedpress.net/