Bjorn commented on my post last week concerning OutFoxed. He admitted that, like myself, he is a liberal. He said "Personally speaking, I think "liberal bias" in media is a (conservative) myth. News as a business skews it to the right." With this statement, I couldn't agree more. News is inherently more geared towards the right side of the spectrum. The old news idea that "if it bleeds, it leads" is a complete right-way of thinking, or at least more so than a liberal point of view. News up until now tends to much more conservative. I don't watch the news as much as I probably should because I just find it to be too depressing. For every one uplifting story, there are three horror stories.
It makes me wonder if a left-wing news broadcast could make it. There are more liberal news broadcasts like "Chronicle" or "60 Minutes" but they are more editorial shows rather than hard fact news broadcasts. I think that a more liberal news program could survive in a right-wing environment. If anything, its staying power would lie in the fact (what a pun haha) that it would be a one of its kind. Reading other people's posts and blogs I get the impression that most are more towards the left-side of things and don't like broadcasts such as Fox News. There should be an alternative for people. Especially in this day-in-age, everything is all about choice. Why not get to really choose what kind of news we want to watch?
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Non-commercial and/or alternative media seem to me to be *a* way to go. Here's a link to Democracy Now!, which might be along the lines of what's you're looking for.....
ReplyDeletehttp://www.democracynow.org
Like many other environments the News business is primarily controlled by big business...as is government. Let's face it the NY times was inches from going under until a very wealthy Argentinian business man pummped in 1/2 billion in capital and owns a large stake. Just for an example if he started requesting to see more secular reports based on christian or more to the point catholic beliefs or he would pull his capital...what do you think they would do at the NY times?
ReplyDeleteFox is just the same with Murdoch's pockets and prior to CNN being bought out by time warner, Ted turner (staunch Conservative)ran the station from the right.
The history tells the story but your point about Right vs Left is more like one businesses ideal vs another's
As far as left wing news, I think one of the best examples of these are The Colbert Report and The Daily Show. Although they may not have the same respect as a media outlet as, for example, CNN or Fox News, they are still very liberal programs that believe it or not, many young adults get their political news from. But I do agree with you that the main news outlets are more right-wing for the most part.
ReplyDeleteI definitley agree. I feel like we cannot choose what we want to have for our news. Every news network gives the same news. Whether I watch Fox, CBS, NBC, or ABC, it is all the same news. One night at around 5pm, flick through the channels and see how much the news links together on every different network. It is depressing.
ReplyDeleteMSNBC is fairly "left-wing". It's nowhere near as extreme as FOX, but it definitely leans at least a bit towards the left.
ReplyDeleteBut there's plenty of choices if you don't limit yourself to television news.
I agree with your reason for not watching the news. That is why I don't watch the news that often. Usually when I am home, my parents will have ch. 7 news on, and that's when I notice how it's bad news story after bad news story. Car crashes, robberies, etc.
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