MSNBC = poison

[Anonymous]

Anyone who thinks Fox News is unbiased is absolutely clueless. There is good reason that noted conservative Rupert Murdoch hired senior republican consultant Roger Ailes (who worked for Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, & Giuliani) to be President of Fox News.

If you don't see the bias visit MediaMatters and do a search for Fox News. While Media Matters is a liberal/progressive organization, the actual Fox News video clips they have on file will clearly settle the matter. Heck, the Faux News sponsored and hyped Tea Parties also prove the point.

Of course MSNBC is just as partisan as Fox News. What I think drives the conservatives crazy is that up until MSNBC found it's groove, Fox News was positioning itself as a counterpoint to CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, etc, claiming those previous had a liberal slant and Fox News a conservative slant.

Now with MSNBC, Fox News actually has a liberal counterpoint to it's conservative coverage. It's easy when comparing the two to see that one is the mirror image of the other. Both are extreme in the bias. Now in comparison, CNN and the other networks come across as the moderate, less biased channels that they always have been.

Plus, what's got to be driving Murdoch/Ailes/Hannity/O'Reilly crazy is that Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow actually call them on their bias - continually and consistently - and they always have the video evidence to back up their charges of bias or inconsistency.

Personally I don't watch MSNBC or Fox because I prefer my news as unbiased as I can find it, but I think having one offset the other is good for people looking for different perspectives.

[Anonymous]

Olberman and Maddow are completely over the top and never have a second viewpoint. They are a joke as is CNN. I have actually clicked around trying to see what channel is the most unbiased and I go back to FOX because they are the only channel with point counter point--Hannity is the only commentator who is completely right wing and even he has people on who call him on it. Rachel Maddow, on top of, being competely unattractive to watch with her twitches just is annoying as is Olberman.

[Anonymous]

Fox unbiased? Come on. Every single host on Fox, in every single time slot is biased.

Did you see how they hyped the GOP's tea parties on every single show throughout the day. For weeks, across all their programing, from the morning briefing through to Hannity, O'Reilly, and even through their supposedly more unbiased world news those parties were consistently and relentlessly sold to the public.

Every other network knew those parties were staged political events funded and organized by right wing donors with deep pockets .

Had it been a real "people's protest" they would have been covered by the media, but as political theater it was a non-story. Unless of course you're Fox News and working to create the stories you cover.

If you actually think Fox is unbiased than you probably think Limbaugh, Hannity and O'Reilly are also unbiased, and if so, well, there's obviously no point in arguing with you because you're living in a fantasy world.

[Anonymous]

There was a poll done back in 2005 or so asking viewers of each of the major networks two important questions to determine the accuracy of the news they were receiving:

1) Was Saddam involved in 9/11, and

2) Did the US find WMD's in Iraq.

The vast majority of listeners/viewers of every single major news source (ABC, CNN, NPR, etc.) got the answers correct. Only the Fox viewers managed to get the two answers wrong well over 50% of the time. That's the result of being spoon fed propaganda by Fox News.

You can call Fox News unbiased all you want. Wishing it were true doesn't make it so.

[Anonymous]

I just checked the Media Matters web site you mentioned above and did a quick search for Brit Hume, who is supposed to be one of the most "Fair and Balanced" anchors at Fox News.

Up comes a quote from him at an awards ceremony where he's receiving the Buckley award and he specifically thanks the Media Research Center "for the tremendous amount of material" they "provided me for so many years when I was anchoring Special Report"

Only problem? The Media Research Center is a right wing organization. Go figure.

Of course there appear to be a hundred or more other instances (videos and footnoted stories) of Hume's bias on that MediaMatters site, but that's enough for me. If the most moderate spokesman on Fox is admitting he got much of his information from a conservative organization like MRC than Fox is really in sad shape.

I can't say I watched that channel all that often to start with, but now you won't catch me watching again.

[Anonymous]

Who was it that talked about the "terrorist fist bump" again?

[Anonymous]

Olberman and Maddow are completely over the top and never have a second viewpoint. They are a joke as is CNN. I have actually clicked around trying to see what channel is the most unbiased and I go back to FOX because they are the only channel with point counter point--Hannity is the only commentator who is completely right wing and even he has people on who call him on it. Rachel Maddow, on top of, being competely unattractive to watch with her twitches just is annoying as is Olberman.

I think you are missing a key difference, though. Olberman and Maddow are political commentators, not journalists. MSNBC actually reclassified broadcasters such as Chris Matthews and Keith Olberman from journalists to political commentators for just that reason. That frees them up, at least in ethical journalism terms, to *be* completely biased, with the assumption that the viewer gets that they are not unbiased journalists. This is something akin to, for example, political commentary in the newspaper being clearly marked as an opinion piece or as advertising and not passed off as a piece of unbiased journalism.

Fox, on the other hand, passes off political commentators as journalists, which is one of the reasons that so many media watchdog organizations object to them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Olberman and Maddow are completely over the top and never have a second viewpoint. They are a joke as is CNN. I have actually clicked around trying to see what channel is the most unbiased and I go back to FOX because they are the only channel with point counter point--Hannity is the only commentator who is completely right wing and even he has people on who call him on it. Rachel Maddow, on top of, being competely unattractive to watch with her twitches just is annoying as is Olberman.

If Fox is so unbiased, why do they attract such a disproportionately Republican audience? And such a disproportionately old audience? If they are unbiased, I would assume their demographics would mirror the adult population at large.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I think you are missing a key difference, though. Olberman and Maddow are political commentators, not journalists.

Fox, on the other hand, passes off political commentators as journalists, which is one of the reasons that so many media watchdog organizations object to them.

This is exactly it. Commentary is different than reportage.

[Anonymous]

Chris Mathews was head of election coverage until there was a huge outcry when he just was unable to act professional--he was supposed to be a journalist. MSNBC is not credible but it's okay they are for the liberals. What concerns me is that the networks that say they are completely unbiased really are biased..NBC is right now trying to work out a deal with the adminstration for the GE brand with medical technology that makes Haliburton seem very very tame.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Chris Mathews was head of election coverage until there was a huge outcry when he just was unable to act professional--he was supposed to be a journalist. MSNBC is not credible but it's okay they are for the liberals. What concerns me is that the networks that say they are completely unbiased really are biased..NBC is right now trying to work out a deal with the adminstration for the GE brand with medical technology that makes Haliburton seem very very tame.

I don't see how anything could make Halliburton seem tame. For Pete's sake, they are electrocuting our troops right now.

But I do think your other point has validity. If there is some sweetheart deal between the government and GE medical systems, you have to expect that would impact their editorial slant. I think the biggest failure of the news media is not that they take one side or the other but that they can be so easily coopted by the government. The Iraq war was such a reporter's bonanza, it became impossible to be critical of the government during that time. The whole embed thing was a career-maker for everyone out there, so who was going blow it by negative reporting? Left or right, it didn't matter. Only after things went south for a long time were reporters able to cover the war more critically. And related to this, reporters of both the left and right are easily swayed by the pressure to be patriotic. No news outlet investigated the flaws in the case for the Iraq war. Why? Because, I believe, they feel the public pressure to get on board with the country. To oppose the war was to alienate viewers who feel that such opinions are unpatriotic. News organizations live and die by ratings, so they know they cannot advocate an unpopular position for very long without consequences.

So IMO, political bias is a minor concern. The ability of the news media to be manipulated through carrots from the government or sticks from the public deeply weakens those institutions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:... What concerns me is that the networks that say they are completely unbiased really are biased. NBC is right now trying to work out a deal with the adminstration for the GE brand with medical technology that makes Haliburton seem very very tame.

Could you expand on that? I know nothing about it, but would not be shocked at anything megabusiness does to increase profits and power.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Olberman and Maddow are completely over the top and never have a second viewpoint. They are a joke as is CNN. I have actually clicked around trying to see what channel is the most unbiased and I go back to FOX because they are the only channel with point counter point--Hannity is the only commentator who is completely right wing and even he has people on who call him on it. Rachel Maddow, on top of, being competely unattractive to watch with her twitches just is annoying as is Olberman.

I couldn't agree more. I can't watch Olberman or Maddow for more than 5 minutes. They are so arrogant and smug. They are not political commentators like Matthews or O'Reilly. They are politcal hacks. FOX news definitley leans to the right, but it consistently puts on a credible view of the left. It makes for a lively and informative debate. Olberman and Maddow wouldn't have the nerve or the skill to enagge in a civil and intelligent debate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Olberman and Maddow wouldn't have the nerve or the skill to engage in a civil and intelligent debate.

Doesn't Maddow have Pat Buchanan as a regular guest?