Don't watch FOX TV. It is biased. If CNN bothers you,
I wouldn't watch it either. We rotate news nations
frequently when we watch the evening news, but I
don't have cable so I am not tempted to watch Fox
or CNN. I don't like television very much. Most of the
programming on US major networks is food for junkies,
and not fit for human consumption. I understand why parents
don't want their kids too watch tv, and I know people who
don't have a tv. There are a few good news show on the
national networks and on PBS but there are only a few.
Paul Krugman mentions Fox bias in the
following editorial:
Into the Wilderness
The New York Times
November 8, 2002
By PAUL KRUGMAN
For those of us who think the nation
has taken a disastrous wrong turn
these past two years, Tuesday's election
changed everything and nothing.
Clearly, we're going to have an extended
sojourn in the political wilderness.
Even criticizing the Bush administration's
policies will become far more difficult.
It will be hard even to find out what
it's up to; the most secretive administration
in the nation's history will now be even
less forthcoming. And anyone who criticizes the administration, even on purely domestic issues,
will be accused of lacking patriotism. After
all, that strategy worked even against
Senator Max Cleland, a genuine
war hero who lost three limbs
in his country's service.
What hasn't changed is the fundamental
wrongness of this administration's
direction. Too many pundits, confusing
politics with policy - or
engaging in sheer power
worship - imagine that a party that wins
a battle must be doing something right.
But it ain't necessarily so.
Political victory doesn't make a
bad policy good; it doesn't make a lie
the truth.
But what do we do about it?
Some of my friends are in despair. They fear
that by the time the political pendulum swings,
the damage will be irreparable. A ballooning
federal debt, they say, will have made
it impossible to deal with the needs
of an aging population. Years of
unchecked crony capitalism will
have destroyed faith in our financial
markets. Unilateralist foreign
policy will have left us without real allies.
And most important of all, environmental neglect
will have gone past the point of no return.
They may be right. But we have to behave
as if they aren't, and try to turn American
politics around.
It won't be easy. There are essentially
no moderates left in the Republican Party,
so change will have to come from the Democrats.
And they are deep in a hole.
It's not just Sept. 11. As Jonathan
Chait points out in The New Republic,
the Republicans also have a huge
structural advantage. They can
spend far more money getting their
message out; when it comes
to free publicity, some of the major
broadcast media are simply biased in
favor of the Republicans, while the rest
tend to blur differences between the parties.
But that's the way it is. Democrats should
complain as loudly about the real conservative
bias of the media as the Republicans complain
about its entirely mythical liberal bias;
that will help them get their
substantive message across. But first
they have to have a message.
Since the 2000 election, and especially
since Sept. 11, much of the Democratic
leadership has argued that the party
must play it safe -don't criticize the Bush
administration too much, don't propose
anything drastic that will offend corporations
and the wealthy. What we should have realized,
and what Tuesday's election disaster
confirms, is that this plays right
into Republican advantages. Talk radio
and Fox News let the hard right get its message
out to its supporters, while those who oppose
the juggernaut stay home because they don't get the
sense that the Democrats offer a real alternative.
To have a chance of breaking through
the wall of media blur and
distraction, the Democrats have
to get the public's attention - which
means they have to stand for something.
It's obvious what the Democrats should
stand for: Above all, they should be
the defenders of ordinary Americans against
the power of our burgeoning plutocracy.
That means hammering the Republicans
as they back off on corporate
reform - which they will. It means
defending the environment against
the administration's sly, behind-the-scenes
program of dismantling regulation.
And it means doing what the party has refused
to do: coming out forthrightly against tax cuts for corporations and the rich - both the cuts
passed last year and those yet to come.
In the next few months the Bush
administration will once again
demand tax cuts that benefit a tiny
elite, in the name of economic
stimulus. The Democrats mustn't fall for
this line again; they must insist
that the way to stimulate the
economy is to put money in the
hands of people who need it.
If the Democratic Party takes a
clear stand for the middle class and
against the plutocracy, it may
still lose. But if it doesn't stand for
anything, it - and the country - will
surely lose.
Copyright The New York Times Company
nytimes.com. |
