Not very many people watch the 6 pm news. They watch the 24 hour news and they listen to the radio in their cars. But let's say that inaccurate notion of yours is correct.
Even if people watched only CBS, NBC and ABC nightly news and nothing else, those are not opinion shows. The anchors and editors go with the headlines, whatever the headlines are that day, and so their influence on spinning news is very limited. You never see them attacking conservatives or Bush the way the right-wing hosts do anyone who disagrees with them.
Contrast that to the most popular quasi news shows. A poll I saw said 29% of Republicans get their "news" from talk radio. That means Rush and Hannity types. Pure RNC spin, not news at all. When you add in Fox's obvious slant (they refer to the Iraq War as the War On Terror for instance, which is inaccurate), then Hannity, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Scarborough and so many others coming from the right (of which there are none from the left since Naderite Donahue was cancelled) you have an obvious imbalance.
The right-wing sometimes complains about the NY Times, LA Times and Washington Post, but if the two Times editorials are Democrat-leaning, their news isn't. The Post in fact had more pro-Bush editorials than anti-Bush in the last three years, and the LA Times has only one cartoonist, a very right-wing guy. So there is some balance even there. Then you have the Washington Times which is an RNC front. There is no comparison there on the left.
Look, I'm a moderate. I dont want the media either right or left, but it's been glaringly shocking to me that even if I wanted to find a liberal talkshow I couldn't, because none exists. Alan Colmes is a token liberal on Fox, but let's face it, he is not much of a fighter.
When we have 4-5 liberal talkshows on nationally then there will be some balance again. Liberal bias in the media went out 20 years ago or more, or those pre-Rush days. It's a right-wing myth that it still exists. It's all a part of their propaganda campaign. It's worked in the past so they keep saying it. But it is not true anymore. In fact, just the opposite is now true.
Also, where are the demands for investigations into pre-9-11 intellgience cooperation from the WH, the Florida voter roll scrubbing scandal, Diebold's boting machine scandal, Cheney's energy papers, the CIA outing traitor's name, coplaints about the shocking dismantling of environmental protection? Not easy to find in the media. The right-wing largely controls the message these days, starting with Bush's bully pulpit on down. |
