Quote:
Originally posted by Lanny_MacDonald+Sep 21 2004, 03:29 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Lanny_MacDonald @ Sep 21 2004, 03:29 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-Bingo@Sep 21 2004, 01:18 PM
BTW ... I was looking at news ratings the fast few weeks, did you know that Fox News in prime time hours are getting as much as five times the viewership of CNN and MSNBC? If this is a luny right wing station, why do so many Amercians watch it? I thought the vote was split down the middle?
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Because Fox tells the people what they want to hear. Plain and simple. They expound about how well the war is going and what a great job that Bush is doing and that the economic outlook is all peaches and cream. They LIE but the people watching drink it in because its what they want to hear and wish were reality. Thinking in that same vein, Al Jazeera is the most watched news station in the Middle East. Does that make them right? Popularity hardly means you're right. It just means you're telling the people what they wish to hear. [/b][/quote]
Bingo doesn't get FOX as a television source in Canada, although their website is freely available.
FOX will never be accused of having a left wing bias just as CBC News will never be accused of a right ring bias.
When a source is accused of bias by both sides, you've got a good indicator they're probably treating things reasonably fairly.
Still, as much as I dislike CBC and as much as I agree that FOX is slanted, I know I can watch either outlet exclusively and still get the basic facts on most issues, at least enough to formulate an opinion.
As an example, on the FOXnews.com site right now are links with Jacques Chirac declaring the USA is impeding the war on poverty.
"However strong the Americans may be, in the long term, you cannot successfully oppose a position taken by 110 countries," Chirac told a news conference. "You can't oppose that forever."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,132972,00.html
There is also a story on FOX of Kofi Annan saying the rule of law is being flouted throughout the world and naming prison scandals and civilian massacres in Iraq.
The lead story at CBCNews right now is not the Bush speech but rather the Annan speech.
The same facts.
Where outlets like CBC and Fox fail is not on basic news but rather in employing only left or right wing commentators, versus a mix for balance.
You can count on Bill O'Reilly coming back at Chirac and Annan on FOX with no one in support. Similarly, on a CBC or BBC news report tonight, I'm sure we'll see the furrowed brows of disbelief as they gather left wing experts to examine the Bush talk at the UN.
I watch BBC quite a bit, never FOX and rarely CBC.
As I noted in a previous post, an observation being made more frequently is that people are gravitating towards outlets that provide opinions they agree with, versus sourcing conflicting views to offer a choice.
Frankly, I don't think its necessarily the basic facts of the news that are different in these places - the mainstream - but rather the commentators employed to interpret it.
Its sort of like buying conspiracy books to confirm what you're already paranoid about.
Cowperson