[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by Shnabdabber

But just as I wouldn't expect one side of this debate to accept news or talking points from Fox news or the NRA, surely you can understand why I wouldn't accept news or talking points from MSNBC or Mother Jones.

You've developed a false equivalency.

MSNBC hasn't been the bastion of fair news reporting when it comes to the gun issue in the US, or anything apparently as the link you provided points out as well.

MSNBC does not report news. The channel is focused completely on political discussion, it does not claim to report the news, only talk about it. There is a big difference between the two. MSNBC's slant is also clearly a programming choice by the parent corporation. When you consider the other programming in their stable NBCUniversal is obviously producing content for specific markets and less intent on ideological delivery, which is exactly where NewsCorp and FoxNews land.

The US media is so politically driven, to take anything said by a suit and tie on air at face value is a mistake.

That is driven mostly by corporations more than anything. You want to understand the media, try understanding the nature of the mother corporation and the politicians they buy with their monetary support. We can thank Citizens United and a conservative Supreme Court for the current media boondoggle.

This is why I would prefer to look at FBI crime stats then studies done by left/right leaning orgs.

Crime stats are bull####. They are fudged in each municipality, county and state, who feed their data into NCIC. There is so much politics in everything that goes on in the United States it is mind boggling. Police Chiefs, who are contracted for a period of time, then become at will employees, have to show positive improvements in fighting crime, so the numbers are routinely massaged and specific chunks of data precluded from analysis so the numbers look good.

This is the whole reason why I asked Caged Great for a source on the claim that the Chicago PD is flat out lying about their homicide rates in 2014. Not to be a dick, not to be argumentative for the sake of argument, but to find out if the claim was legitimate as the optics of such a lie would be terrible, and worry some given politicians who use police chiefs/departments and police orgs to push through policy. Thats it, thats all. If you don't like Fox news, great. Neither do I.

The whole system is broken. It is run by corrupt politicians and unscrupulous public servants. This has been caused by the duality which exists in the political system itself. X can't trust Y because they are from different parties. Issues don't matter, only party lines. The only thing that will fix anything in the United States is a third, fourth and fifth parties. There needs to be more choices and to have cooperation and compromise forced down the throats of the system. Without that, America will continue to flounder and become the failed state that some very wise thinkers are predicting.