I think bias tends to be in the eye of the beholder. But I guess whether someone else is "still possessed of their senses" is as well! It comes down to whether you take in a wide enough frame of reference to exercise reasonable judgement. If all you watch (or read) is FOX, how are you even going to know they're to the right of basically everybody else?CameronPoe wrote:
Spastic Bullet - I don't think anyone who is still possessed of their senses could ever describe the odious neo-con voicepiece 'FOX News' as unbiased. Scary channel. It is THE US-Israel-Big Money propaganda machine. I trust Horseman knows that it is biased too.
PS I'm not trying to say there are not equally biased liberal news channels.
My guess is that most FOX News viewers know it has a tilt, but believe the tilt is "necessary" to offset what FOX News calls the "liberal media". From an outsider perspective, it's a vicious circle of sorts, but a reasonably sound and innovative strategy nonetheless, on the part of FOX News. They're basically locking down the loyalty of their audience by painting themselves as the sole arbiter of fairness and balance. Ironic, but who even knows what that means anyway? Thanks, Alanis!
By never failing to mention the "liberal media", you can gradually create a widespread impression that such a thing "indisputably" exists. If enough people believe it, you've succeeded in moving the debate further right with nothing more than simple repetition, because most people don't want to be too far from the "middle" of any debate.
Not only that, but it has become self-perpetuating. The phrase "liberal media" shows up in posts here almost as often as "Bush" or "Iraq", generally accompanied by an assertion of the "fact" of its "indisputable" existence. Occasionally, someone might present an instance of journalistic negligence as "proof" (like Dan's Rather enjoyable brush with justice), but that's about it. It's mostly re-repetition and forceful assertion.
I don't doubt there are "liberal" journalists working in the media, and maybe even a lot of them, but it's never explained why their bosses can't rein them in or, if "they're all liberals too", why the owners can't fire them for bias. Are we supposed to believe owners of multinational media concerns generally tilt left, relative to the general population? Give me a fucking break.
Whether any "equally biased liberal news channels" actually exist is a matter of perspective, but if you accept the implicit assumptions of the question, it will mostly come down to where you perceive the middle to be. Some Americans seem to think they get in their car every day and drive right down "the middle of the road" and it all works out okay, so who knows?