by kevinberry1 » Sat Mar 04, 2006 9:50 pm
Lotas, the notion of a "Liberal Media" is baseless and an outright myth. Have you ever read the book "What Liberal Media" by Eric Alterman? I would highly suggest it. He provides a lot of evidence to disprove this and how many conservatives make this claim without any substantiation. His determination, based on historical evidence, is that the media is neither more conservative or liberal, but that it tends to follow what is popular and what people are interested in; pure capitalism at work. He provides numerous examples of the media's facination with recent and past events that are in direct conflict with the liberal media myth.
Also, are you aware of who controls 90% of the media in the United States, including television, radio, magazines, and newspapers? Fewer than 5, and they are all white males and almost entirely conservative (and extremely wealthy). Their monopoly has flourished under the current administration with the conservatively controlled FCC allowing them more power with outright violations of U.S. anti-trust legislation.
I believe the real concern in our country is not how liberal or conservative the media is, but how the 2-party system is ruining politics. I was very hopeful that Bush would protect civil liberities and limit the role of the federal government when elected to office, since these were issues paramount to his campaign. However, much of what he has done in office has contradicted this, by going against the longtime republican platform of preferring states' rights versus federal involvment. Of course that was only important when democrats were in office, but now that republicans control the exectutive and legislative branches, the role of the federal government has been expanded. See the Patriot act and the Terry Shaivo case as examples of this, not to mention the huge increase in the federal governments expansion. Bush has increased the number of Federal programs, employees, and expenditure. The democrats did the same thing in office and now ironically are pressing the issue of "states' rights" because they have limited federal power and control.
In my opinion, it doesn't really come down to an issue of democrats versus republicans, but rather citizens versus politicians becuase whomever is in power appears to make an attempt to increase their party's power, influence, and control of citizens. Both parties favor certain groups, and they will say and do anything to retain and expand their control, power, etc. The sooner we realize how corrupt both paties are, and stop pointing the finger "across the aisle", our country will be much better off...
Lotas, the notion of a "Liberal Media" is baseless and an outright myth. Have you ever read the book "What Liberal Media" by Eric Alterman? I would highly suggest it. He provides a lot of evidence to disprove this and how many conservatives make this claim without any substantiation. His determination, based on historical evidence, is that the media is neither more conservative or liberal, but that it tends to follow what is popular and what people are interested in; pure capitalism at work. He provides numerous examples of the media's facination with recent and past events that are in direct conflict with the liberal media myth.
Also, are you aware of who controls 90% of the media in the United States, including television, radio, magazines, and newspapers? Fewer than 5, and they are all white males and almost entirely conservative (and extremely wealthy). Their monopoly has flourished under the current administration with the conservatively controlled FCC allowing them more power with outright violations of U.S. anti-trust legislation.
I believe the real concern in our country is not how liberal or conservative the media is, but how the 2-party system is ruining politics. I was very hopeful that Bush would protect civil liberities and limit the role of the federal government when elected to office, since these were issues paramount to his campaign. However, much of what he has done in office has contradicted this, by going against the longtime republican platform of preferring states' rights versus federal involvment. Of course that was only important when democrats were in office, but now that republicans control the exectutive and legislative branches, the role of the federal government has been expanded. See the Patriot act and the Terry Shaivo case as examples of this, not to mention the huge increase in the federal governments expansion. Bush has increased the number of Federal programs, employees, and expenditure. The democrats did the same thing in office and now ironically are pressing the issue of "states' rights" because they have limited federal power and control.
In my opinion, it doesn't really come down to an issue of democrats versus republicans, but rather citizens versus politicians becuase whomever is in power appears to make an attempt to increase their party's power, influence, and control of citizens. Both parties favor certain groups, and they will say and do anything to retain and expand their control, power, etc. The sooner we realize how corrupt both paties are, and stop pointing the finger "across the aisle", our country will be much better off...