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Edited on Tue Sep-28-04 09:36 PM by NightTrain
Remember a couple of weeks ago, when I posted a letter from a Connecticut woman who complained about the right-wing dominance of the talk-radio airwaves? Just today, some paranoid right-winger wrote a response. I, turn, have written the following:
This is in response to the September 28th tirade from the delusional Robert J. Frasco of Suffield, who like most conservatives thinks the media are out to get him.
He claims that America’s television networks and newspapers are biased toward the left. Is that why both media have lynched Dan Rather instead of reporting on the real issues that might make the Bush Administration look bad? (His claim notwithstanding, I defy Frasco to produce even one example of the mainstream media's “actively pursuing stories designed to damage Bush.”) Is that also why the same media relentlessly pursued every right-wing lie about Bill and Hillary Clinton? For eighteen months, it was All Monica, All The Time.
As for those “liberal” newspapers, Frasco appears unable to tell the difference between their news and editorial pages.
Who, exactly, are these “liberals” who own the the mainstream media? News Corporation’s ultra-right-wing Rupert Murdock, founder of the Fox News Channel? Viacom’s Sumner Redstone, a self-described Democrat who recently delivered a speech in which he stated that he was voting for Bush because it was in Viacom’s best interest? NBC, which is owned by General Electric, one of the biggest arms manufacturers in the world? PBS, whose higher-ups have made a conscious decision to slant the network’s programming more toward the right, and have started by giving a show to Tucker Carlson?
Frasco claims that “Time and Newsweek give 75 percent favorable news to Kerry.” He does not cite his source for that allegation. Might it be the right-wing talk radio shows he champions, whose hosts are uniformly notorious for making up their “facts” as they go along? Entire books have been published debunking the on-air claims of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, while the Internet has made a virtual cottage industry out of showing the likes of Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity as the liars they are.
If the mainstream media have any bias, it is neither liberal nor conservative. Their biases are more like “get it first,” “pack mentality,” “negativity,” “soft news,” and “don’t offend the conglomerate that owns us.” To believe that America’s mainstream media have a liberal bias, you either are not paying attention or are susceptible to repetition.
Finally, I saw the original letter from Elaine Vinick of Manchester. Frasco’s paranoia notwithstanding, not once did Vinick demand that right-wing talk radio be taken off the air. All she requested was some balance. But even that is too much to ask of Bush-loving Republicans, who have shown themselves as sensitive as a safecracker’s fingers.
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