Senator Jay Rockefeller admits that there’s a little bug in him that wants to shut down both Fox News and MSNBC. He’s right that the partisanized press has been a detriment rather than a help to political discourse. But obviously his impulse is wrong, and he is quick to say that he knows full well that such a thing could not actually happen consistent with the Constitution.
But there is another way. Turn those channels off and don’t turn them back on again. Get your news from sources that are not so overtly partisan. The good reporters, the good commentators, the good producers, will all find work elsewhere. The bad ones will get weeded out.
Won’t happen, of course.
I've been thinking a lot about this recently. And this discussion between Rachel Maddow and Jon Stewart is a pretty interesting discussion of this subject.Of course opinion journalism can't (and shouldn't) be prohibited. But your observation to simply turn them off, while glib, really does illuminate the underlying issue, that opinion journalism is more popular than "objective" journalism.Where I'm struggling lately is that it takes time to learn what's going on in the world, and so most people get their information from one source. And, when that source is so biased that even the news operation is spending it's time covering the stories that tee up what the opinion operation is going to focus on, you get FOX. I certainly don't want the government intervening in these matters, but it would be nice for the different players in the media to agree to subject themselves to some voluntary standards of honesty and truthfulness. As has been said many times, one is entitled to their opinions not their own facts.
Rockefeller's tact is simple. Fox News is outnumbered by the left-wing blowhard stations and station-infiltrators on approximately a 10-to-1 basis.If he can get "Fox News and MSNBC" shut down, then the other 90% of left-wing blowhard stations will be left on the air to spew their hate speech under the umbrella of "well the government didn't shut US down so we must be ok" idiocy.And of course there's the fact that the newsmedia is so skewed that idiots like Matt above can claim Fox is "so biased that", even when studies by such "right-wing bastions" as UCLA and Berkeley have repeatedly shown that Fox is in fact the closest to balanced.
I liked it better when Walter Cronkite would come on at night and read off the front pages of the "New York Times"PS – would I be able to comment if I didn't have a Gmail account?
See the FAQ re: comments. Gmail has nothing to do with it; comments should be relevant to the post, and civil.
And of course there's the fact that the newsmedia is so skewed that idiots like Matt above can claim Fox is "so biased that", even when studies by such "right-wing bastions" as UCLA and Berkeley have repeatedly shown that Fox is in fact the closest to balanced. Interesting link, but it excludes the network's opinioneers. Fox is far more known for (and identified by) opinioneer Sean Hannity than newsman Carl Cameron.