You are one cunning linguist!

Duggre, Possibly Not a Linguist, But Long Live the Rebels of the Vendee!!!!!!

Yeah, I live in a world where the lobbyist Jack Abramoff was funnelling corporate money to Republican lawmakers hand over fist, and “journalist” Chris Matthews was holding fundraisers for Abramoff’s sham charities.

Whereas in you world … okay I’m stumped. I don’t know what the hell goes on in your world.

Survey says: Yup. Sure woulda.

And now you’ll respond with a “doesn’t count, you don’t know what would have happend” argument. Or some bs about how grand it is that checks and balances have disappeared.

Ok, lets get beyond the leftist revisionism and correct a few things….

Clinton was not persecuted, he was prosecuted. And you are right, things are very different. Bush has not been prosecuted or indicted….so “ho-hum” is an appropriate response.

You are correct though, there is no “rational comparison”.

Oh, Dugger, MikMik lurks here and will occasionally spew in a somewhat Tourette’s-like manner radical leftist talking points, quite amusing actually.

Dr. Pierre….(J’taime Francophile….!)

Duggre

“corporations own the governmen,”

I know we live in diffreent worlds when you say something like that.

mikmik,

Lets see. You are a new poster here. You, first time, use a pejorative to address moi (more of mon Francais, Sadie) and you want to know certain things from me . Well, son-daughter, learn some manners, take off your hat, slick down that cowlick and if you want me to explain media bias to you, something I can easily do, come back with an open mind and without the chip on your cyber shoulder.

Duggre

Pretty much add Ney, Rove, and Frist to the list, just for starters….

Let’s see, 70% of the rest of the world’s countries, and 80% of the population of the reast of the world, view the US negatively.

I wonder how the US rates on a left/right scale compared to the rest of the countries in the world? More right wing than, what, 90% of them?

Newspapers Urge President to Quit
Outrageous, out of the question? Of course. Then again, here’s what happened in the summer of 1998 when the president was named Clinton. Dozens of editorial pages clamored for him to quit (see this list). “He should resign,” the Philadelphia Inquirer declared, “because his repeated, reckless deceits have dishonored his presidency beyond repair.”

It is sickening how badly Clinton was jumped, and persecuted by the media and repugs, yet thsi bastard now, Bush, lies through his teeth, breaks the law, lies to get into an aggressive war, yet it is little more than a “ho – hum” and the BS just gets thicker and thicker.

There is no rational comparison between the enormity of this administrations lies and deciets and conciets, compared to what the party tried to annhialate a Democratic(in name only) leader for lying about an act of little or no consequence to anyone in the public.

Do you ever, is it even possible, for you to be in any way, objective? Every single person, you misinterpret.

I want to know exactly what you mean by ‘right’ and ‘left’ slant in journalism, and by that I do not mean stupid examples of what you consider, thereby still escaping putting your mind and thoughts directly out there.

What is your definition, and how would you be able to justify calling media as having a ‘left’ slant?
“Well, I agree completely that they aren t  right enough for me. When Raines left the NY Times, the paper crept ever so infintessimally to the right – so that it was then positioned as a mainstream leftist paper.”
What a croc. What do you mean, ‘leftist’? Eh??! Define

You seem to think that either a) the government owns the media or b) corporations own the media, and that these two positions are mutually exclusive. They’re not. What we have here is a situation where corporations own the governmen, and corporations own the media.

It’s like a Punch and Judy show — Punch and Judy are enemies, right? They are always fighting with each other and that proves they are enemies, right? But in reality, they have the same guy’s hands up their keisters, calling the shots.

“But when the media is concentrated in the hands of corporate interests, you are only ever going to hear the pro-corporate side of any story.”

Duggre (French Canadian for Dugger), ever the logical pupil, asks, then, if government owns and finances the media, should we assume we will hear only the pro-government side? Wouldn’t that media, with only one owner, be even more concentrated? And then which would be worse? We can have multiple corporations in a free society: corporations like the ones that run Nation Magazine and Mother Jones (are these right wing publications, Sadie, darlin’?) and ones that run National Review and News Max. But we can have only ONE government and hence a completely one-sdied, monopolistic media.

And how silly to claim there are not left wing corporations and private left wing publications! How very silly.

Monsewer Duggre, Zut Alors!

And if my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle. The problem with our media is not a Left/Right issue, it’s a corporatist/democracy issue. Namely, for democracy to function, the public has to have access to good information in order to make good decisions. This is suppposed to be the job of the press in a free society.

But when the media is concentrated in the hands of corporate interests, you are only ever going to hear the pro-corporate side of any story. We’ve been through this before. Monsanto will never tell you the downside of genetic engineering, MBNA will never go into the dirty details of bankruptcy reform.

Your statement about Lenin and the rope is based on the assumption that the media somehow makes money directly from subscribers or viewers, so that if there were money to be made from presenting a “leftist product” they would do so. This assumption is flawed. Media makes its money from advertisers, so it doesn’t have any real incentive to “give the people what they want,” and as long as they all move in lock-step together (people tell me CNN is different from Fox News but damned if I can see it) people don’t have any choice, do they?

Well, I agree completely that they aren’t ‘right’ enough for me. When Raines left the NY Times, the paper crept ever so infintessimally to the right – so that it was then positioned as a mainstream leftist paper.
But I do think most leftist skeptics of left media bias assume there is and can be no or little bias because the paper is a capitalist enterprise (”marketers at the expense of journalism”). Not so at all. It can be a marketer, a capitalist venture, even be owned by right wing moguls and still produce a leftist product. You would say, logically, but why would an inherently capitalist business enterprise, a newspaper, put out a type product that would be ultimately harmful to the theoretical underpinnings of that business? And the answer is that complicated but basically has to do with the capitalist mentality (remember the Lenin quote about obtaining rope). It also has to do with fashion of all sorts (left wing themes are very fashionable), the type of employees hired, whats taught at college, etc.

Dugger

Exactly my point. It would be foolish for you to do so.

But you still seem to think you are outnumbered 10 to 1
or more in spite of the fact that you give the example of
WSJ having economic interests that conflict with the
role of journalism. That is my point with regard to papers
that have long been considered left-leaning (latimes, WAPO
NYT). They have become marketeers at the expense of
journalism. They just haven’t moved far enough right for
your taste, yet.

You have a point. Journalism has always been deadline driven and the
pressure to publish is often like ‘pinching a loaf’. It has always been
more of an art form than a science and thus is often an imperfect
product. But the impulse of an ambitious Bob Woodweird has always
been subject to the more circumspect, like Ben Bradlee. That is what
has changed. Editorial oversight has given way to the star quality
of the reporter and the boardroom approves because such stars
create brand equity. Multiply that many times in braodcast media.

In the late 19th Century, there about a zillion newspapers with dozens of ideological stripes, until the Park Row Fire wiped out so many newspapers.