In response to CNN’s current “Broken Government” (ie: vote for change) series theme which just happens coincidentally to air 2 weeks before an election.

I give you…

“THE BROKEN NEWS MEDIA In America” Part I

Fix it or Start over?

Thanks to algore's internet via blogs and talk radio, we can now easily see just how “broken” the mainstream news media really is.
The media is badly broken, perhaps beyond repair.

The big problem is that the print and network news media all have the same agenda (liberal) but claim to be "independent and objective". They claim to be non-partisan while being nothing but partisan. They can’t help it and most don’t even recognize that they are biased.

They present a predominately liberal slant to the news, cherry-picking stories and just plain making stuff up in the case of Dan Rather and ABC. All designed to help us in the viewing audience come to the same conclusion that they have reached.

ie: Conservatives are backward, stupid and evil while Liberals are progressive, smart and righteous. David Gregory, Chris Mathews and Helen Thomas lead the pack. MSNBC's "Countdown" with Keith Olberman is one of the best examples of claiming to do hard news without bias while being the exact opposite. Comedy Central's Daily Show with John Stewart is at least "honest" in that they brag about doing fake news (wink, wink).
FOX News is the exception to the rule which explains why it is also #1 in all the ratings. Fox simply gives BOTH SIDES (conservative and liberal) and is accused by the rest of the media for being right-winged biased. How hypocritical (and just plain wrong).

They all live in a vacuum surrounded by other liberal elites and feed each other expensive wine, cheese and caviar while laughing about how dumb and stupid the average person out there in middle America is. We just don’t get it according to them. But we get plenty.

The news media has set out to bring down this presidency and affect the outcome of this war. They are concentrating totally on this winning this election for Democrats and convincing Americans that we can't win in Iraq. They believe they are close to achieving all these objectives and reached a new low last week when CNN aired a terrorist produced snuff-film depicting the assassination of a US soldier with the speaker on the video telling the “shooter” to be sure and be careful not to kill any innocent Iraqi’s. CNN aired the video as true news, failing to mention that the terrorists in Iraq have actually shown no mercy for killing innocent Iraqi’s or that the video was merely a recruiting and propaganda tool for the terrorists.

CNN was clearly showing a terrorist propaganda video less than 2 weeks before an election to convince voters that we need to get out of Iraq. (by electing Democrats to office). Pathetic.

The Michael J Fox controversy is just the latest example. CNN, ABC and all the rest (expcept Fox) are reporting how outrageous Rush Limbaugh's comment that Fox was "Acting or off his medication". None of them mention that Fox had already admitted in his own book that he had done just that when testifying before Congress on Stem Cell Research in 1999 in order to emphasize his point on parkinsons disease.

None of them mention that Fox has said he was in fact "over-medicated" when he did the Democrat ad. None of them mention Fox claims that Missouri voters are voting on a Stem Cell Research bill when it is actually a cloning bill making CLONING constitutional in Missouri.

The latest episode of "Broken Government" CNN is called "Where the Right went Wrong.
Do you thing there will be an episode called Broken Government- Where the Left went Insane" any time soon? Of course not.
Broken Media at it's finest.

Is there an answer?

It’s simple really.

No reporter or “journalist” should ever be allowed to claim to be objective or to be without an agenda of his/her own. Every reporter should be required to simply state where they are coming from in the form of a small disclaimer. What is your “cause” and why are you doing this particular story from this particular angle? That’s all. Simple.

Just tell us if you are a communist, socialist, a liberal, a lefty, a Democrat, a conservative, libertarian, rightwinger, conspiracy theorist, anarchist, nazi, al qaeda or whatever. Then, say whatever you want and don’t pretend to be unbiased. You aren’t unbiased. We know that you are not unbiased. Now you know that we know that you are not unbiased. It was a lie and it is over.

Here is what the news media could do to convince us that they are fair and balanced.

For Starters…

After admitting to us where you are coming from,
provide equal time for the opposing opinion to your own once in a while. Consider for a moment that conservatives might be right... just for the sake of conversation if nothing else. Stop assuming that the "progressive", liberal point of view is automatically the correct point of view.

Credit where Credit is due

Stop discrediting Rush Limbaugh (talk radio in general) and pretending like his opinions don’t matter. Admit that people like Matt Drudge are credible and have a significant place in public news. They do matter, ...in fact it appears, his opinions matter more than YOURS as he has a much larger audience than any of you and is single-handedly credited with already affecting the outcome of several elections (according to leading Democrats and liberals).
Something you (main-stream-news-media) are trying to do now, but have yet to accomplish.

Separation of State and Glitter.

Shut up about Hollywood when talking politics. We don’t care what Al Franken, Michael Moore, Susan Sarrandon, Madonna, Alec Baldwin, Sean Penn or Whoopie Goldberg thinks about George Bush and world affairs and neither should YOU.

(if indeed you ARE a “journalist”?)

Most of them didn’t finish high school and you want to let them run the government and the country and the media? You want us to put these wacko’s in charge of the security of our children?

Stop it, that’s just plain stupid.

Stupid is as stupid does-

And while we are on the subject, you can stop calling George Bush stupid.

He was smart enough to beat the best Democrats had to offer, not once… but twice and he is smart enough to fool all of you media types into misunderestimating him all the time.

So if he is stupid, then you are morons and the Democrats are vegetables.