The Media

2006-9-17 17:22:00

Joe M writes:

It seems that when there is a really great President or leader like FDR, liberals will always claim them as liberal and conservatives will always claim them as conservative.

Actually I don't know of any conservatives who claim FDR as one of them. Many do believe that JFK would be a Republican if he were alive today and there is some evidence for this. He was big on national defense, self reliance and tax cuts. The orthodox liberal motto today is "ask what your country can do for you."

Joe M:

An example is Abraham Lincoln. He fought a war against slavery. And although he was a Republican, all the states that wanted slavery and voted against him all went for Bush in 04 and all of the states that voted for Lincoln voted for Kerry in 04.

That's like saying the people in Congress today must be like the Founding Fathers since they both represent the same country. The Republicans and Democratic mindsets have not changed that much since Lincoln, but the landscape has. You have to interpret a people for what they believe and not based on where they live. More Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than did Democrats.

Joe M:

Conservatives must get off their high horse and stop complaining that the media is liberal.

If anyone sees an injustice, they have a right to complain about it and do something about it. Liberals also have a right to complain about talk radio and do something about that.

Joe M:

A real analysis of the media reveals that the media is actually conservative. There is an excellent website called http://mediamatters.org, which every American must visit. It shows the extreme conservative bias in our media. Again I say every American must visit that website and see the evidence.

I've had that page bookmarked for some time and have seen no evidence of conservative bias in the major media (as a whole) there at all. All they present is anecdotal evidence and much of it is distorted because they see anything right of Hugo Chavez to be extreme right wing. Accusing Democrat supporter Katie Couric as biased in favor of conservatives is laughable.

It is not logical to assume a conservative bias in the hard media when close to 90 percent of the writers and broadcaster vote Democratic. There have been many studies of bias and none (except maybe anecdotal) that I have seen support a conservative bias.

A fairer site which presents more than anecdotal evidence, but slanted right is: http://www.mrc.org/

Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), speech at The American University