Daniel,

You asked for suggestions and I offered some, on the assumption that you were wanting to broaden your perspective in order to stay as fully informed as possible.

Obviously my assumption was wrong. But it might have been nicer to say, "No, thank you, I'm not interested in reading or hearing anything that doesn't reflect my particular world view" rather than ungraciously attempting to belittle me.

~Beth 

My name is Nicholas, and I am an NPR junky...

I listen to NPR every day, switching between Minnesota Public Radio and Wisconsin Public Radio.

And, since we are all sharing--and nothing we say here will leave this forum, right?--several years ago I used to listen to Rush Limbaugh.   You see, I was (Lord this is embarrassing, but I've got to get it off my chest) a registered Republican, and even voted for W the first time. Then I went to college and got an education, started reading news magazines like Time and Newsweek and listening to NPR, and even read Al Franken's Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot. But, you know what--I was kinda starting to figure that out for myself, even without Al pointing it out. Like when Rush would claim global warming wasn't really happening. Or when he said things like, "You know what's the best thing about trees? What you can make out of them. The best sound in the world is a chainsaw cutting down a tree."

I wish an ent would step on Rush Limbaugh.

I got tired of neo-cons saying things like, "We have increased the number of protected wetlands," then learning that they had actually removed protection from thousands of acres of bona fide wetlands and made up the numbers by categorizing golf-course ponds and swimming pools as "wetlands." And they'd say, "Look, job numbers have gone up," to which I'd reply, "Yeah, I know, I'm working two of them to pay my bills." And then my college tuition went up 80%. And then I could no longer afford health care. And Rush Limbaugh would say, "Heh heh, the good old American dream is alive and well; you've just got to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps!" And then I noticed that when issues like health care and college tuition were raised, or when people asked why the EPA was being underfunded and its library archives shut down, or any of a plethora of other pertinent questions, the neo-cons would come back with stock phrases about terrorists, homosexuals, and abortion. These phrases got thrown around more and more hysterically as they dropped in the polls running up to the recent election, until it sounded like: "You must re-elect us or gay terrorists will abort your babies!"

I'm sorry--I didn't mean to get all riled. I'd better sit down and let somebody else have the floor.

I love that show, but don't get to listen to it most weeks.

One point in Franken's favor: he's actually been to Afghanistan and Iraq with the USO to entertain the troops.

Michael,

Ummm, I have no wish to wade into the swamp of political controversy here, because that's really so pointless. We all just end up spinning our wheels and covered in muck.

However, I would like to clarify something.

I wasn't meaning to imply that the sources of conservative news and commentary I listed are inherently less biased than their liberal counterparts--though I stand by my assertion that Fox news often does give both sides of a story, whereas, say, The New York Times or CBS will often report only the part of a story that promotes their agenda. Anything that might contradict that is either left out or buried so deep that the average consumer will likely miss it. And I'm not parroting talking points here (which is not only a condescending and offensive insinuation, IMO, but it's also a tactic designed to shut down discussion by discrediting one's opponent. I wouldn't personally accuse anyone of parroting without strong evidence; I'd rather assume that we're all intelligent people here who can presumably think for ourselves.). No, this phenomenon of news distortion and suppression happens all the time, in all media. Nobody has to point it out to me; I can observe it for myself.

What I was suggesting was that Daniel (or anyone who wants to stay informed) might try consuming news and commentary from both sides of the ideological aisle, as a form of self-imposed balancing. The news media, all of it, is biased, has always been biased, and will continue to be biased. Objective, neutral reporting, while laudable and something to strive for, is nevertheless largely a myth. If I had kept a log of every instance where I'd seen a story misreported, distorted, or spun to reflect a particular viewpoint, I'd have filled up a novel's worth of pages by now. Sometimes the spinning is blatant but more often it's a matter of the journalist making subtle word choices so that even in a straightforward news article, opinion appears as fact. That kind of thing slips under most people's radar.

But not if we take care to be watchful and stay informed, and the only way to do that is to be distrustful of a monolithic point of view and to try to get the whole story or as much of it as possible. And the only way to do that is to consume a variety of news sources from a broad spectrum of opinion and political stances. Which was all I was trying to communicate to Daniel.

~Beth, former journalism student and ex-liberal