It may surprise you, but I will agree with you on one point. The press was not agressive enough in the runup to the war. That’s simply something that happens in these situations; it has nothing to do with the press being controlled by “neocons.” There is simply a tendency for people, including the press, to get behind the country, in a time of war. I know it is hard for people to remember, but even most Democrats were behind the war. Even folks like Gore and the Clintons, for example, hard been arguing that Hussein had WMDs.

That said, your suggestion that press coverage is slanted in a conservation direction is laughable. Sure, one can isolated examples of whwere that might be true, but overall the opposite is the case, as many studies have found. Also, many studies have shown that the people who do the reporting self identify as liberals or Democrats.

For example:

This new Pew study found 4 times as many journalists identify themselves as liberals than as conservatives — far out of whack to the ratio in the general population. http://www.stateofthemedia.com/2008/

You seem to suggest that NBC is supposedly conservative because it is owned by GE, a defense contractor. What evidence do you have that GE is directing editorial decisions? Please provide evidence.

Even if you could provide evidence, how do we know defense contractors are conservatives? In MT, the businesses that do this kind of work are big backers of Dems like Baucus, Tester, Schweiter, etc.

Wall Street provided huge amounts of money to the Obama campaign. In fact, I haven’t see any seen any final numbers, but I’ve read stories that suggested corporate America gave more money to Obama than to McCain. (In fact, some of the most notorious business people, Madoff and now Stanford, were BIG Democratic givers and fundraisers)

I should also note that there have been stories that have noted that when media people give money to campaigns, they give overwhelmingly to Democrats. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19113485/</ulr?

I don’t want to disparage all journalists with these remarks. I see journalists like Ed Kemmick who try to be fair. My sense is that he leans to the left in his personal beliefs, but he works hard to represent both sides in his stories, and thats great. That is all one can ask. There are many others who are very good in that way.

But there are others who don’t make the effort. I have been critical of Jodi Rave. I don’t see that she makes much effort to provide readers with a balanced perspective on things. I wish her editors would demand more from her.

There are other reporters who could do a better job in that regard too, and editors should be demanding more.

Those of us on the other side can point to real events and real coverage, and objectively say that it was slanted towards government power, then owned by the neocons. Starting in November of 2002, objective coverage of the impending invasion of Iraq was totally tilted towards the government view. Phil D was taken down, the generals were brought in, and it became a jingoist chop shop.

I ask again, and am yet to receive an answer – how is it that NBC, supposedly “liberal”, is owned by GE, a defense contractor. You must answer this question. Otherwise, you ar missing something important.

I’m wondering if what is happening here is that we are moving toward the British newspaper model, in which papers like the Guardian and the Telegraph (and the Economist, which is a magazine, but calls itself a “newspaper”) spread their editorial points of view throughout the entire issue. All three of those papers are filled with top-notch writing (and sometimes top-notch reporting) but you can’t assume that anything in them represents even an attempt to be balanced.

If we really are headed toward the British model, I wonder if it is the product of another development within the last 20 years — the national availability of overtly, sometimes stridently, conservative news sources, such as talk radio, World Net Daily, and the Wash Times — and Fox News (which while more mixed than it usually gets credit for, certainly leans right).

The growth of these conservative media may well have freed up the “old media” to “self-proclaim” — probably with a sense of relief, and certainly with a sense that now that conservative media are readily available, they no longer have the public trust obligation of attempted objectivity they once had.

Reverend Sun Myung Moon, and Rupert Murdoch.

That has to be one of the oddest flat earth comments you have ever made. Tell us about the conservative credentials of tycoons like Armand Hammer, George Soros, Warren E Buffett, Jeffrey R. Immelt, and Peter Lewis to name five. This ought to be interesting.

But I ask you one more time how it is that these supposedly liberal forces happen to be owned by the most staunchly conservative forces in the land – corporate America is no more liberal than you, Swede. Why do they behave this way?

That’s not rhetorical. I would like a sensible answer. Because I think if you can’t come up with one, I’m going to conclude that your perceptions are wrong.

Note to journalists, editors, newspaper owners: Keep on doing what your doing.

That is, keep giving us one sided reporting. Keep showing us Bush haters and Obama lovers. Keep bragging about the stimulus and how its going to help. Keep berating conservatives and applauding liberals and their ideas. Keep ignoring failed policies and the social repercussions of said policies.

But never ask us why………why we refuse to buy your papers.