If I may borrow a Rush-ism:

DITTO.


Hmmm... not familiar with that one. Was that Geddy or Alex that said that? Or maybe Neil?

tanstaafl.

Hmmm... not familiar with that one. Was that Geddy or Alex that said that? Or maybe Neil?

Well it'd have to be Neil as he writes 99% of their lyrics! Can't seem to find it though . . .

Would you believe I had this same thought (well not exactly the same thought, but I thought of the band first).

am I banned?

So it turns out this story, and everything you got mad about, was complete and utter bullshit. The NY Post article failed to mention that Franken got struck first by this very violent guy and he was defending himself.

http://www.alfrankenweb.com/pramsey.html
http://www.alfrankenweb.com/index.html

Wow, I knew the conservative media lies every time they write anything at all, but I underestimated them even now. They completely left out all the details and made Franken look like the agressor. The thought that Franken would have done this as they said was ludicrous, and I bought it hook line and sinker anyway. You know, Franken spent some time ragging on the Post in his last book, and I guess this is payback; they have have done an excellent job of smearing him without actually lying outright just by quoting him out of context and giving a distorted and incomplete version of the story.

I am ashamed I doubted Franken. This is exactly the kind of thing he exposes so well in Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them. I apparently have not learned the lessons he has presented about the conservatives consistant lying.

Do you have any other source besides Al Franken's personal web page?

"The Conservative Media" lol. I love parody.

> Do you have any other source besides Al Franken's personal web page?

The first hand account from the club owner was not enough for you, eh? In fact, it is interesting, pretty much only the conservative media covered this story; other than the Newsmax and the Post, only the paper The Union Leader seems to have covered it. Could it be the Post and Newsmax have something of a personal vendetta against the guy who publicly humiliated them by exposing all of their lies? Nah, couldn't be.

> "The Conservative Media" lol. I love parody.

Oh, you are one of those people who actually believes Fox's "Fair and balanced" BS? You really should read Franken's book, he shows in great detail how the huge mega-corporations who own all the media in this country are indeed, not surprisingly, actually pretty conservative.

It's important to note that the major networks are all fairly liberally biased, although they do a better job of presenting the news in an unbiased manner, something which the conservative sources don't even attempt to do, even if they pay it lip service.

Bitt, I think that's a fair way of putting it. I was pretty liberal during college while I studied broadcast journalism as a major and I was shocked at how anti-US and liberal (not always the same thing) the professors are, and they are training the people that go into these feilds. Libs are smart! They're using "Trickle-down Economics for Social Change". hehe.

I think many of us would argue that a) You can count the number of conservative national news outlets using just your thumbs Fox News and Washington Times. Where as liberal outlets include the big 3 networks, NYT, LA Times, all but one cable news network, etc etc. and b) Conservative outlets only seem so conservative because we're so used to liberal coverage. Depending on where you personally view "the center" to be, it will make you view coverage as biased one way or another. And who in the world doesn't grow up seeing themselves as "average" and "middle of the road"? The funny thing is that you and I (and the others here) care enough about this stuff to post and debate it while the other 70% of America doesn't give two shits about it! Maybe we should be asking them!

Someone here proved this when they complained of seeing O'Reilly (who is hated by many conservatives) everywhere. They "couldn't escape him!" He has a one or two hour TV show on one channel, one current book amoung hundreds at the stores and a 2 hour radio show. I mean, if you don't watch Fox News anyway, and are busy listening to your empeg, the only way you'd be exposed to him is if you were given his book for Christmas (oops, X-Mas).

I don't think that most people would consider the Washington Times a quality source of news, regardless of bias. FOX News is better.

The problem is that a few years ago, I think people would have been fairly correct in saying that the news media is liberally biased, but there have been so many conservative sources pop up since then, even if they are relatively small, that it's evened out. But the conservative sources are so vocal, it feels like they're in the majority now, and I'd say they have a greater impact because of that vocalness (and, often, panderingness). There are basically no vocal liberal pundits. There need to be some.

Enter: Al Franken w. Michael Moore.


Edit: Washington Times is crap. I much prefer the Washington Post.

Do people consider CNN conservative or liberal? I've always seen it as being pretty conservative myself.

Do people consider CNN conservative or liberal? I've always seen it as being pretty conservative myself.

Actually, most conservatives that I know call CNN the "Communist News Network" so to answer your question yes it is considered a liberal news source.

But then again my mother-in-law makes the libs on this board seem conservative.

It certainly depends on who you ask. Maybe people can't shake the fact that Jane Fonda and Ted Turner started the station, and they're well known as being liberal. There is also the bit where CNN was hiding information Hussiens brutality so they could keep their offices in Baghdad, even enableing Saddam's sons to kill two family members that were intending on providing information to the West.

Personally, I always like Headline News except that you only get 1 min on each story.

I suppose I've just seen people on there who are too conservative for my tastes. I can't stand Candy Crowley.

But give me Erica Hill and I'll watch CNN all day long

And yeah, CNN is annoying because you get the exact same story every 10 minutes.

Well, in their defense, it was either report on the rest of Iraq and hope to squeak some info on the brutality out or get closed down and have no real news from there at all. It's a bad choice to have to make, but I think it was the only one that they could have made.

Tell that to Saddam's two murdered son-in-laws. I admit it's a tough decision but I think that the bigger story was given up for more coverage. I guess it's a lose/lose situation.

> It's important to note that the major networks are all fairly liberally biased

Well, since I don't watch network news I admit I can not refute that personally. All I have to say is that Franken devotes 3 chapters to the supposed liberal media bias, and using the example of the 2000 election, shows how the media ignored the bad things Bush did and lied about and smeared Gore endlessly. He does a quite convincing job of showing, using statistics and going over things the media said point by point, that it is complete hogwash.

He then proceeds to show the media's true biases of laziness, sensationalism, greed, fitting events into already established story lines, and a jump on the bandwagon mentality. The media did not hammer Clinton about getting a blowjob in the white house and let Bush get a free ride about all of his ties to shady businesses practices because they have a conservative bias, they did so because one is titilating and one is pretty boring.

That's certainly all true. I think sometimes the vaguely liberally biased media tries to correct itself and bends back too far and avoids anti-conservative stories or harps on anti-liberal stories. More the former, I think.

But you're certainly right in that the bigger bias is in trying to get more viewers or increase readership (read ``make more money''). In other words, sex sells.