Re: Obama 9 -- Its Been a Whole Year Now
No need to do research...but...
The things you mentioned were a handful of specific episodes over 50 years. Your key example was one guy, Rather, who was biased...you take him out and a CBS track record of bias is thin at most in this generation.
The big difference is that stations like CBS or CNBC have a few examples of individuals that have opinions. CNBC has guys like Kudlow and Jim Cramer that may appear to push that network to the right...but in reality, they are a couple of isolated guys with a few opinions. Frankly, if Fox would have had dirt on Obama and held it back a month or so...it would have been one of the most mild mannered acts they committed all campaign.
These other channels are nothing like the real left and right wing media outlets. Hannity, OReilly, Beck, Huckabee, Coulter, Palin...its each of these and every single day. BBC and Fox have institutionalized bias so that there agenda is melded in with news.
Institutionalized agenda=biased.
...and no need to belittle my pov, just show how I'm wrong.
I'm guessing if I'd provided 10 or 110 examples of CBS' historic biases, you would have waved them away, too. There are none so blind as those who will not see.
You talk about Rather as if he had blackmailed his way into his various high profile positions with CBS news. As if he had pictures of Don Hewitt with teenage boys, and THAT's why he was their WH correspondent and then 60 Minutes anchor and anchor of the evening news. He occupied those positions because the powers that be at CBS news viewed the world as he does not because they don't.
So your "if you just take Rather out of the equation" analysis falls flat on its face.
You (and by extension all of the reflexive Fox bashers) apparantly are incapable of understanding the difference between news and opinion. Rather was held up as a journalist. His appearances on CBS over the years were productions of the CBS news division, in the "proud tradition" of Edward R. Murrow and later, Walter Cronkite. He was "reporting honestly," not "trying to advance a point of view." I believe my handful of examples shows how preposterous and untrue those assertions were, both for Rather and his colleagues.
As I've posted previousy, I'm not a fan of the various cable pontificators, left or right (although I must confess to really enjoying the funereal fury on MSNBC the night Scott Brown was elected, but I digress) and seldom watch them. Nothing any of them does can accurately be called "news." So why would you insist on explaining away my examples of CBS' news bias by pointing to O'Reilly or Hannity or anybody else? They do opinion, not news. As do Olbermann and the very feminine Maddow. Why do you insist on comparing apples to oranges? My guess is it's because you have no answer to CBS' historic and continuing lapses in journalistic practice.
Finally, with all due respect, your pov NEEDS belittling. You are the one who criticizes America for its "overarching adherance" to concepts like "open capitalism" and "overseas military adventurism" and (my personal favorite) "relatively high rates of censorship." You are free to criticize America as you see fit, and I am free to criticize your criticism. Let the other posters decide the merits of our positions.
IMHO, you reflect a point of view with which I've dealt my entire life, through the cold war and right up until the present day: there is basically nothing that happens anywhere that can't be blamed on the United States, or that the United States didn't bring on itself, or that the United States made worse, or that wouldn't resolve itself if the United States would just mind its own business. Most especially, that the United States is in no way exceptional and should learn to be humble when dealing with the world. The current occupant of the White House is an adherant of that principle. And I fear that the time is coming when he will learn that bowing and groveling before dictators, potentates and emperors will not serve the interests of our country well.
