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From: mjk@tty3b.UUCP (Mike Kelly)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Selective reporting - (nf)
Message-ID: <434@tty3b.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 23-Jul-84 10:16:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: tty3b.434
Posted: Mon Jul 23 10:16:43 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 24-Jul-84 04:12:14 EDT
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Organization: Teletype Corp., Skokie, Ill
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Alexander Cockburn, formerly of the Village Voice and now of The Nation,
has said, "Newspapers at their best are bundles of opinion and propaganda
and clearly labelled as such."  The problem is that the U.S. press pretends
to objectivity.  In Europe, you buy Socialist newspapers or Communist
newspapers or conservative newspapers -- but you know what you're buying.
In the U.S., people take Time and Newsweek as the pillars of truth.

As to the part about "liberalism" of the press, perhaps journalists as
a group are more likely to label themselves "liberal" than the population
at large, but owners of the press certainly aren't liberal.   They're
corporations.  There is also a difference between the label "liberal" and
a person's set of beliefs.   In the U.S., liberal is a dirty word, so most
people don't use it as a description for their politics.  But if you ask
specific questions -- "Do you support cuts in social security?  Do you
favor the right to choose an abortion?  Do you support a nuclear freeze?" --
you get what would be called liberal responses (yes, by a majority, in the
case of the questions mentioned here, for example.)

Mike Kelly