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Old 04-20-2019, 01:53 PM
daker13 daker13 is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: Rhode Island
Posts: 1,161
I struggle with many of the things the OP brought up. Generally, I think the less news one reads the better, but I do believe one has a certain responsibility to the world and for one's country. You can't just bury your head in the sand. I try to be very critical about what I read.

I dislike the chart for reasons different than most. For one thing, it uses the word 'liberal,' which most people on the left, or at least the younger ones, are avoiding, and is a dirty word to those of us to the left of the Democratic party. People who use this word are just relying on an outdated vocabulary. There was a funny exchange recently where the NYT referred to the magazine Current Affairs as a 'liberal' magazine, and the Current Affairs staff threatened to sue them for libel.

The chart refers to the Atlantic as 'leaning liberal'--a magazine edited by Jeffrey Goldberg and featuring David Frum! Give me a break. People refer to the NYT as biased because it's too 'liberal'... In debating whether to use military force in other countries, the Times has been in favor of every intervention in the last 40 years except for the invasion of Grenada, I believe. This is not a lefty newspaper. The op ed pages are so full of conservatives that it became a joke in the publishing industry, until they finally were bullied into hiring Michelle Alexander. (I subscribe to the NYT and the Post.) I could go on and on, but it's really inaccurate to refer to the NYT and the Post as 'liberal' newspapers. They are biased, but as to which side, it's going to depend on where you're standing. (I do agree that nearly the entire media machine favored Clinton in '16--though again, whether that was more unfair to our current president, or to Bernie Sanders, is subjective.)

All news sources are biased. But the ideological fallout of the Cold War is that many Americans are completely unequipped when it comes to thinking about leftist movements, or anything to the left of the Democratic Party. The so-called 'liberal' mainstream media is as bad at this as anyone. Leftwing political factions of one sort or another are powerful players around the world, dominate the governments of many nations and regions (and show signs of being emergent even here in the US), and yet the average American is unable to wrap his head around this beyond the routine 'capitalism is the greatest' mindset. Truly left-wing and critical sources like Counterpunch, the Gray Zone, FAIR, etc., are really valuable if you're interested in a truly 'balanced' view--also non-US sources such as RT, Al Jazeera, etc.
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