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Despite whatever leanings the anchors may have, the news is about what went wrong or could go wrong. Watch Fox news. When they aren't in thier infotainment formats (Hannity, O'Reilly, Shep, Gretta, Hume), watch what is presented during their hard news programs and hard news breaks. It's always the "bleed" stories, not the "the school that was rebuilt or the electricity that was restored" or the "advances made with the Iraqi people" but rather the latest skirmish, roadside blast or crazy cleric who has his followers shooting at people. Listen to Rush. While he spends tons of time railing about the amount of bad news, how much of the above good news does he feature. How many schools has he announced have been re-openned? How many cities restored to calm? I can't think of any. Even the conservative mouthpiece has little in positive news; he just focuses on the amount of negative news. Even his call from the military soldier tht said he was more afraid of what he saw on tv vs what he saw while over there a week or so ago, while containing good news, the soldier openned that the Iraqi's were either not to be trusted or they are wretched people or something to that effect. His call was not entirely things are going positive. Rush lead it and spun it that way, but a closer examination showed something much different.

Watch many of the conservative politicos on the news shows. Even they speak with glee that Kerry hasn't been able to capitalize on all that has gone wrong in recent months. Sounds hardly like theirs alot of good news.

For some reason our culture isn't looking for good news to be presented. They want to see the storm that leveled a city, not the storm that flew by in the nearby field. They want to see the 10 car pile up, not the 10,000 cars per day that made safe passage along that same stretch of road. They want to see the latest rapist, not the millions of guys who who lead chaste lives.

Rather may personally hate Ronald Reagan. conservative news broadcasts often don't feature much different in content, but rather spend their time railing about the news being skewed against them.

For some reason our culture isn't looking for good news to be presented.

I think you might be missing the point...it's not necessarily what news is being reported. It's how it's being reported. If Dan Rather reports two soldiers have died in Iraq, that's news. If he then goes on to imply that we're losing everything over there when the true facts bely his position, that's propaganda. There's a difference and it goes way beyond whether or not he's reporting on a "rebuilt school".

For example, during MonicaGate, Rather insisted on referring to the Independent Counselor as Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr. Ol' Dan knew the Independent Counselor statute replaced the Special Prosecutor back in the '70s but he also knew that the term "Special Prosecutor" had a more negative connotation. So that's why he used it. It implied that Starr was simply out to get Clinton...which, coincidentally [/sarcasm off], was exactly the Democratic Party line.

Was that objective reporting? No...it was bias-laden propaganda and it was done purposely.

The bottom line is it's not a "good news versus bad news" issue. It's "truthful news versus agenda-driven news" reporting and while Rather, Brokaw and Jennings claim they are objective, their nightly news programs prove that claim to be false. They're liberals. It's easy to tell. And because it's easy to tell, they can't truthfully claim to be objective because if they really were, it wouldn't be easy to tell.

It's also worth noting that while the mainstream media claims there is a "conservative" network", Fox News, in this country there are simply no "liberal" networks in America. And we're left to believe that because why? Because they said so. And everyone knows that liberals are the only people capable of objectivity, again, because they said so.

That, my friend, is pure elitism.