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.
There is an aspect of truth in what you reference, but in my opinion the spin in the major network's news delivery is almost exclusively anti-American. Fox may report the same negative stories, but the delivery from them is matter of fact, perhaps even expressing lamentations if those facts ran against conservatism. Rather's delivery for instance, would deliver that fact, but would also attach a negative connotation regarding U.S. policy, almost exclusively anti-conservative in it's scope.
The negative story does attract more attention. I do believe that FoxNews reports too little good news, but I do not see them in the same light at all.
When it comes to the evening network news, these men do not share our values. It's as if they were working for the old Pravda. I used to listen to English broadcast versions of Pravda. I used to listen to English versions of Cuban and other anti-Ameircan stations over shortwave radio. Our network evening news is an exact reproduction of what they used to do. I'll bet Radio Cuba and the network news today could be written by the same dopes.