[street_lawyer]

Your points are well taken. The mere mention of Hitler would brand me an anti-Semite by liberals, but my loyalty is to FR’s who I rely upon for honest, sincere criticism and information worth knowing. I did begin to read your post on Broadcast Journalism. The question of limiting the airways is a tough one since without some control the strongest signal could potentially step on others. At least the FCC has given lip service to Leased Access, which was intended to give independent producers the right to lease time on local cable, but cable companies have found ways to prevent access by requiring producers to buy expensive liability insurance to cover the cable operators, when in fact the cable companies are not responsible for the content of the lessees.

          I agree with your point about built-in bias. Aside from the editorial pages and talk radio, which are transparently biased, the hard news will never be sterilized from viewpoint bias. The best we can hope for is a better balance. The problem as I see it is that viewpoint bias is invisible to anyone with the same point of view. Since individuals with the same viewpoint overwhelmingly populate the MSM, it is natural that the audience will adopt their point of view almost automatically. At least that has been my observation and belief.

          The war of words is really a war of ideas. If the idea is unpopular such as is abortion, proponents have to change the emphasis. Stem cell research is more about justifying abortion than saving lives. If pro-abortion advocates can argue that abortion has the potential of saving billions of lives, they have won the propaganda war.

          Thank you for reading the article and responding.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Aside from the editorial pages and talk radio, which are transparently biased,

"Aside" from them, in the sense that they wear their perspectives on their sleeves, rather than presumptuously claiming objectivity

the hard news will never be sterilized from viewpoint bias.

. . . because a viewpoint is embedded in the process of story selection, and that viewpoint may not have been examined by the journalist. Certainly the last thing the journalist would brag about is the inherent limitations of the "objectivity" of story selection.

The best we can hope for is a better balance.

The best we can hope for, IMHO, is not better balance in pseudoobjective journalism but better appreciation by the audience of the arrogance inherent in claiming objectivity.

The problem as I see it is that viewpoint bias is invisible to anyone with the same point of view.

I admit that it is hard for people to fully discount their own perspective, but I assert that the arrogant among us don't think they have to try. Conservatives are innundated with the perspective of "objective" journalism, and it takes real work to parse out why that perspective exists - and the justification for conservatives to discount it.