Reply #10: Doubts about effectiveness of liberal media approach [View All]

[DaedelusNemo]

"The Dems and their platform are exactly where the country really is if the issues would be discussed honestly by the media."

Definitely.

I heartily agree with, and even chuckle over, the idea of Soros buying Sequoia. So long as the situation is a win-win for republicans we can expect status quo.

The idea of a liberal network i have some arguments with.

First, the idea that Wolf Blitzer et al. are republican toadies. What they are in fact, and almost inescapably, are establishment toadies. Most media will pass along the news that's written for them, because it saves them a lot of work. In addition, given that political reporting of anything but the official line depends heavily on sources, toadying to said sources is considered necessary to retain viability as a political reporter. This problem is bigger than theories of direct republican control of CNN and so forth.

Second, i don't know that a liberal channel will help the liberals nearly so much as a conservative channel helps the conservatives. In general, conservatives want to insulate themselves from other opinions; liberals want to respond to and factor in those other opinions. While liberals certainly do need outlets to express themselves, i think they would be better served with shows on existing channels for that purpose; a liberal channel would be viewed as suspect by anyone but people who already agreed with it.

What i think would help the liberal cause far more is simply a hard-news, objective channel that left out the tabloid stuff altogether, did its own investigation and considered its integrity to be its foundation. An internet presence would be handy for recieving and responding to challenges to factual accuracy. There is a great hunger for such a channel, not only among the public but among the journalists. Given that the facts, the arguments, and the issues are solidly on the side of the liberals, the most effective advocate could be simply someone who could be expected to tell the unvarnished truth.

What a liberal channel might be good for is to put competitive pressure on the other channels for the liberal viewers in the same way that Fox has influenced the other channels to compete for conservatives. If i had to choose between that and a 'hard-news' influence, though, i would choose the latter. Bah, there's room for both, isn't there?