Sarang said:
Ken you INSULT Liberals like me whenever say every other broadcast TV bit is Liberal. Do they ever show people like Amy Goodman or Thom Hartmann on those channels? No they don't. Nuff said. They're not Left Wing.
Just because something isn't unabashadly Right Wing does not make it Liberal.
I worked in piddly-local news for many years, and here's how it really works.
-The reporters are mostly liberal.
-The editors, owners, ect are mostly conservative.
So the editors send the reporters out to do stories with a right-wing slant. The reporters get pissed and put a liberal spin on the story.
Likewise, if there is a liberal issue that simply can't be ignored, the editors will insist that the reporters seek out one of the few people on the right that will speak against it.
Example...I live in an extremely left-wing town. When Bush came to visit in 2002, there were more people protesting outside the event than actually showed up FOR the event. They bussed in kids that should have been at school. I was assigned WITH a reporter to cover the Air Force One landing, even though the airport was essentially closed so there was no one to talk to. There was another team at the event (which was actually just to promote a Republican running for congress.)
The team at the protest had all the interesting footage and interviews. (Of course, they went out of their way to get the biggest left wing nut jobs on camera.) Their story wound up being cut down by the producers so it focused on the one guy that got arrested. They took out most of the protestor interviews and put in the dull police interview.
But the editors and producers only look at the scripts. They never look at the finished video before air unless it is a super-sensitive story. When we photographers get the homoginized scripts, we wind up editing in the footage that makes the story interesting again. So while the reporter is reluctantly talking about those "bad" protestors, the viewer is seeing shots of school busses with "Help, we've been kidnapped by Republicans!" signs in the windows. If we have a shot where Bush looks particulary goofy, we will linger on it as long as possible, to counteract the verbal ass-kissing.
Actually, the photographers/video editors don't have much of a political agenda- we just hate the producers-and some of the stupider reporters. If the script says "1000's showed up to support the President", we will show as few people as possible. We will shoot one guy standing in the back waving stupidly.
So you have left wing reporters forced to cover right wing stories, filtered through underpaid photographers who distort things just to amuse themselves and spite everything else.
The left sees that their issues aren't being covered, and says the media is biased to the right. The right sees the obvious spin put on by the reporters- and attack the "liberal media". And the photographers do their best to cover-up any actual news that might be left.
That's why I got out of news and into advertising. It's refreshingly honest, comparatively.
