Mark,

Considering that there is nothing contentious about the article (ie, the Bush administration has been clear about the sigtel going on), what exactly is your point?

Please don't fall directly into the trap of ignoring facts that are inconvenient to your partisan point of view - that makes the reality based community's job way too easy.

The fact that Rupert Murdoch donates 57% of his political contributions to Republicans and only 27% to Dems means... exactly what about that "fair and balanced" thing?

Oh, heavens, Rush Limbaugh donated 100% of his to Republicans...

Or Matt Drudge - 100% Republican...

Or Tucker Carlson - 100% Republican...

Really, what's the point? Are you saying these are all neocons with an agenda and not credible?

Neil Cavuto - 100% Republican donor...

Lou Dobbs - 100% Republican donor...

Oliver North, Deborah Norville, Chuck Scarborough, Armstrong Williams... well, ok, he got a great return on his 100% Republican donation.

Mark

"Whatever the case may be, everyone should adopt my rule of thumb for the MSM - unless proven otherwise, it is at the very least a half-truth when not a complete fabrication."

Do you consider Faux News MSM?

Just wondering
-Joe

So she is a democratically voting person. So? You are fine and encourage Republican leaning journalist to write stories that benefit the GOP or blow the whistle on democrat corruption, but its not ok the other way around. Funny how that works.

Her views does not matter, the USA today is a HUGE nationwide publication and in order for it to have risked a front page article that implicated 3 major telecom giants in a, illegal government scheme to spy on the american people you can bet your bottom dollar every single source was check, double and triple checked as well as every i dotted and t crossed.

Its not a fabrication. The companies denying it proves nothing. They are being sued for billions that could bankrupt them. They had the president give them a get out of jail free card allowing them to deny involvement and lie to the FTC about handing over the documents.

The CEO of Qwest, the holdout denied them flat and he was promptly slandered and discredited Valerie Plame style. He asked them to show a warrant or probable cause and he would gladly cooperate. If not, he wouldn't as it would be illegal and would put Qwest's asson the line. The government people ran from the building instead knowing they had neither.

We all know that if this was not true, the 3 telcos would be suing the USA Today for slander, not meekly asking for a retraction. The USA Today is standing by its story. They are not suing because they know its all true and more and all of it would be proven in discovery in court, or the suit would be thrown out if they blocked discovery.

Making matters worse is that they were well compensated for violating Americans privacy. If that is allowed to stand, you set yourself up for a situation where your privacy is for sale to the highest bidder. Imagine your business competitor buying your financial history from your bank to use against you.

haha. Yes Mark, if you didn't see it on Fox news, its simply not true.

Open up your eyes and look around, Democrats are not at all happy with the MSM, as they are laying down for this administration, while not publishing white house propaganda like Fox News, but they only cover 1 out of 10 stories that cast shadows on this administration. Usually only the blockbusters that cannot be swept under the rug. Look around on CNN for coverage on the Boston Globe story of Bush exepting himself from over 750 laws he has signed in. Thats one in 10. Thats a signifigant story, not a mention on CNN, MSNBC or and other MSM publication

The MSM used to be for the most part, centralists. Look back a few years, they covered every single Clinton scandal imaginable. Monica was front page news for months and months. Does not sound very liberal to me at all. They lay down now for fear of being branded liberal anyway. Keep it up until they give up and start front paging every single republican scandal and dirty little secret. Then you will really have reason to complain.

Unlike Faux News, liberals have no slanted main stream news media like you do.

For now, you are not hearing any good news about the republicans because there is none. Fascists in the white house, war in Iraq going very badly, us debt racked up to an all time high of 8 trillion, trade defecit at an all time high, new job creation only 10% what it was during Clinton years, us greenback at 30 year lows against other world currencies, it just goes on and on. Not much of that is covered by the MSM either.

"Whatever the case may be, everyone should adopt my rule of thumb for the MSM - unless proven otherwise, it is at the very least a half-truth when not a complete fabrication."

Joe,

Of course I do - they do a better job than CNN, but as CNN is a massively incompetant news organization, that isn't too hard a thing to do.

Winnow,

I'll let you know the first time I come across someone on the left who is living in the real world...haven't had one here in quite a while. For a "reality based community", you guys sure are disconnected from the reality you are allegedly based upon.

Congressive,

The thing is, all of those you listed don't pretend to be non-partisan; the news reporter, though, claims to be just an unbiased source of the facts...the reason it doesn't surprise me that she's a donor to the Democratic Party, by the way, is because I already know that MSM people generally give 80% of their votes to the Democrats at election time...for a bunch of supposedly unbiased transmitters of fact, they sure do seem to be heavily skewed towards one Party.

This would all be ok, if they'd just admit to their bias...heck, they'd get more respect from all and sundry if they just stopped trying to keep up their fool pretence to objectivity in news reporting.

Axis,

As I don't live in a world of conspiracy theories, there's not much I can do with what you wrote - everything you wrote is completely off base. I will point out one small thing, however - in your desperate quest for privacy, you will have to stop writing checks, using credit cards, driving, buying insurance and, of course, using the computer...if you do any of these things, then your personal information is available to anyone who wants to take the time to find it. Privacy ended when the Information Age came in...

For me, it was no big deal - it is mostly scoundrels who demand their privacy...if what you do is honest and decent, then you don't mind who knows about it...it is skullduggery of various forms which makes some demand privacy. Sorry, but I'm not going to sweat the prospect of having it discovered that a particular person goes to juggs.com ten times a day...

Mark, I don't agree. What said above is documented and true, not at all off base. They are accurate and not slanted either way. Faux propagandaists try to slant to make things look rosier.

Hannity says on his show recently that the unemployment rate during the first year of Bush was better than Clinton, which is true on its face, however looking into it, you see that unemployment rose bigtime under Bush Sr and started to come back down in the first year of Clinton. Then bush Jr took over from clinton and took a low unemployment rate and its gradually increased. So by looking at only a one year, hannity tried to make the arguement that bush offered better domestic governance.

A caller called in, and started revealing this and showed hannitys agruement to be totally slanted and hannity hung up on him. Slanted.

Rush screens all callers to prevent liberal callers from popping his reality bubble. If one gets thru, hes disconnected before he gets 10 words in. Slanted.

Rush makes a deal to stay out of jail on drug charges then says he is innocent and did not have any evidence to charge. If true, why was is necessary to make any deal with prosecuters? Then he goes on to poke fun at kennedy's drug and booze problem. Hypocrite.

Many moderate liberal shows allow conservative views and are happy to debate them. Why are Conservatives afraid to debate liberals if their way is better and so successful? The only possible answer is their theories and views are easily crushed by reality if its allowed to slip in.

Not true at all. Here in Canada, we have serious privacy laws and value privacy. Run someones credit here without authorization and you go to jail. Sell someones private info and you go to jail.

Yet law enforcement has little trouble with just cause and a warrant.

You can do background checks and find out a persons complete financial background with just a birth date or SSN in the U.S. Can't do that there.

Perhaps you have no problems with other people looking at your credit reports or banking statements or cell phone records, but I view it as private that ordinary people have no business looking at.

I must correct you, privacy in the UNITED STATES ended with the information age, thats because you are a capitalist country and business stand to profit from selling your private information to other people and profits is seen as more important than is individual privacy. You and your fellow americans let that happen, it did not happen on its own. Its not too late to fix it either, it just takes people standing up and showing the politicians that you want your privacy back and tell those that want to sell your phone records or driving record or credit history to go to hell.

"I will point out one small thing, however - in your desperate quest for privacy, you will have to stop writing checks, using credit cards, driving, buying insurance and, of course, using the computer...if you do any of these things, then your personal information is available to anyone who wants to take the time to find it. Privacy ended when the Information Age came in...

For me, it was no big deal - it is mostly scoundrels who demand their privacy...if what you do is honest and decent, then you don't mind who knows about it..."

And now Rupert is getting into bed with Hillary who will likely do his bidding if she gets the Dem. ticket in 08. Hopefully not.

I am not a fan of Hillary, Bill was ok on some things, terrible on others but Hillary's views are mostly a Vulcan mind meld with Bush. Shes also for big business, keeping the troops in Iraq to die. About the only good she will do is put an end to the Neo-cons take over the world campaign and get spending and the debt under control.

America needs to do a "hard about" after 08 and not a "steady as she goes" that hillary would likely bring.

Theres a few good Dem's that would make a worthy president, but they are going to have to work hard to get the ticket as she has the money, the name and connections going in her favor.

GOP's gonna have their hands full with her as well as Bush will have left a bitter Republican taste in voters mouths by 08 as the debt will be 10 or 11 trillion by then.

Posted by Congressive

"The fact that Rupert Murdoch donates 57% of his political contributions to Republicans and only 27% to Dems means... exactly what about that "fair and balanced" thing?"

Mark,
I seriously doubt your stats on how members of the dreaded "MSM" vote, though I suppose that since you get to define who exactly the "MSM" are you can skew your cohort to produce any result you choose.

I have seen polls that suggest that a majority of media types consider themselves to be "liberal" and tend to vote for Democrats. That's not really much of a surprise since most reporters are college educated and well (or at least better than the public at large) informed -- I think that virtually any demographic group with those attributes that is not involved directly in politics will tend to be "liberal" and vote for progressive candidates.

I don't know, a saw a poll around the 2004 election that had something like 90% of polled working in the media were voting for Kerry. But I don't think its that they are ideologically socialist or what have you, but I think its because they actually pay attention to the information. Unless you are the type of person who makes fun of the French for being French and doesn't seperate Al Qaeda from Saddam, then you vote against these Bush fellas. It's that simple I think.

And the MSM conspiracy continues....

Just thought I'd beat you to the punch. The new story on CNN is that William Jefferson, a congressman from LA, had his office searched today by the FBI.

In the story, they never once made mention that he was a Democrat. They also mentioned the "culture of corruption" being tossed around by the Democrats. I found it quite odd and I'm sure you will have a hay-day with it. Either way, regardless of his affiliation, he is still part of the problem with Washington these days. I'm glad these people are finally being brought to justice for their unethical behavior.

Cap'n Ron,

Yes, there should no partisanship in fighting government corrruption. Republican or Democrat, if they are corrupt or breaking the law, indict them and send then to prison.

It is unacceptable for people to send the message that corruption is ok if your party is in power.

"I have seen polls that suggest that a majority of media types consider themselves to be "liberal" and tend to vote for Democrats. That's not really much of a surprise since most reporters are college educated and well (or at least better than the public at large) informed -- I think that virtually any demographic group with those attributes that is not involved directly in politics will tend to be "liberal" and vote for progressive candidates." saliva

"I don't know, a saw a poll around the 2004 election that had something like 90% of polled working in the media were voting for Kerry. But I don't think its that they are ideologically socialist or what have you, but I think its because they actually pay attention to the information. Unless you are the type of person who makes fun of the French for being French and doesn't seperate Al Qaeda from Saddam, then you vote against these Bush fellas. It's that simple I think." Faux keefer

Here we have two brilliant examples of why the dems continuously loose and can't understand why.

It is the patrician like arrogance of psuedo intellectualism.

"We know what's best for the poor uneducated peasants of this country." or "They must not be paying attention, otherwise they'd agree with us."
or "We just didn't get our message out."

Actually you did and continue to do so.

It comes across in the the MSM news broadcasts where instead of reporting facts they presume to interpret events for the viewing public who are obviously to dimwhitted to comprehend for themselves.

It comes from your politicians who attempt daily to create new entitlements, new classes of victims who must be dependent upon government largesse for their existence.

And this effete attitude was epitomized and personified in the last democrat great hope and loser for President, Mr. John "justagiggolo" Kerry.

The dims are the Dr. Pepper of politics...sooo misunderstood.

But please keep it up...we can always use the comic relief.