I watched some MSNBC, and I agree they are biased.
But I also watched some FOX, and they are equally biased in the other direction. They all are motivated mostly by their network’s financial bottom line.

Now reasonable and rational people can argue and disagree whether the $700B bailout of the banks is “spreading the wealth around” or not. And if McCain was for it, is “spreading the wealth” only bad when it goes to the poor. But this is not the point!

The point is this fear that I have of Palin and you of Obama. THAT is not rational. It is absolutely beyond the realm of rational to think that an elected politician in this country can want to intentionally damage it. Even G.W. Bush, I hate to say it, did the damage mostly by incompetence.

And this fear is something that politicians are very skillful at exploiting. And then they can get away with incompetence, by just playing us against each other…

no argument here!

It seems that you see the current balance in the media as Democratic party taking over the media, and I see it as a media reflecting the mood of the country which is pissed at Republicans who squandered six years of unchecked power.

Plus, I’m not even sure that the balance is *THAT* skewed. I was disgusted with what I saw of Olbermann. But he insulted my intelligence in the same way O’Reily and Limbough do. So the SPECTRUM of opinion is still all there, it is the AVERAGE that now shifted towards the left. As it did towards the right around 2002. And many times before that.

I do feel you fear though. I am deathly afraid of this country being led by Palin. And I think analyzing this fear is what we need to find common ground. Because it’s exactly this fear that politicians are so capably exploit.

I actually think that it is this conglomeration that forced the merger of news analysis and entertainment, led to attention-span-challenged coverage and all that.
It’s local independent newspapers and TV/radio stations that have been almost wiped out of existence.

Sure, no-one wants the government to control the message. But no control over the messengers leads to corporately controlled message, like the one from GM that you do not like.

Blogs & Internet could save the situation, but they are still years away from being a trully competative with TV in this country. And if we do not regulate, Internet will end up as corporate as TV. How do you like that your blog doesn’t load very fast if Verizon disagrees with your message, eh?

(As a sideline, I find your fears of snooping quite endearing, given what the current REPUBLICAN administration had been doing)

Not being one of yuri’s much-ballyhooed “smart people” I fail to see how his anti-consolidation position (whatever that means) would do anything except get the government’s finger in everyone’s business (“Are you big and successful? There is a room downtown without a view that waits for you!”). Media consolidation is not the problem. Media bias and flat-out lying is the problem.

Besides – if it is merely a matter of needing the government to smash down anyone who is “consolidating” (and in the process somehow end up with “diversity”, whatever that means), there are already laws on the books to do so. Let’s say that I had a lobotomy, after which I finally saw the light and became a liberal Democrat. Let’s also say that I decided to run ads comparing Sarah Palin to Satan (not to be confused with ads comparing her to a whore, a porn star, and a right-wing fundamentalist Christianist theocrat, which is the MSM’s private bailiwick). If I am a private citizen, I have to comply with a large number of pesky campaign finance laws, or (if my name is George Soros) at least pretend to do so. But as a journalist whatever swill I put out would be “news” and (at the present time) outside the reach of the law. Maybe that is the loophole to be closed.

If it’s government-guaranteed snoopi-, ah, accountability that you want, why not simply enforce McCain-Feingold against media companies as vigorously as against, say, certain swift-boat veterans and conservative churches and start hauling journalists into court for illegal campaign contribution? Most everything broadcast on NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and MSNBC “news” shows these days are thinly-disguised commercials for the Messiah anyway, so there is no lack of potentially illegal material (illegal, that is, if you take campaign finance reform seriously). Ditto for the major newspapers.

It would do wonders for fighting the evils of “consolidation” (since a lot of folks would be in the slammer and the rest would be too afraid to think about expressing an opinion), although it probably would not do squat for “diversity”. But hey! You cannot have everything, and that is McCain’s fault anyway.

Inspired somewhat by this blog I did something that I usually do not do – watched some TV. Looked at derided here MSNBC and Keith Olbermann. Wow. But for all the bias and unfairness, he didn’t strike me as “Pravda” type guy. He’s just a reflection of O’Reily and Hennety.

So if NBC were loosing viewers because they didn’t want to tune in to hear Olberman, his show would have been off the air. Ditto for Hennety. So it’s not liberal conspiracy (after all, it’s Republicans who are in power), it’s just money.

Now how do you maintain healthy diversity of media?
You do something that Republicans so much opposed: make and enforce very strict regulation against media consolidation. See, sometimes you need teh government to protect ya

I’m not saying it’s bound to happen, but it sure looks possible to me.