Just Tell Us Which Side You're On, PLEASE.

Months ago my good friend, sometime blogger and international citizen David Chorlton made an observation in regard to the ongoing argument between American conservatives and liberals bickering over whose news outlets were more "fair and balanced". He noted that on a typical British newstand there are a variey of publications: socialist, Catholic, conservative and so on. He said that the British (and this extended to many other European nations) know what they read is biased by the nature of the publication. They accept and EXPECT the bias, and they discuss national politics from the position that all positions are biased, none has the "truth" and that government is a matter of striking balance among many factions' interests.

How sane. How reasonable. How unAmerican?

Finally though, American media bias severely skewed to conservative opinion (reflecting conservative media ownership interests) may force a paradigm shift. The relentless downward pressure to obfuscate negative political information combined with the increasing upward pressure of those who feel their day-to-day lives threatened by disinformation, will cause an eruption. If we're lucky, it will be an outpouring of intelligence, self-confidence, commitment and RESPECT for unapologetic liberal (and other) media sources.

Daily Kos: Read It and Weep: "We've been over it all again and again here in blogotopia. Using the Oval Office to having extramarital, consensual sex trumps using the Oval Office to falsify intelligence to take the country to war. It trumps using the Oval Office to engineer the outing of CIA operatives. And now we also know it trumps using the Oval Office to orchestrate the illegal, warrantless wiretapping of thousands of American citizens. Well, gee. I think we just really need to work on getting our priorities straight.

I'm just wondering when the traditional media is finally going to give up the pretense that it is objective in reporting the news. From Chris Matthew's (and the entire Fox gang's) hate speech to Deborah Howell's non-correction 'correction,' it's time they just admit the truth. They are Republican party organs. Most of the rest of the developed world doesn't operate on the false assumption that their media is unbiased. Why should we? Let's just get that out in the open, recognize who is on which side, and go on our merry way."