Understanding the Ugly Truth: Health Insurance

[Guardsman Bass]

Was that in terms of positive coverage for Kerry as opposed to Bush, or simply in terms of how they were polled? It's quite possible for journalists to be liberal, and still get stuck with coverage biased in favor of Republicans because of conservative editors.

[Darth Wong]

I disagree wholeheartedly on the basis that the majority of the mainstream media (sans-FNC) seems to take a pretty stout anti-Bush stance.

A position they just coincidentally adopted when the right-wing establishment decided to turn on Bush as well, by making him the fall guy for all the consequences of their policies. Right-wing bullshit is alive and well in America, and that includes an almost pathological opposition to socialized health care.

I don't have the stats on hand with me at the moment, but if I recall correctly, it was something like a 2 to 1 margin in 2004 of journalists that supported Kerry over Bush.

Totally irrelevant to the editorial slant of the actual news coverage that makes it to air, which was (and is) extremely right-wing. In America, you have a choice between right-wing news and even more right-wing news.

[Patrick Degan]

I disagree wholeheartedly on the basis that the majority of the mainstream media (sans-FNC) seems to take a pretty stout anti-Bush stance.

A position they just coincidentally adopted when the right-wing establishment decided to turn on Bush as well, by making him the fall guy for all the consequences of their policies. Right-wing bullshit is alive and well in America, and that includes an almost pathological opposition to socialized health care.

I don't have the stats on hand with me at the moment, but if I recall correctly, it was something like a 2 to 1 margin in 2004 of journalists that supported Kerry over Bush.

To be entirely honest, though, I think it probably has more to do that Republicans were in control for so long, and there was a Republican president. Journalists naturally seem to try to go for (or against, I suppose) those that are in power.

And yet in 2004, no major news organisation was really challenging the Swift Boat slanders against Kerry. Nor were they reporting on how the case for that pesky little war we got into was essentially based on a pack of lies. Odd that.