Paris Hlton responds to McCain ad

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2008-08-08 03:19pm

The biggest difference between news media in America and news media in Canada and (especially) Britain is that your media has this bizarre notion that politicians deserve a certain amount of automatic "respect", so the news media should not behave in a "disrespectful" or "inappropriate" way toward them. Of course, this begs the question: why? Why do these people deserve automatic respect from the public, when they are supposedly employees of the public?

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2008-08-08 09:30pm

Darth Wong wrote:The biggest difference between news media in America and news media in Canada and (especially) Britain is that your media has this bizarre notion that politicians deserve a certain amount of automatic "respect", so the news media should not behave in a "disrespectful" or "inappropriate" way toward them. Of course, this begs the question: why? Why do these people deserve automatic respect from the public, when they are supposedly employees of the public?

I don't know the exact rationale used to present the news in this fashion, but the biggest difference is that American news media is a for-profit industry driven by advertisement revenues (dependent on ratings) and controlled by large conglomerates who may or may not want to stay in good graces with elected officials.