From: KKRUEGER@Zeus.unomaha.edu (Kurt R. Krueger)
Subject: Re: Liberal press...   yeah, sure
Organization: University of Nebraska at Omaha
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 1992 03:07:16 GMT
X-News-Reader: VMS NEWS 1.11

In <1992Aug14.231724.22745@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> tip@lead.aichem.arizona.edu writes:

> After a week of keeping informal tabs,  I have come to conclusion that
> at least locally the press is fairly biased...   and fairly conservative.
> So the constant hue and cry about "Liberal press" does not hold water in
> Tucson, Az.  (on the other hand, there isn't a lot of water to hold in
> Tucson, Az.)
> 
> (The Arizona Daily Star is a Gannett newspaper, by the way.)

Well, you're a neophyte to this business of keeping tabs, so most of us
seasoned veterans see why you have come to your conclusion.  Tucson, AZ is
not exactly the home of liberal values.  Dennis DeConcini is your Demo-
cratic senator, and I've never found him to be that left-wing for a Demo-
crat.  John McCain is the Republican, and he's pretty conservative.  AZ is
also the home of Barry Goldwater, Mr. Conservative himself.  The point is,
liberalism isn't well received where you are.  Phoenix--maybe a bit--but
Tucson, never.
   Nationally, the media are quite liberal, and the more honest journalists
such as Jeff Greenfield and David Brinkley, admit it.  A friend of mine told
me that last night during CNN's Campaign '92 show, one of the "unbiased" CNN
reporters said there was room enough for "hypocrisy in the Republican Party"
(referring to the comments by Pres. Bush and VP Quayle on the "what would
you do if your daughter had an abortion?" landmine).  That's an opinion, ob-
viously, and doesn't belong in what should be unbiased coverage.  Mary
Tillotson (sp?) gets in her licks at Bush now and then, too.  Other CNN
journalists have admitted off camara to not liking Mr. Bush, as well.
   CNN also laps up anything the environmentalists say without question,
too.  I've seen some _major_ news briefings by prominent scientists get
passed over by CNN when the message was non-apocolyptic.  CNN used to be a
fairly good network in terms of fairness, but right now I could list ex-
ample after example of its left-wing leanings.  If you doubt this, ask your-
self when the last time was that you heard anything bad about Bill Clinton
or Al Gore.  I've read some major blunders both have made this year, but
it wasn't in the mainstream media.  Still doubting?  In the primaries,
Mark Shields said that with Clinton there was always this dread that a sup-
porter had when he picked up the paper: What was the next scandal about?
Clinton was called the scandal-of-the-day candidate.  I'll admit that many
of the scandals were unfair, but what happened when it looked like he was
going to clinch the nomination?  The scandals were gone--totally.  The media
didn't like Clinton, but when he got the nomination, they rallied behind him.
If he was such a good daily target, why isn't there even one scandal every
three months?  Well, there have been some, but you aren't reading them be-
cause they got killed.  Just because I happen to have a good selection of
sources, I've run across some big ones, but they only got published in a
few papers despite the fact that they were well-documented (not that this
matters anymore).
   Just ask yourself why VP Quayle gets nailed on picayune things like
"potatoe" and Al Gore gets by with saying there is an ozone hole over
Kennebunkport, ME, "Western civilization is addictive and dysfunc-
tional," or that journalists should censor themselves whenever they hear
evidence which might hurt the environmentalist cause?  Why do we still hear
about the president's flip-flop on abortion around 1980, but little about
Gore's change of position?  Why doesn't Gore get challenged on _anything_?
   MacNeil-Lehrer is not too bad in terms of bias, nor are all news shows
or newspapers.  The one I read the most frequently, The Omaha World-Herald,
is quite conservative.  However, I can say from having read many magazines
and newspapers and watched virtually every news program in existence, that
the mainstream media are, by and large, very liberal and it's getting worse.


--
/*        Kurt Krueger | kkrueger@zeus.unomaha.edu | kkrueger@unoma1        */