From: gary@colossus.cgd.ucar.edu (Gary Strand)
Subject: Re: CNN Anchor Admits Pro-Clinton Bias
Organization: Climate and Global Dynamics Division/NCAR, Boulder, CO
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 15:55:46 GMT

pn> Peter Nelson
gs> Gary Strand

gs> When it comes time to vote, I'm sure you're comfortable knowing that *you*
    haven't been influenced by the biased coverage of the latest Big News
    Story, but millions of others have been, and they'll outvote you every 
    time. Your conscience is clear, but that doesn't give you more votes.

pn> What do you propose -- blow up a TV transmitter?  Jam their transmissions?
    Shoot down a satellite?   Nowhere have you suggested any alternative to 
    bad, biased, or stupid TV.

  Let's start with a real free market. No more FCC. Place TV and radio, and
  any other broadcast medium, under the protection of the 1st amendment. No
  restrictions of any kind on content. Also, de-regulate cable monopolies,
  and whatever other obnoxious government regulations there are regarding
  broadcast media.

pn> I'm exercising free choice - a basis of a free economy. I'm acting in my
    rational self-interest by deciding that I have better things to do with
    my time than watch the tube, and rational self-interest is another basis
    of a free economy.

  Methinks you doth play on your "rationality" too much. Is it really ration-
  al to conscientiously and steadfastly ignore the most powerful medium of
  (mis/dis)information that there is? 

gs> Perhaps the reason TV is so uniform is because people like you don't make
    their choices known.

pn> I used to write lots of letters to TV networks and advertisers and I al-
    ready detailed by calls to the networks in 1988 and to CNN.  I've paid a
    lot more dues than most people as far as "making my choices known".   

  "Used to"? Why did you quit? They didn't recognize your obvious intelligence
  and eloquence? Why don't you try buying a TV network? They listen to $$$, 
  not the little pipsqueaks "writing back to their TVs".

pn> Suggesting that smart people should watch the stuff that's not so bad as
    the rest is a bit like saying that to fight drugs I should smoke a rela-
    tively innocuous drug like marijuana so that the really bad ones like co-
    caine or heroin get fewer "votes". Or something -- I really don't under-
    stand your point at all.  
  
  Your analogy is even worse than mine! How many other issues can we try to
  make analogous to your plan of "action"? If you acted the same way toward
  the drug issue as you do toward the media bias issue, you would refuse to
  engage in any action for or against drug legalization or the drug war; how-
  ever, I do grant that you would read about the issue in *both* "High Times"
  *and* "DEA Journal". Outside of that, though, you'd do nothing.

pn> The bottom line is still that people, for some undetermined perverse rea-
    son, CHOOSE to watch TV and allow it to influence their world view, even
    when it evidently clashes with their personal values. In doing so they
    CHOOSE to give TV great political and cultural power. The key word here
    is CHOICE. You have suggested no credible way to prevent this consistent
    with a free society.

  Look at it this way -- in a country of 50 liberals and 50 conservatives, if
  5 liberals and 5 conservatives watch the evening news, but the evening news
  is biased toward the liberal view, if the conservatives take the Nelson ap-
  proach and stop watching TV, but are replaced by liberals who like what they
  see, eventually you'll get 9+ liberals and <1 conservative watching the news,
  and the media says it's unbiased. After all, look who's watching it. All
  choices are freely made, but that doesn't prevent biased journalism. All I
  know is that steadfast refusal to deal with the problem head-on is not an
  acceptable course of action. I have some small respect for Don Wildmon in
  this regard, because at least he busts a gut trying to get what he wants on
  TV. He doesn't close his ears and eyes and pretend that doing so actually
  means something.

--
Gary Strand                      Opinions stated herein are mine alone and are
strandwg@ncar.ucar.edu            not representative of NCAR, UCAR, or the NSF
Newsgroups: alt.news-media,talk.politics.misc