Just an opinion from someone who never voted a "straight ticket" in her life:

The media push both sides. (Most, mousethief, are owned by people who are Terribly Concerned with "first amendment rights," -- theirs, not ours -- and ofttimes confuse freedom with license. The bottom line for these folks is that it's more profitable -- and powerful -- to be liberal.) The trick is to watch the adjectives and adverbs, as well as the choice of verbs. If you hear that the Republicans are "taking the issue to the courts" and the Democrats are "filing yet another lawsuit," you get a pretty good picture of the reporter's slant.

It's like advertising: Advertising tells us what's out there, and that's good. But it behooves the consumer to remember that the people who put gobs of toothpaste on the brush in the commercial would like for us to believe that it's necessary to use that much to get our teeth clean. The media have their own agendas, too. Some are slanted to the left, some to the right.

The problem, as I see it, is that Journalism is dead. Its life was a brief one in this country, but it did live, and was a noble thing. When I were a wee child, television news was news. No adjectives, no adverbs, just the facts. Walter Cronkite, Harry Reasoner, Huntley and Brinkley, telling us what happened and nothing more. (God, I'm old!) The editorial piece was labeled as such and set aside in its own slot.

It's a chicken/egg conundrum. Did politics destroy statesmanship or did op-ed destroy news reporting? Or are they working in tandem? Politics gets more feedback than statesmanship; editorial reporting arouses more passion than does a simple delivering of the facts. It doesn't matter to these folks whether the feedback is encouraging or outraged -- it proves to their bosses that people are listening. Back to the bottom line, you see.

Sarah