Monday, August 25, 2008

Exactly How Biased is the American Media? The Sad Hard Facts

The donations tell the tale

The average American voter is starting to come to grips with the fact that those who control the flow of their information, "the media," are neither independent nor unbiased. In a September 2007 Gallup survey of American voters, 45% said the media is too liberal, compared to only 18% who said the media is too conservative and 35% who said the media is about right. The results of that survey demonstrate how far left 18% of Americans are today, and how uninformed another 35% are. Only 45% have a good sense of just how biased the media really is, before they follow the money and confirm their suspicions.

It's the information age, so the media is made up of several sectors today. American thought patterns and political sentiments are influenced almost entirely by a combination of all of these sectors, collectively referred to as the media.

The Media Sectors and their to-date 2008 Political Investments

* Computer & Internet - $24,255,207 (62% to Democrats)
* Books, Magazines & Papers - $12,187,548 (78% to Democrats)
* Computer Software - $8,922,053 (61% to Democrats)
* Motion Picture Industry - $7,523,136 (88% to Democrats)
* Cable & Satellite TV - $6,303,046 (63% to Democrats)
* Music Recording Industry - $2,983,755 (79% to Democrats)
* Television Production and Distribution - $2,322,587 (86% to Democrats)

These numbers are 2008 total individual and PAC donations coming from the people who make up these media sector industries. But the picture is even more convincing when we begin to look at individual organizations. Ever wonder why our education system is slanted hard left? Here are some of the biggest publishers of educational materials.

* Reed Elsevier Inc. - $135,250 (69% to democrats) - Publisher and information provider, operating in four core segments: science and medical, legal, education, and business.
* Houghton Mifflin - $132,000 (97% to democrats) - Major publisher of textbooks, reference works, fiction, non-fiction, and educational software and video.
* National Geographic Society - $79,463 (95% to democrats) - provides free maps, photos, videos and daily news stories.

Ever wonder why the news media has a hard left bent?

* General Electric/NBC/MSNBC/CNBC - (88% to democrats)
* Disney - (86% to democrats) - Walt Disney Studios, Touchstone, Hollywood Pictures, and Miramax; owns television interests including ABC, the Disney Channel and ESPN; runs dozens of local television and radio stations.
* ABC News - (99% to democrats)
* BBC International - (62% to democrats)
* CBS News - (99% to democrats)
* CNN News - (99% to democrats and Ron Paul)
* Newsweb Corp - (100% to democrats) - a publisher of ethnic and alternative newspapers in the United States, based in Chicago, Illinois.
* Cox Newspapers - (100% to democrats) - Publishers of sixteen local newspapers in Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, Florida, and Ohio.
* Time Inc - (66% to democrats) - the largest magazine publisher in the US.
* News Corp - (95% to democrats) - Rupert Murdoch's global vertically integrated media company includes properties in film, television, cable. (Donor facts provided by Open Secrets)

Think the internet is more fair and balanced? Guess who manipulates search engine results (aka online headlines)?

* Google Inc. - (81% to democrats) - Biggest search engine and online news source.
* Yahoo! Inc - (86% to democrats) - Search engine and online news source.
* MSN - (91% to democrats) - Search engine and online news source.

In case you think the money trail doesn't prove anything. a glance at the last 18 years of political funding will change your mind!

Abortion is alive and well at the expense of a million innocent children a year because the pro-abortion lobby has spent $16,497,110 since 1990, 81% of it with Democrats while the pro-life lobby has spent only $5,906,234 during the same period, 94% of it with Republicans. Ever heard that the squeaky wheel gets the oil?

Americans still have the right to keep and bear arms thanks to the gun lobby spending $19,746,376 since 1990, 85% of it with Republicans while the gun control lobby has only spent $1,739,542 during the same period, 94% of it with Democrats.

Our public education system is still a mess because the teacher union lobby has spent $146,422,869 since 1990 to keep it that way, 71% of it with Democrats who are protecting union thugs instead of protecting students, many of whom can't even read their high school diploma. But teachers who won't teach have tenure... making sure they can continue to turn out illiterate voters who will undoubtedly become reliable leftist adults.....

More here

************************

ELSEWHERE



Defending the Baltic states : "Fred Kagan, the intellectual author of the successful US "troop surge" plan in Iraq, believes Nato's presence in the Baltics must be massively strengthened to pre-empt the risk of them being invaded in the same way as Georgia. Such measures would infuriate Moscow, which last week warned that the installation of a US missile defence shield in Poland would ignite a new "arms race" between East and West. But Mr Kagan, an expert on the Russian military who has the ear of hawks within the US administration, said that the West needed to match words with deeds if it was to stop Russia turning into an "intolerable, aggressive imperialistic" power."

Pakistan attacking the militants: "He has one of the world's most dangerous jobs -- turning back the seemingly unstoppable tide of al-Qa'ida and Taliban-linked jihadi militancy sweeping across nuclear-armed Pakistan. And Rehman Malik, as we talk in his Islamabad office, makes it clear that the days of pussyfooting in Pakistan's fight against the militants are over. "Look, we've got two choices," says Malik, formerly one of Benazir Bhutto's closest aides and now Pakistan's security supremo who heads the Interior Ministry. "Either we can hand this country over to the Taliban, or we can fight. I am going to fight." Later, speaking to MPs in the National Assembly, he is even more forceful: "The Government of Pakistan will not tolerate any nonsense," he says. "Wherever the Government's writ is challenged, we will take action." Of the jihadi militants, he says: "We will wipe them out. We will not surrender before them."

Economic reform bears fruit in Israel: "It is also becoming clear that Israel's economy is growing faster than all Western economies. Even the war did not slow the pace. The mirror of growth is employment, which has improved greatly. A total of 240,000 Israelis joined the workforce in the past three years, supporting themselves instead of relying on government handouts - and that is the most important news for society. The unemployment rate has dropped to its lowest level in a decade, to 8.3 percent of the workforce compared to 10.7 percent in 2003. The number of people receiving unemployment payments fell from 97,000 in 2003 to 57,000, and the number receiving income support decreased from 155,000 to 140,000 in the same period".

The moronic TSA again. "Inspector" damages 9 aircraft: "Nine commuter aircraft were grounded for safety inspections Tuesday at Chicago's O'Hare airport after a federal security inspector climbed onto them by grabbing sensitive outside instruments, the Transportation Security Administration said Wednesday. "It delayed a lot of folks getting to where they had to go yesterday," said American Eagle spokeswoman Andrea Huguely. "This was something we had never experienced before." The inspector used the total air temperature probe and the jetway to haul himself through the open doors of seven of the nine planes he inspected, a TSA official said. The inspector aimed "to look for and test, among other things, access vulnerabilities or areas were someone with ill intent could gain access to the aircraft," the TSA said, adding: "Aircraft operators are required to secure each aircraft when left unattended." Sam Mayer, a spokesman for the Allied Pilots Union, said the maneuver could have damaged the probes. Pilots use readings from the probes to gauge the probability of icing. "Apparently the TSA inspector hoisted himself up using the TAT probe as a stirrup. He repeated the same procedure with nine aircraft. Most TAT probes have a painted decal on the side that reads 'NO STEP,' " he said."

VERY sad news about Margaret Thatcher's decline.

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

****************************

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

****************************

No comments: