"There's a compassionate way to murder infants"

[Plane]

  I do like PBS, but I haven't any illusion about its evenhandedness.

   Fox isn't perfectly even handed either , but they do better than PBS.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Fox wastes 21 minutes of every hour on hideous stupid commercials. They reduce every issue to two sides and pump up the rightwing side. Guys like O'Reilly are just hotheads and have no real training in anything other than running their mouths. It is hard to imagine anything that could possibly suck more than Fox.. Fox News has never been news, it is political infotainment with hideous commercials.

[Plane]

  I have spotted Bill O'Riley being wrong , but I haven't seen him being unfair.

   Nor is he consistently conservative , the danger of doing his own thinking is that he is liable to disagree with either side in turn and not have allies on either side.

    He is consistent within his own thinking , even the mistakes I see him make are the same month after month.


     Fox seems to me to be the wisest network for moneymaking, they do not favor conservative commentators over liberal commentators for the sake of conservatism they allow commentators of both types to have turns and feed the winners.

       Since there is very harsh competition between the networks that serve the left , the winners tend to be those that serve the underserved right and Fox's liberals wind up late at night or in second bananas status.  If the people were clamoring for more progressive commentators that is who Fox would seem to promote , because they feed their winners .

      PBS has a niche market that they well serve , but they get a subsidy from taxes , which includes taxes taken from Bill O'Riley fans. This is patently unfair, but I don't want Fox to get a matching subsidy ............ or do I?


 

[Xavier_Onassis]

You subsidize Fox whenever you buy the crap that the advertise on Fox.

PBS is far more useful to this country in many ways than Fox.

The Ken Burns documentaries on the Civil War, Prohibition, Baseball, the National Parks. the NOVA nature shows, the cultural programs are better than any of that crap that Fox passes off as "News".

I don't think much of any of the commercial networks.  Fox's only redeeming programming are the Simpsons, Family Guy, Bob's Burgers and Cleveland. 

[Plane]

  It doesn't hurt your feelings at all that the government itself is the sponsor of one of these competitors?

[Xavier_Onassis]

No, it does not. I have no idea why it should "hurt my feelings." I find the ads on PBS to be short and not so annoying. I detest the pledge drives, they go on forever. But the rest of what PBS shpws I usually find fascinating and informative, and many times better than History Channel documentaries, that ask stupid rhetorical questions and repeat the same crap over and over with the voice of someone who is somehow scandalized by what he is saying. The tone of PBS documentaries is calm and factual.

[Plane]

 

No, it does not. I have no idea why it should "hurt my feelings."

  Then use your imagination and place yourself in the alternate universe where PBS relies on public approval ands FOX gets a government subsidy.

[Xavier_Onassis]

That makes zero sense.

Fox is not in the business of providing news, it is in the business of delivering rightwing eyeballs to advertisers to make a profit.

[Plane]

That makes zero sense.

Fox is not in the business of providing news, it is in the business of delivering rightwing eyeballs to advertisers to make a profit.

That is one way to look at it.

Looking at it this way explains why Fox needs no government subsidy.

There are many more right wing eyeballs than left wing eyeballs.

You know,.............. that makes us sound like a whole lot of pirates doesn't it?

[Xavier_Onassis]

Right wingers generally run in packs and mobs. They seek validation and social approbation for their views. They like to reward companies they admire buy buyig their products.

Left wingers generally do not listen to opinion radio and TV. They already have their opinions and mostly do not seek validation Also, they are leery pof all commercial advertising, and unless an ad deals with a very low price or a very new technology, they hop away.  I never listen to opinion programs, because I know what I believe and do not care what the average guy thinks.

[sirs]

I never listen to opinion programs, because I know what I believe and do not care what the average guy thinks.

The left likes to think that, but when you make particular comments about how so&so shouldn't be listened to, kinda defies that position.  The left is in constant shaping mode, as they do care, as a mob, what someone else thinks.  In fact, I just heard that a new federal agency is being formed that will literally monitor what they consider as "hate speech".  Tax dollars to be used to research how much "hate speech" is "out there".  Now, there's no repercussions involved, as its simply tabulating....the problem is the Government has no blooming business monitoring what the "average guy" is thinking or saying.  Who gets to define the parameters of "hate speech"??  What would they do with all this "research" after compiling it.

I'll give the benefit of the doubt to the Professor here, in that he doesn't care, but the left, especially hard core liberals care deeply what others think, and want that thinking to be massaged in the correct direction.  Starts as early as Public schooling, extending right into the higher education colleges, and for those teens & adults out of college, that's where the MSM steps in to help with making sure folks are thinking the right way, whether its global warming, or rampant racism, or not enforcing laws is ok as long as its politically correct, or the sympathetic reporting to those who commit murder upon an unborn child, or a whole host of other social issues, all of which is to help others think the correct way

[Xavier_Onassis]

After WWII, the Allies demanded that the Germans ban all use of the swastika, Nazi insignia, and Nazi slogans.

How is that different from banning "hate speech"?

Personally, I do not care much about banning hate speech. People can listen to whatever idiot they want to, but there should be some sort of right of those with opposing views to use the PUBLIC airwaves to present them. 

The fact is that the right wing is competitive, dogmatic and operates as a heard of pack, and this is far less true of the Left.  I taught at five colleges and universities in my career and NEVER did anyone tell me what I should say to students regarding political views, other than to remind them to vote. Never HOW to vote, just to vote. And even that was seldom mentioned.

The story about how Academia brainwashes students was entirely untrue at every college or university where I taught.
I know at least a dozen people who get all their opinions from ideologues like Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly or some other Fox "news" blatherer, and they always mention where they heard these opinions.  Colleagues on the left, however, rarely quote anyone when they discuss their opinions of events. I may have spent a total of five hours in the last 30 years listening to Air America or some other dedicated left wing broadcaster. Mostly, I listen to CDs and NPR, which always presents not "both sides" of an argument, but MANY sides. If you would listen to Diane Rheems, you would note that she usually has two or three people commenting, and then takes calls from listeners, which present many opinions. Nearly all of what right wingers say about NPR and PBS is crap they heard on Fox and unrelated in any way to the truth.

[Plane]

  Fox doesn't often criticize PBS.

   But they might now and then hire commentators that PBS fires for being politically incorrect.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Williams

He was a senior news analyst for National Public Radio (NPR) from 1999 until October 2010.

..............................

Williams is the author of Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 (1987),[3] a companion to the documentary series of the same name about the African-American Civil Rights Movement;Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary (2000), a biography of Thurgood Marshall, the first black American to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States; and Enough (2006), which was inspired by Bill Cosby's speech at the NAACP gala, and deals with Williams' critique of black leaders in America, and as he puts it, the "culture of failure."[4] Williams has received an Emmy Award and critical praise for his television documentary work and he has won several awards for investigative journalism and his opinion columns.

..............................................................

Williams made the following comment on January 26, 2009, to Bill O’Reilly and Mary Katharine Ham, while appearing on Fox News' O'Reilly Factor: "Michelle Obama, you know, she's got this Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress thing going. If she starts talking...her instinct is to start with this blame America, you know, I'm the victim. If that stuff starts coming out, people will go bananas and she'll go from being the new Jackie O to being something of an albatross".[10] NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard maintained that: "Williams tends to speak one way on NPR and another on Fox."[10]

NPR terminated his contract on Wednesday, October 20, 2010,two days after he made remarks on The O'Reilly Factor.[11] He had commented, "Look, Bill, I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."[12] According to NPR, the remarks were "inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR." As to the reason for the termination of Williams' contract, NPR’s President and CEO Vivian Schiller offered...................


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Juans firing bears the message ,toe the line if your thinking is right of center , you can't have a job here.

I listen to Juan Williams often enough to have a very favorable opinion of him tho he  seems to be 90% left of center.

    Fox can put up with this they have no hiring bias against leftists , but at PBS if you have tendency to speak the truth as you see it , it had better be the left truth else you get canned.

[Plane]

You subsidize Fox whenever you buy the crap that the advertise on Fox.

Which I might willingly do.

I might willingly chip in a bit on a PBS fund drive , and I might not but the subsidy they take from taxes is taken from me by force with threat of arrest and prison and garnishment of wage .

That is not fair.

[Plane]

Williams appeared on The O'Reilly Factor and discussed his thoughts on how his role at Fox played into NPR's decision: "I don't fit in their box. I'm not predictable black liberal. You [O'Reilly] were exactly right when you said you know what this comes down to. They were looking for a reason to get rid of me because I'm appearing on Fox News. They don't want me talking to you."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Williams