Why should private media not be biased? Where is the unwritten rule that says that media should not come from a point of view? Is "media" not a plural of "medium", which the good folks at the big fat dictionnary building define as something along the lines of "a means of effecting or conveying something"?

Even in the UK, the apparently non-biased publicly owned (and largely excellent) news coverage at the BBC is at the whim of the political mascinations of who ever the director-general at that point in time may be.

It's a seriously bad thing that the general public assumes anything they read in ANY newspaper or see on ANY news channel is gospel, but do you honestly think that's directly the fault of said forms of media? Perhaps the general public needs to educate itself better to be a more even-handed interpreter of the evidence put before it, and perhaps society needs to find a way to engender more discussion on any pertinent subjects arising from that evidence.

Either that or you'd prefer that the media was under tighter societal or governmental control, which is a very anti-freedom and quite dangerous i'd have thought. For all those right leaning folks in the US who think the media is undermining the war effort, they should take a look at Pravda and all the various government-controlled media in the soviet union post about 1950 for how badly things can go wrong when it becomes governmental policy (in this case actually WITH the support of society, generally and initially) to coordinate what the media can and can't say. Equally, those who chastise the american media for being unpleasantly right-wing in its attitudes should also understand that any sort of policy to change this would be worryingly interventionist and anti-liberty.

It's a tricky tightrope. Isn't it an important facet of a free country to have a completely free press within whatever political and economic conditions prevail, and any attempt to subvert this would be tantamount to revoking some elements of freedom (which, it seems, is the one area that most people feel is most threatened by terrorism?).

It's hard to read a newspaper story or see a TV news story that isn't biased in some regard, IMO. In fact, I think you could go even further and say that because most news and reportage is the reporting of occurances from the viewpoint of the reporter, it is pretty much subjective by definition, and that the personal or collective view of the news provider is always going to have some bearing on the nature of the way the news is reported. Just a shame that people are too used to being spoonfed that they don't question the possible motives and background to any news story they see or hear from the point of view of the source.

Over more government control in the form of government controlled media, I choose our currently flawed/biased free press everyday. But that doesn't mean we can't dream of a better system

Tim,

I havent read the entire thread because I am currently on three tables but, I dont agree with your interpretation on Bin Laden´s newest tape/offering.

I really think he, if something, has been coherent. He became against US because of the US base in his natal Saudi Arabia. He wasnt happy about the golf war, as MOST of the Arab people, not only extremists. His demands has always been what he claimed now: "US and the West should not interfere with our matters". If we have the right to be the POlice of the World is another discussion. If we have been honest and fair while being the police of the world is just another discussion.

Gulp. I'd get your head down below the parapet now, Mr Stoneburg.