Unless you don't have advertisers nor a boss you are not independent. Why single Murdoch and Fox?

CBS is owned by Viacom. Viacom owns Showtime, Simon & Schuester, Paramount. Does CBS report anything negative about viacom or its holdings. Nope. How about false stories that were political hit jobs like the Bush/Guard story? Sure did.

ABC is owned by Disney. Disney owns a bunch a Disney media properties, parks, and ESPN. has ABC ever reported a negative thing about Disney or ESPN, nope. ABC also got busted for political bias falsehoods with their Path to 9/11.

NBC is owned by GE and Vivendi. Guess who they don't report about. GE has tentacles in a few dozen industries so NBC must watch their step. NBC has also went astray on a few news stories- especially if it was about a GE property.

CNN is owned by Time Warner another huge conglomerate of which they will drop stories for. CNN just goes with the flow politically- whoever is in power they favor for access.

MSNBC is owned in part by GE and Microsoft so you never heard them complain about Vista. they have been the whipping boy rating wise for a while. They try to corner the crazy progressive market by being ultra bias for liberals and progressives. They too had many controversies- the most recent is the cropping of a picture of a man carrying a gun at a tea party rally and declaring that these protesters are all racist and hate a black man in office. ABC has the same footage, but was not cropped, and the "racist" was in fact a black man.

Also keep in mind all of the these news organizations other than Fox are owned,managed, and staffed by liberals. Producers, directors, anchors, reporters, etc are all liberals and donate to democrats with out fail. If you are a conservative anchor or commentator you will be hard pressed to work anywhere but Fox. If they work in any other network it would be considered a hostile working environment.

I agree that Fox may not be independent, but lets face it neither are any of the other media outlets including newspapers, which are overwhelming liberal and often support Democrats publicly (conservatives own radio).

The farce isn't that Fox isn't fair and balanced, it is that all the other media outlets think they are. Honesty I think Fox news programming, not opinion programming, is more fair than any other outlet. I see many more liberal guests on Fox than I see conservatives on other networks. In any case I think Brit Hume is right:

"One wonders how our colleagues at CNN and elsewhere like being patted on the head and given the seal of approval by the White House. These outlets already stand accused of being in the tank for Mr. Obama. Do they really want to open themselves up to more such criticism by ignoring legitimate stories because they originate here?"

The WH attempts to de-legitimize Fox makes the other networks look like they are Obama's leash.

Just finished lambasting a poster who probably was trying to defend his position (which is similar to yours). You get no lambasting as you stated your case well.

My only question: Would a landscape of unknown bloggers be better, do we continue 2 party media that thrives on confusion, or some hybrid?

KHpoliticalinnuendohere:

Just finished lambasting a poster who probably was trying to defend his position (which is similar to yours). You get no lambasting as you stated your case well.

My only question: Would a landscape of unknown bloggers be better, do we continue 2 party media that thrives on confusion, or some hybrid?

That is the problem. Which is better professional and bias vs unprofessional and bias. I don't think you can get rid of bias, so as news consumers we should apply the principle of checks and balances to what news we consume.