Reply #39: I used to be a dedicated news hound, reading three newspapers a day,

[Uncle Joe]

The Nashville Banner; (now gone) The Tennessean and USA Today, I made sure to be home virtually every day to watch the network news, flipping between ABC,CBS,NBC then it was on to PBS for the McNeal Lehrer News Hour and Nightline when it came on. Local news, murders and such rarely interested me so much as national and international news. I was always looking for the truth of the big picture and felt I needed multiple sources.

At some point in the 90s I started picking up on a pattern, there was no real differing of opinion, everything became as if thought out of the same ever diminishing box of thought. Superficial B.S. that wasn't fit for the National Enquirer became standard issue on the nightly news and virtually every newscaster or pundit parroted the same buzz words. Increasingly more issues which seemed important to me, were totally ignored and it seemed no one was thinking for them selves anymore.

The wall to wall coverage of O.J. and continuous witch hunt of Clinton on what seemed as nothing stretching out in to eternity started to alarm me. Even if there was nothing new to report, we got to see on a nightly basis some form of negative innuendo. However the real splash of cold water came with their totally one sided fabricated myths leading up to and surrounding the 2000 selection. This is when it finally occurred to me they were flat out making up absurd lies and slander with no regard to any form of journalistic integrity. They were betraying the American People's best interest.

They were not only trashing who I thought to be the best, brightest and most superior candidate to come along in long time for the most powerful job in the land. They were trashing the importance of the office it self as being insignificant to the daily lives of the American People and the world at large.

Generally speaking I still watch the News Hour with Jim Lehrer and the BBC on PBS and I believe Bill Moyers is the best journalist/interviewer out there, but even PBS is under attack by the corporate loving neocon types. I've gotten to the point where I could care less about the Network News, I've come to view them as nothing more than corporate mouth pieces.

I checked other on your poll.

Thanks for the thread, sfexpat2000.