The problem with most if not all news organizations is selective reporting. One news source may tell us about all the schools, power plants and hospitals being built in Iraq and gloss over the deaths. Another news source will dwell on the deaths and anti-war protests and not even mention all the positive things taking place there. So in order to get all the facts, one has to get the news from various sources.

Political news is most subject to bias. News about natural disasters, crime or scientific advancement is much less prone to selective reporting. Where FOXNews tries to be balanced is in political reporting. If a specific issue is being debated in Congress they give as much air time to the Republican congressmen as they do the Democrat congressmen. There is no way they can make everyone happy so obviously they are going to cater to their viewers rather than their critics.

I agree facts can be manipulated and it's good to get a balance. I do find it very interesting that if you are interested in hearing about protests and anti-war events, you will hardly find them in the mainstream media.

I enjoy opinions, but facts are the main thing with me too. I think it's funny how some people will not listen to Al Jazeera or Democracy Now because of this or that bias. But facts are facts, no matter who is saying them.

I really hope that was a joke!

Facts are facts but we have no way of verifying facts simply by watching, reading or listening to the news. When we get our news from various sources and the same facts are being reported by multiple sources it is more likely that the facts are accurate. However that is not always true because news sources often times get their information from other news sources so some bad information can corrupt many news outlets so that several sources end up reporting something that is not correct. Some sources put more effort into verifying facts than do others and are thus less apt to become corrupted by ill-informed sources.

I have not watched Al Jazeera English long enough to know how often their stories get corrupted by bad sources. My comments about them are basically comments on their format. I like the way they present the news.

I definitely agree about multiple sources of information. My comments were more about an approach that tends to reduce the news to *only* issues, and to pretend that issues have *only* two possible sides, always in opposition. Real issues are complex, and dumbing them down to opposing soundbites doesn't serve our democracies well.

I'm just curious how it is that you were able to reply to me with a quote that was never in any of my posts. Did I miss something?

Some people see the forum 'inline' (as one long page) and just reply to the post above them. Others see it 'threaded', so that replies to posts higher up create new branches, and reply to a particular post, and that reply comes out further down the inline version. (These are settings you can change in your profile.) This often causes confusion.

Nah, Just a posting.......

Just so long as you understand that I wasn't the one who said what you quoted.