Better late than never

Submitted by Tony Currie (Australia), Mar 31, 2010 at 05:34

Sorry...four years later, with my reply.

I am amazed how people can think that the media in the United States is biased. The US is one of the few countries in the world without a Labour Party, a social democrat party.... a tiny left. The Democrat party is thought of as a Centre Right Party...the Republicans as further to the right.

All this is supported by a media which ranges from Centre right to Right wing (with Fox being right wing).

Of course, a right winger will see anything in the centre as left. And the same is true for a left winger...they will see all the media as right wing. It depends where you sit on the spectrum of ideas, as to how you judge the bias of the media.

But most of us outside of America, do see it as a bastion of conservativism.... refusing to go metric, and the high religiousity of its population are just social indicators of that great conservatism. Look at the pain the nation went through, just to get a smattering of medical insurance....while the populations of other western countries have been enjoying the benefits of government supported medicine since the 30's and 40's. I don't blame the ordinary people... they're wonderful. But the bulk of the media have allowed the average citizen to go on with a certain amount of ignorance about how the rest of the world is living. Socialised medicine is not communism...it's just common sense. And it ultimately saves the nation a lot of money, because all that private health is more costly in the end.

From outside of America, the only voice I have really been impressed by, is that filmmaker, Michael Moore. He has been pretty gutsy... tackling all those issues and misconceptions, so long hidden from the public consciousness in America....yet so obvious to those outside.

The election of Obama has been a breath of fresh air ... all around the world, people have suddenly looked again at America with interest. "You can fool all of the people some of the time....." How true this has been for such a long time...such a sad, unhappy and lengthy time for the average US citizen.

But now lots of issues are being looked at with fresh eyes. Fox News is becoming frantic...with commentators raving about communism, and socialism....and the sky is falling down.

But the US public are starting to have the blinkers removed from their eyes...more and more media are beginning to question the great myths of the last sixty to eighty years. The Global Economic Crash had a lot to do with that I think...... the great economic orthodoxies that people had been persuaded to believe in since the time of Reagan, suddenly came crashing down. Economic reality hit them. Suddenly the markets didn't work. (Previously the markets had been seen as the next thing to God..... everything could be left to the markets).

So now...we can just hope. Hope that more journalists will question...that readers will shift alliegances from papers and tv programs that they once accepted uncritically.

Yours,

Tony Currie

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