A Letter to a Limbaugh listening, Drudge reading friend

Your home page is the Drudge report. Your car radio is tuned to Limbaugh.

I love you too much to let you know exposing yourself to this kind of misinformation, propaganda, and outright hate speech.

One of my degrees is in journalism, so I have the background and experience to help you learn how to get the real facts, not those hand-picked by any individual or corporation.

I am not pleased with the state of all journalism myself now. It used to require two different sources to state something as fact, but somewhere along the way, someone merely spouting a "rumor of the day" (their actual term for it during an election), got reported as fact, not rumor. The corporate influence on news has been destructive, too, with corporate interests guiding news reporting. From major corporations such as GE owning NBC, to self-avowed right-wing Australian media magnate Rupert Murdoch owning Fox news--and now the Wall Street Journal, when corporations skew the news it's part of fascism.

My friend, I know you that you think most major sources are part of the "liberal media" but the facts show no such thing. If they were really liberal they would not have been complicit with Bush during the first 6 years of his presidency--or even the initial election.

If you look at the coverage you will see, in fact, that the so called "media elite" were highly supportive of GWBush until his poll ratings fell so low that the media felt safe pointing out his errors.

Obviously, anchormen like Keith Obermann are overtly liberal in their views--but they are vastly in the minority, given the rise of Australian Rupert Murdoch's empire, including Fox and the WSJ, which has a corporate mandate to be right-wing propaganda tools (I know you will argue with me on this, but you can save your breathe--I know journalism, and Fox is not journalism, it's propaganda).

Murdoch's stated goal is not news, but to forward his personal viewpoints and those that will make him the most money. That is the definition of propaganda.

You're right in saying that Drudge points to a lot of sources. But given that he has a specific political slant, he picks and chooses his stories, which is fine, but you don't get the full picture this way--or by viewing the news through any other single person or corporation's point of view.

With the internet there's no longer any excuse to get your news exclusively from either US or corporate media outlets.

By reading sources across the net I knew before the US invaded Iraq that the WMD documents were forged. The absolute proof of this was available online. Because of my experience in typography I could tell they were obvious fakes. so I'm sure someone in the CIA must have figured it out, too (I would hope they're smarter than I am). But somehow the major media outlets--in the US--didn't. They did in the UK, very clearly and specifically.

So I get my news from around the world and it's fascinating to see what news outlets that don't have a vested interest in a story say, because they are obviously less biased.

====

the bottom line is that to get a real view of "facts" rather than opinion (which has masqueraded as news since the start of newswriting, because reporters are people and their opinions get mixed in--much more so in recent years than in the past), you need to look at a variety of sources from around the world, including non-corporate ones.

====

Finally, I want to say that I respect and uphold your right to your political opinions.

You have firm beliefs as I have mine--and that's good.

I just don't think it's good for anyone to regularly expose themselves to people with messages of intolerance or even hate.

You're a loving person, and Limbaugh is not a healthy influence on you, or your family. It's not funny, it's hate. All Coulter is another negative influence--not funny, just hate.

Yes, there are liberal hate-mongers, too (they don't get much air time but they're there). I don't listen to them. I never have.

I did not hate Bush or Cheney personally. I hated some of their actions. Yet when I listen to right wing talk radio it's so often personal attacks on people they don't like, rather than on their actions. And one of the reasons I don't listen to it that often is because I so rarely hear positive plans of action of what they feel would better the situation and the world. "Everybody's a critic," the old line goes, but if you don't work on positive plans, you don't move in positive directions.

I just hope that you will try, whenever possible, to listen to Republicans who have POSITIVE messages. The positive messages may be "we don't think this is good because..." or "someone is wrong because" but they HAVE A REAL PLAN, not just an attack, and they deliver it way that's NOT personal, nasty, destructive, mean-spirited, or negative.

You deserve better than that, because you are better than that.