Media Bias Example

Here a really good example of media with different biases spinning the same story different ways:

The Justice Department's decision to drop almost all of its investigations into CIA torture was headlined like this on Democracy Now!: "Justice Dept Drops 99 of 101 Cases Against CIA."

At the New York Times (7/1/11), though, the glass was 2 percent full: "U.S. Widens Inquiries Into 2 Jail Deaths."

The Supercommittee has failed

In late November the supercommittee, which had been appointed to create a plan that would effect a 1.2 trillion dollar budget cut, announced that it had failed.  This means that in 2013 the automatic budget cuts that were agreed of previously will take place. 


Source is here

And in local news...

Former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson has formed a new political party called the Justice Party and plans to run for president because he doesn't like the way Obama and the democrats are running the country.

He is against the current wars, sympathizes with Occupy Wall Street issues, and supports socialized health care.  It's an extreme left ideology, but it is always interest to compare the extreme left and right to see if they can agree on anything, such as, in this case, how stupid our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are.


(Some of the comments on this story are pretty humorous too.)

Democracy Now!

If you have wondered why I like Democracy Now so much, in spite of its socialist worldview, Tuesday's show was very good. 

Among other things, they reported on the National Defence Authorization Act, which would effectively extend the definition of what’s considered the U.S. military’s battlefield to anywhere in the world, even the United States, and require anyone even suspected of terrorist activity in any way to be turned over to the military, which can detain them indefinitely without charge or trial.  This bill has already passed the House and Senate and is waiting for the president to veto or sign it.  One of the authors off this provision ran for president in 2008.

They also had an update on the situation in Egypt.  I've always been extremely impressed with their coverage of Egypt.  Their (former) producer is a well-connected Egyptian citizen and has now moved back to Egypt and occasionally does stories updating the situation, like this one.

Here is a few articles I found interesting

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=18299091&title=dog-shoots-man
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/ct-scans-help-researchers-perfect-replicas-of-stradivarius-violins/
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/is-social-networking-the-ultimate-lost-and-found-tool/

Will we ever leave Afghanistan?

We have been in Afghanistan since October 2001.  During this time many US soldiers have died fighting the war on terror, which being impossible to win makes this war pointless.  There have been several times when people realized that either the war was pointless or stupid and have wanted to get out.  One of these times was when Bush was President, but instead of listening to the people Bush sent more troops.  Recently a plan has been put into place to remove 33,000 American troops, about 1/3, from Afghanistan and to get all the troops out in 2014.  Will this actually happen?  I do not know; I hope it will but I am inclined to believe that the Government will find an excuse to stay.  

Here is the Source for the latter part (the removal of the troops).