One story... lots of versions.
I do love how different media outlets report the same story.On President Obama's budget plans:
Washington Post - "Obama's budget proposals would push deficit to $1.75T
New York Times - "Obama plans major shift in spending"
MSNBC - "Deficit soars in Obama budget"
Fox News - "Height of Audacity"
This is one of the things I find refreshing about America and American media. Views are disparate and they cater for different tastes - Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative, hawk and dove.
Would be nice if we had that here...
1 comments:
Are you kidding? Melanie Phillips is our Coulter/Limbaugh and that's more than enough of that.
Channel 4 & the BBC still do better than the virtually ignored NPR & the slightly better PBS, although you have to sift through the garbage to find the quality.
But its a blessing that we don't have that kind of partisan negativity in our media. Well maybe not a blessing, as a liberal I believe if there's a market for it it has a right to exist, but it is an indication that our political culture is not that bitter. Incidentally, its that polarising corruption of political debate that Obama condemns, as you referred to in your last post, in 'The Audacity of Hope'.
If you want, you can find in the British media, opinions as diverse, disparate as you put it, as Phillips, Polly Toynbee, David Aaronovitch, Julie Burchill, Christopher Hitchens, George Monbiot, Naomi Klein and Richard Littlewood. None of those high profile commentators are renowned for pulling their punches.
I disagree with a number of them. I hate one with the fire of a thousand suns. But I freely admit (that notable exception aside) that they all engage in constructive debate that is often emotional or polemic but doesn't, usually, seek to attack the other side of that debate with distortions & perversions of their arguments.
Political commentators like this wouldn't allow a "Swiftboat" style attack ad here. Fox News in the US repeated it, promoted it, begged for more of it.
I don't call that refreshing.
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