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[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Do you think if you keep repeating that I watch Fox people will believe it? You keep doing that and it's dumb. I'm happy to debate an issue with you, but that bitchy sort of stuff is tedious. You don't need to do it. So don't.

Now as to substance: Both Fox and MSNBC are news slanting machines. Maddow is a ridiculous cheerleader against anything and everything GOP. She was also a close friend of Roger Ailes (oh yes she was... look it up). He schooled her on how to be a media personality the same way he schooled the pundits at Fox. Lawrence O'Donnell at MSNBC is a completely biased bullshit artist. Strangely, Al Sharpton is probably one of then most honest pundits at MSNBC.

News is a product. It is aimed at siloed audiences. MSNBC slants for its audience, Fox slants for its audience. You'll never read it, but Taibbi actually challenges your flawed assertion that Fox is materially more full of shit than MSNBC in Hate, Inc.. He actually devotes a whole chapter to why Maddow is on the cover of the book next to Hannity, and he explains the methods by which MSNBC manipulates readers while appearing (largely to the credulous) to be a reputable news outlet.

The difference? MSNBC does indeed have more reverence for facts. They're much better at subtle spinning than Fox. Where Fox will misrepresent a fact flagrantly, MSNBC will carefully package facts that prove X as facts that prove Y.

Slanting the news is like pregnancy. Once you start doing it, you're in the liars' bucket. That one source does it more than another is worth noting. That one source does it better than another is worth noting. But if you believe MSNBC and Fox are further apart than they are aligned in their models and methods, you're in the sucker bucket. You're buying exactly what MSNBC is selling.

But don't take my word for it. Read Taibbi, or Greenwald, or Chomsky. I've been lucky, or perhaps unlucky, to have been exposed to the inside of cable news a lot over the past 15 years. What those authors, and many more like them, say about media manipulation of the masses rings true.

Your mind-numbingly repetitive criticism of the dishonest media would have more credibility if you were not an open and ardent defender of lying as, among other things, an important form of advocacy.