October 21, 2008 (modified at a later date)

I enjoy watching the O'Reilly Factor. I think that although Bill O'Reilly stands for conservative principles, he criticizes both parties when he feels they are wrong, and he tries to balance his program with equal numbers of conservative and liberal guests.

O'Reilly claims that MSNBC, and its affiliate NBC, have determined to take a hard turn to the left. Evidence of this can be seen in the September hiring of Rachel Maddow. Maddow was given her own show (weekday primetime) on MSNBC. She comes from the ultra-liberal Air America radio program.

I have heard that CNN is left-leaning in their presentation of the news as well. However, to their credit, they did host the Glenn Beck show which presented a conservative view. It aired 2 times each week-day evening. Just last week CNN dropped the Glenn Beck show. Why? I believe it is because he did not speak favorably enough of Senator (Democratic Presidental hopeful) Obama.

Fox News tends to be more conservative, and some might say they lean toward the Republican party. In October, Mike Huckabee joined the Fox News network with his own show (weekend primetime). Huckabee states clearly that he is a McCain supporter, and works to elect and re-elect Republican candidates.

Recently I spent a week watching network news programs, ABC, NBC and CBS. I got the feeling that all of them were very critical of Governor Sarah Palin. Maybe I'm just imagining it, but I can hardly watch them at all now without thinking they are promoting an agenda.

I've also listened to a little bit of PBS and CSPAN. I'd have to say that they hold liberal views.

I think television news programs stack the deck against conservative candidates. (I know conservative radio programs outnumber liberal ones; I don't know by what margin, but I think it's a large one.) However, if I had to estimate how many people get their news from TV rather than radio, I think that might be a HUGE margin.

So with the news networks stacked as follows:

Liberal	Conservative
MSNBC	FOX
CNN
PBS
CSPAN
ABC
NBC
CBS

I wonder who has the better chance of getting elected November 4th.

Bias in Television News

Will Television News Help to Elect Barack Obama?

Other Articles