This WND story is paranoid. I'll tell you why. Look at your friends at FOX. They use AP and Reuters wire reports all the time. Why? Because it saves them tons of money. They can employ fewer reporters and still cover all the news. Wire services also save them the need to have expensive overseas news bureaus. Pay attention to FOX's international news coverage. It is most often from wire reports. At least much more often than CNN's news.
This is a business decision by FOX/News Corp., not a news decision. When it comes to U.S. politics, where FOX knows its bread is buttered and its viewers/readers actually give a damn, they more often report their own stories. But even here, if the news topic is not "controversial" (read: exploitable for right-wing propaganda purposes) then FOX usually goes with the wire reports.
If George Soros is funding the AP (which seems odd/unbelievable to me), then you know what? Let him. You can't stop him. It's a free country with free enterprise and he can do what he wants with his $ billions. Apparently FOX owner Rupert Murdoch chooses to save his money for things other than reporting the news, which is not such a profitable venture. More power to him. It's much more profitable to print/broadcast opinions about the news, which is why commentary is interwoven into just about all news coverage on FOX tv, to the point where sometimes you don't know if they're reporting a story or commenting on it.
Speaking more broadly, I marvel at how conservatives point to the New York Times, Washington Post, and LA Times as examples of the ubiquitous lib'rul media (which is a debatable claim, but I'll let it pass), but they never mention the conservative Cincinnati Enquirer, New York Post, Washington Times, or Dallas Morning News. Why? Because outside those local news markets, people don't read those conservative local papers. (The conservative Wall Street Journal and its sister publication Financial Times are probably the only real exceptions, with substantial national and global readership.) Whereas outside the NYC, DC, and LA news markets, people do read that local "liberal" news -- all over the world, in fact.
So... what you're really complaining about, when you think about it, is that news consumers in the global marketplace of ideas seems to prefer "liberal" news from America's more liberal coastal capitals over news produced by America's smaller Midwestern cities or fringe conservative coastal papers. Anyway, I don't know what grounds you have to complain. You live in a conservative locality, and your local paper caters to that political preference. You should be a happy consumer. Yet you're not. Why? Because you regard news not as information but primarily as propaganda (just admit it) with the power to persuade (read: bamboozle) people into accepting a certain world view. I mean, your mind is made up, nothing's going to change it, even if George Soros buys your local paper tomorrow. You're worried about what information other people are consuming, because you want your side to reach them and "win." If the other side's worldview seems to dominate, that upsets you, because your side's propaganda is losing its voice in the market.
In other words, if you think the U.S. media is biased, then you have nobody to blame but the free market, which you say you adore.
I wish all you laissez-faire Republicans would stop whining about the mythical lib'rul media. You've got your propaganda from FOX, talk radio, Drudge, Townhall.com, WND, etc., which filter out for you most of the information you don't want to know. And you've got a cowardly, corporate-owned mainstream media that jumps at the sight of its own shadow. Obviously, you're finding myriad ways to stay misinformed, and you're smugly satisfied with your level of un-knowledge. Rejoice.
Your only alternative is to throw your free-market principles out the window and endorse some kind of Fairness Doctrine. So which is it gonna be?
By Joseph Farah
August 13, 2009 | WorldNetDaily
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