THO of portland, ME Reverb - just out of curiosity, where did you get that info on Obama? He was raised Christian, though not devoutly so. Went to a private, secular high school in Hawaii, attended Occidental, Columbia and Harvard after high school. When were those four years at the madrassah? I suspect that you got some misinformation at one of those objective, fair and balanced sources you must use and are now passing it off as fact. Your trained eye is jaundiced, Reverb. Ludicrously so.

By the way, the mainstream media doesn't crow about Obama's success despite his race. That in itself would be racist, don't you think? What they talk about, as with Hilary Clinton and Mitt Romney, is the novelty of the candidacies.report abuse

Reverb of Haverhill, MA Talk radio doesn't claim to be neutral, network news (Dan Rather) does. The liberal bias is subtle, hard to spot to the untrained eye. It is as much in what they don't report vs. what they do. Consider how the media has this love affair with Barack Obama, then compare how they treat him vs. Mitt Romney. With Obama it is always a positive story about his upbringing, his charisma, his speaking ability, his success despite his race, etc. With Mitt its mostly, well he's a Mormom, they aren't very popular with the Christain right, and then they show some poll about how a certain % of people are reluctant to vote for a Mormon. So then where is the coverage about Obama and his Muslim roots? Where is the poll about people's feelings about voting for someone was raised Muslim? The big story about how he attended a Madrassa for 4 years? Why is Mitt's Mormonism a story, but not Obama's affiliation with Islam? I'll tell you why, to the media Mitt is just another rich, conservative religious white guy, and Obama is a young, liberal politician of color who speaks well. And the media loves diversity (by skin color only though), so they fawn all over him. If you think the mainstream press gives Mitt the same treatment that they give Obama, then you just aren't paying attention.
Another example, I was reading the PPH back in Dec. In the front page section they had those short little news stories about events in the USA. In one there was this story about some politician who was in some trouble in Ohio, in a separate story there was one about some pol. from Nevada who did something bad. In the former, it was prominently mentioned that the guy was a Republican. In the latter, there was no mention of party affiliation. I had to look it up on the web that the guy in Nevada was a Dem. Those kind of things happen all the time, you just have to look for them. Though if you agree with the liberal point of view, you don't notice it because it seems normal to you.report abuse

THO of portland, ME Reverb, I don't need your blithering compare-and-contrast tome on newscasts and talk radio. It's your fellow dimwit, the one who calls himself derek taxpayer, who brought up right-wing talk radio as an alternative to mainstream news sources. Not only is his argument FUBAR (show me all this bias that exists in the mainstream news reporting or shut up about it), but he (and really, Reverb, we know he's not alone on these pages) seems to use right-wing talk radio as his news source. Mike Savage, whoever that Nazi might be, is his Dan Rather, Re. Check out his dopey post and see for yourself.report abuse

Leon Richard of Farmington, ME Typical Liberal... "It's not FAIR! It's not FAIR! It's not FAIR!"

Obstetricians and Nurse-Midwives should wear surgical caps... embroidered with the following credo...

"Young men and women, LIFE IS NOT FAIR! GET USED TO IT!"

It's not fair... what the hell? I suppose it's offensive too. Right?

Well, show me in the constitution where you've got some inalienable right to go through life unoffended. And that everything will be fair... ROTFLMAO gimme a break... you're killing me.

Fair is equal opportunity. Get some radio station to provide you with a microphone and shoot your mouth off too, if you think you can get anyone to listen to you. I'm pretty sure the unemployed liberal welfare mongers out there will tune right in to hear how they're deprived and put upon... pump out some more babies and we'll take some more money from those conservative running dog capitalist pigs and give it to you and your brood. Conservative republicans all have jobs and work... I have no idea when they would ever have time to listen to a radio show...report abuse

tiredtaxpaye of central, ME The left cares nothing about fairness.........
I urge all true conservatives to check out www.teamtancredo
www.goduncan08.com
for a real conservative to support in 2008 ................report abuse

4commonsense of WTVL, ME M. Tardiff writes--"As for right-wing talk radio being "Fair and Balanced," Howie Carr calls Democrats "Moon Bats." OK, where's the Democratic response to Republican "leadership" on issues such as Iraq?" I don't recall ever hearing Howie Carr claim to be fair and balanced.

You are joking though right? Fairness doctrine? ABC, CBS, NBC,CNN, MSNBC, the LA Times, the Boston Globe, the NY Times, Blethen family papers, and on and on and on? You really are joking about the "fairness doctrine" right? That's a good one.report abuse

Cecil Gray of bingham, ME Any fairness statement, or Act, should prevent the likes of Rupert Murdoch from buying everything in sight. Thusly we will be stuck with his doctrine, or anyone else's, and fairness, or just simple facts on current events will disappear. As Papa Bush said," You can fool some of the people some of the time, and that's the ones we are concentrating on." Needless to say Karl Rove took it mainstream and on the major networks to boot, who are owned by the great "liberal" corporations such as General, get rich on the war, Electric.report abuse

Greg of Skowhegan, ME Again we come to another difference between conservatives and liberals.
Conservative, aka "right wing radio" makes no secret of the fact they are broadcasting opinions on the issues of the day. The main stream media call themselves "journalists" and are hoping we do not notice their liberal views and agenda. They will not and do not declare themselves, their constant editorializing of the issues in the guise of news reporting is no longer fooling many Americans.
Liberal radio talk shows have been tried, not successfully and have gone off the air.
The Left's solution, as always, is the have the law demand what the marketplace will not support.report abuse

Reverb of Haverhill, MA continued from previous post...
That is just like saying that the Boston Globe or the PPH is biased as a news source because of what they say on their opinion pages. They are allowed to have their opinions on current events, but they are supposed to present the news objectively. Now I think it is pretty obvious that the Globe and PPH do have a liberal bias, but that is due to the way they report the news, not what is on their op-ed pages.

Another thing, the “Fairness Doctrine” is an infringement of the 1st amendment. You know, “Congress shall make no law…”? They should not be in the business telling radio stations what kind of content they must have. It should be market driven, if people listen and it makes the radio company money, then so be it. There are enough news sources out there that people know where to go to get news if they don’t like what they hear on talk radio. If people are too stupid to tell what is op-ed/entertainment vs. real news, that is their problem. The Dems/liberals just want to put right wing talk radio out of business with this asinine law because their views can’t compete in the radio marketplace. That is what this is all about.
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Reverb of Haverhill, MA THO-
You obviously don’t understand the difference between a “news” program vs. an “opinion” program. There is a significant difference. For example, Bill O’Reilly’s show is not a straight news show, it is opinion/commentary (and entertainment) on some current events. So it is OK if he is biased to one side, it is expected. The there is the Fox News hour or whatever it is called before that with Shepard Smith. That is a straight news show, you don’t hear his opinions on the stories like you do with O’Reilly. All networks have their own versions of both straight news and opinion/commentary shows, just like Fox. Dan Rather got canned because he was the anchor of a straight news show that presented something that was basically fabricated; there was no credible source or substance to back up his story. He is supposed to be a true journalist and therefore objective and thorough in his reporting. In the case where he got fired, he was neither objective nor thorough, and he got canned because his bosses thought he couldn’t be trusted anymore. Right wing talk radio is not straight news either. Limbaugh’s show is opinion/commentary/entertainment, not straight news. Same with most talk radio shows. They are not held to the same journalistic standards that straight news is, that’s why they can do what they do. That most talk radio shows are ”right wing” is a function of the market, not some kind of preferential monopoly that the government allows. Remember Air America? It failed, because nobody was listening. It just so happens that the demographic that is most likely to listen to radio has more conservative than liberal views. So you can’t compare network news with talk radio, and what happened to Rather vs. Howie Carr, it is apples and oranges. continued to next post... report abuse