...

  You know, to some, that might not be much different than the media now.

I wouldn't consider this liberal but more of the conservative side of things.  At first, I bristled at the "religious fundamentalist" tag because I consider myself one.  I think you mean more of the "extreme religious fundamentalist" type which I'm not. 

Remember fundamental just means "basic."  I believe we need to get back to basics. 

My youngest son is an editor making some pretty good inroads very quickly and at such a young age.  He just changed jobs from VA to IA receiving two job offers.  He's thinking of keeping both.  One fulltime and the other partime.  He called last night saying he might be interested in buying a newspaper.  I think he would agree with much of what you put here. 

He said we should see what comes off the AP wire.  We have to have access to this wire to see it and it costs the paper thousands of dollars to get this access.  I think he said it's the greatest expense of the newspaper.  Anyhow he said what comes across is totally biased.  It's very clear that what comes off this wire is very liberal biased.

Thank God for Fox News. 

I don't see the mainstream media being very sympathetic to minorities or biased against fascists or religious fundamentalists.

When did you see the last CNN report that referred to northern Africa as "Tamazgha" (the Berber name for it) rather than the more often used "Arab Maghreb"? The media are very clearly biased against the natives and supportive of Arab imperialism.

Similarly the media still use the word "Palestine", the pagan Roman imperialist name, for the land that its natives for thousands of years call "Eretz Israel". They are clearly biased against the Jewish ethnic minority in the middle east.

When was the last time you saw the mainstream media refer to Iran as something other than an "islamic republic" as if the religious fundamentalism forced upon Iranians by its dictators is "Islam"?

Or when exactly do the mainstream media point out that the PLO was founded by Nazi sympathisers and former allies of Nazi Germany during the Holocaust? Instead the PLO are celebrated as "moderates", aapparently a mainstream media word for "Nazi".

How often do the mainstream media defend a Kurdish or Assyrian position in Iraq against the Arab rulers' interests?

How often do the mainstream media point out that while Sudan is ruled by an Arab government it is, in fact, a country of mostly Nilo-Saharan (black African) peoples living under Arab rule?

No, my friend, ethnic minorities do not have a great place in tha mainstream media, and unless they have a powerful lobby in the west, the mainstream media will ignore such ethnic groups.

But fascists and religious fundamentalists get a pass all the time.

Or why would the mainstream media not constantly report that Syria practices an apartheid system which takes away the rights of its Kurdish population?

Do you have any proof of this?

That or they're just utterly ignorant? You know, not everything is one big plot, or one big bias. In fact, I find it startling that someone of your intelligence doesn't realize it; in my opinion, you let your bias run amock. I honestly cannot think of a time when you've said something positive about anything Arab. Maybe I missed it, I'll admit that.

It's common knowledge, but I applaud your newly-found sense of questioning what you hear.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Amin_al-Husayni

He was an Arab leader in "Palestine" and Iraq who collaborated with the Germans and helped forge the alliance between Iraq and Germany during World War II. He was unsuccessful in his attempt to drive out all the Jews or kill them and to expand the Holocaust into the Arab world.

His Egyptian nephew finally founded the PLO. He is still considered a hero by supporters of the PLO.

Egypt's dictator Gamal Nasser was another ally of Hitler who already attempted to take over Egypt and join Nazi Germany and fascist Italy during World War II but did not succeed until 1952.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamal_Nasser#Second_World_War

His support for Arab nationalists in "Palestine" was crucial and the PLO developed right from that nice set of people.

I assume a lot of it is stupidity. But that doesn't excuse the obvious bias or the validity of attempts to point it out. There is also nothing wrong with being biased. But one shouldn't call oneself a "news source" if one publishes opinions.

As for saying positive things about Arabs, I think you are confusing my opinion of Arab nationalists (which is similar to my opinion of German Nazis) and my opinion of Arabs and Arab culture (which is similar to my opinion of Germans and German culture, which I am a part of).

I have written a lot of positive things about Arabs and, as most Christians here will probably remember, about Muhammed and the Quran. None of that has anything to do with my opinion of Arab nationalism.

Here are a few articles I have written about Arabs or Arab countries which were completely positive:

https://forums.joeuser.com/331877

http://citizenleauki.joeuser.com/article/332239/Israels_Muslim_Friends_III

http://citizenleauki.joeuser.com/article/342378/Most_interesting_Arab_blogger

http://citizenleauki.joeuser.com/article/342696/Everybody_loves_Hamas_except_those_who_know_them

Hmmm, interesting.

I stand correct; my apologies.

The only problem is unchecked and ignorant bias.

Did you know that Hitler's "Mein Kampf" is a best seller in the Arab world? Or that Hamas refer to and quote the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the charter? Those people believe that stuff. They are like the Germans used to be, only without the ability to project military force and outproduce their neighbours.

I don't think so. While it isn't a vast conspiracy, it is pretty clear that the people who run the big news organisations (Reuters, AP etc.) have an agenda. Ignorance can only explain so much.

However, I also think that today's journalists thrive on having a job which they assume makes them fighters for freedom and automatic experts on everything.

I think it's more accurate to say that people who become journalists tend to have a social agenda which causes them to become journalists. That social agenda inevitably leads to bias, through what probably has a proper name but for convenience I'll call the embedded effect. Basically, abysmal pay for difficult working conditions is the result of a calling, so most successful journos tend to have zeal for their causes. Disinterested observers don't become journos - there's more money in management training.

Secondly, we have the agency issue, which even your outlets would have to cope with. Apart from a handful of state media outlets, which have their own quirks, most news orgs are dying. There just isn't enough money to pay for a good journalistic pool at your average broadsheet, which leads to an overreliance on agencies. So you get hundreds of papers worldwide running the same story. Agency journos tend to be good, so quality or accuracy is rarely an issue, but it means there's no breadth of coverage, which is the real problem. In the past you could rely on a difference in reports from the NY Times, the Guardian, The Times of London, the Washington Post, etc. Those days are nearly over.

I did know that, but I am staying a long ways away from implying they are anything like the Nazi's. (Knowing there is a large difference between Germans, and Nazi Germans...)

Mmm, I would disagree, but who knows.

Yes, but why would that social agenda always include support for Arab imperialism, disdain for Africans and Jews, and a complete and utter disinterest in any world event that cannot be blamed on America or Israel?

I agree that journalists are fighting for a "cause". But I do believe that unless that cause is truth, journalism is not the right field for those people. Journalists are supposed (and claim) to report the facts. That doesn't agree with having a cause.

I on the other hand am no journalist, do not claim to report just the facts, and have a clear bias towards Zionism, towards support for all other ethnic minorities in the middle east, science, equal rights for men and women and homosexuals, religious freedom, and a certain level of capitalism.

Well, I already said that there is a clear difference, since the German Nazis were able to produce lots of stuff and had a great military. But other than that the only clear difference between the German Nazis and the Arab Nazis is that middle-eastern Jews were forwarned and able to defend themselves while European Jews were not.

Once someone reads Mein Kampf and screams "Death to the Jews!" the difference between him and a German Nazi is really academic, isn't it?

I'm either more or less cynical than you, I can't figure out which: I find there's very little human stupidity CAN'T explain.

I'm inclined to think that the media is easily manipulated and prone to group think rather than outright malicious, on the whole.

The most vicious journalists appear to be lone wolfs.

I can only really speak for my own country's press, but I can assure you that what you say is not the case here. There aren't many journos that share those features. Usually if they're interested in America/Israel (whether for or against) they tend to be negative about Arab imperialism. No one cares about Africa except for a sad story about human suffering, although occasionally you get something about how we should take in more African refugees. As for world events, most things covered don't tend to blame anyone as such. 

The EU elections though have been very concerning. The anti-Semitism of many successful candidates has been heavily played up in the Australian press. You may have something to really worry about over there, but as an Irishman you probably know more about that than me.

News isn't necessarily about truth. When I was working as a junior cadet my mentor used to tell me that the truth didn't matter a damn if I couldn't tell a good story. Sometimes journalists get carried away and report the story rather than the news, but in serious broadsheet journalism I think it's very rare.

Really? Can you point me to two examples where Arab imperialism is even mentioned?

It's a media myth. What in fact happened is that the European elections were won by conservative pro-Israel parties. The media here are already calling it a "protest vote".

The anti-Semitic parties, left and right, got very few votes, fewer than in the last elections.

Let's look at individual results.

Germany

Christian Democrats (the party of Prime Minister Angela Merkel, whom I would call reasonably philo-Semitic): 37.9%

Social Democrats (who have both pro-Israel and anti-Israel factions): 20.8

Green Party (who are very anti-Israel these days, in the name of pacifism, of course): 14

Liberal Democrats (who have an anti-Semitic branch but are mostly disinterested in the issue): 12

Socialists (who are mainly anti-Semitic but have a vocal pro-Israel camp these days): 8

Ireland

Pro-Treaty Conservatives: 29.1

Anti-Treaty Conservatives (aka Republicans): 24.1 (both are not anti-Semitic at all)

Labour: 13.9

Nationalists (who are anti-Semitic): 11.2

United Kingdom

Tories (not anti-Semitic): 27.7

UK Independence (they are anti-Europe but I haven't heard much else): 16.5

Labour (nobody knows what they are at the moment, Tony Blair was certainly no anti-Semite): 15.7

Liberal Democrats (probably are anti-Semitic): 13.7

Green (probably are): 8.6

British National and a few other nationalist parties (some of whom are anti-Semitic): less than 10