[Diogenes]

Those claiming here that Fox news are lying bastards are probably going to be equaled by the number of people here claiming that NPR leans left. As objectively as I can observe, the real outliers (far to the left) are the entire NBC/MSNBC set of stations and Newsweek (which is about to go under anyway). Among ABC and CBS, I think the only valuable sources are 60 minutes (which can lean left) and CBS Sunday Morning (which isn't hard news, but is informative and entertaining).

Again, in my opinion, NPR <i>leans</i> left. Fox news <i>leans</i> right. And if you want to watch the NEWS programming on Fox, then it is usually accurate as opposed to the OPINION programming on Fox like Glen Beck and O'Reilly.

Surprisingly enough, the most worldly, unbiased, informed and thorough daily news sources are the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal. Unfortunately, both of them use some combination of pay-for-service access - which changes regularly as the newspaper industry figures it out. They're both very close to centered, although the editorial boards lean left and right respectively. The big difference, however, is that both also give voice to dissenting opinions (where appropriate - on the OPINION pages) and publish well-thought-out, if contrary, letters to the editor.

Some of the other commenters are right - you need to take a look at multiple sources and discern for yourself not only where they sit on the political spectrum, but also the percentage of news to bullshit each chooses to publish.

[spamizbad]

> (far to the left) are the entire NBC/MSNBC set of stations and Newsweek

If you think NBC is far-left then you probably don't understand the left.

Far to the left is Socialist Worker. MSNBC is basically a mish-mash of bog-standard (American) liberal populists and analysts.

This is mostly new for MSNBC, because in 2001-2004, MSNBC was one of the biggest boosters of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, with Scarborough and Carlson headlining the prime-time opinion shows. As soon as the American public lost interest in the culture war and turned against interventionist foreign policy, they started staffing up liberals.

I also disagree with FT Op-Ed leaning left. Being a socially-permissive capitalist doesn't make you a lefty.

[cgranade]

Those claiming that Fox News are lying bastards (such as myself, though I didn't use "bastards" originally) likely are doing so because the evidence is on our side. On Fox, there is no division between the opinion and news programming, and both are riddled with so many outright lies that it is an insult to journalists to apply the word "news." To then equate that total butchering of facts with an upfront and honest ideological bias such as those espoused by Olbermann and Maddow (whom I am assuming you mean when you refer to MSNBC, as they don't really have very many liberals at all) is no more than false equivocation. Liberal-leaning watchdog groups such as Media Matters (http://mediamatters.org/) do a damn fine job of documenting and citing evidence of Fox's lies, and so I will not get into it here. Rather, my point is that there is a huge gulf between having two or three liberal hosts of fact-based shows and having an entire channel twist and abuse facts into subservience to the Republican/Tea Party.

[MikoD]

Despite all of the conflicting research around the TP, the one thing that I'm fairly sure of is that 100% of them watch the Fox News & Entertainment.

[mkramlich]

upvoted you to counter-act what I think is a rather strong right/Fox/Repub segment among HN readers (I think, based on activity I've seen so far)