Speed Daemon

Not now; we have Reagan-era deregulation to thank for that.

I got into television broadcasting while I was still in college, and so I took the unusual step of supplementing my electrical engineering course work by taking classes at a nearby college that trained people to be TV producers, directors and so forth. Not only did I get a more rounded education than I would have at IIT's Armour College of Engineering, I got to take a course that was all about FCC rule-making, its history and the reasons why America needs sober oversight of the Fourth Estate. Believe me, that was a real eye-opener, especially in light of the systematic dismantling of FCC regulation directly afterwards.

I know all too well that the sheer expense of getting all of the licenses for a TV station, purchasing the equipment and hiring people competent to install and operate that equipment alone is so enormous that the onlt people who can afford to get into that kind of business are extremely wealthy ones. And without any regulatory body or public will to keep the "news" honest, it's only natural that the news media that can "shout the loudest" has become beholden to the extremely wealthy people who own and operate the stations and the networks behind them.

Notice that this hegemony leaves only ten Watt college radio stations that reach only a few blocks as the only possible "liberal media". And IME, college stations don't do much news.

No, FOX News (and I say that with a ten pound salt lick) is owned by Rupert Murdoch's media Empire, and NBC is owned by NBCUniversal. As for "MS", it's still MSNBC, CNBC and so forth.

If you're trying to imply that MSNBC is in the same class as the FOX "News" cable channel, I couldn't agree less. First of all, MSNBC does hard news, and that news arm is as good as journalism in the US gets these days. The political commentary/opinion shows are presented as such on MSNBC, and MSNBC has never been seen giving any political party carte blanche access to their programming, as FOX has. What FOX has slapped the "News" label on does not meet the standard of journalism, but does fit the definition of propaganda closely.

PBS NewsHour may or may not be "the closest". Considering that it is supported by large corporate donors and targeted at an upper class audience, on one hand it appears to be relatively neutral. OTOH its extremely limited scope of reporting and emphasis on feel-good news makes it biased in an entirely different way. I call it "ivory tower news" because of this bias. The people in my life who watch PBS NewsHour and receive little else for news tend to be well-off and disinterested in getting involved in social issues that their money can keep them insulated from.