Mr Huesgen, I suggest that we take one newspaper, as a test case, and regulate it. I suggest we should start with The St. Louis, Post Dispatch.

Rule # 1. The PD Will not print any nonsensical letters from anyone in Berkeley.

I like your idea, I hope you do too.

Bill: First of all, I suggest you proofread your pieces before having them published; you have several grammatical errors. Second, you don’t have an understanding of how the media works. All media are in the sales business. They sell papers, they seek viewers or listeners to achieve ratings that equate into more advertising: more money. The days of fair, objective journalism is long gone. I teach communication at the collegiate level, and I can assure you that few young journalism students have aspirations of being defenders of the First Amendment. They are more interested in making a lot of money and being famous. Even Mizzou, one of the nation’s top J-schools, no longer pushes journalism. They tell students to be “communicators.”

Mr. Huesgen: Are you suggesting the citizens can or should provide oversight of the media? Where do you get such a bizarre idea? The FCC monitors the media, not John Q. Public. However, if citizens don\’t like the way the media do or do not report, they have the right and responsibility to stop supporting them. As an example, if you feel the SPD or local stations such as KMOV are not fair in their reporting - stop patronizing them. Don\’t watch their newscast; don\’t buy the paper or go the the website.
Aside from that, members of the public have no oversight.

We need someone to regulate the media from reporting unfavorable news.

Bill Huesgen:

“We need a change in leadership that will set a new step by step national and internal examination that brings all of us forward.”

That sounds like a line from a tentative Barack Obama nomination acceptance speech. It loses a bit of glitz when you understand that he’s spent 20 years doing the Electric Boogaloo at the hate speech services of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. You call that “forward?”

I like Johnh’s idea of starting with the PD which regularly filters the news it reports if it doesn’t fit their left-wing biased political agenda. On the other hand, I think they have done an exceptional job of leaving no stone unturned at exposing the Bush Administration. We have had no less than ten each of commentaries on Abu Garab and Valerie Plame, at the expense of totally ignoring many other topics they don’t want publicized.

There are several public interest research groups that monitor the media. Media Matters is one. The FCC as administered by the last several administrations, ESPECIALLY Bill Clinton has caved in to the deregulation and merger/consolidation of our airwaves. The very least we can do since “we the people” own and license the airwaves is to insure the diversity of viewpoints by limiting the number of stations any one corporation can own. The print media is less affected because of the pervasiveness of the internet. Radio though is the worst offender not only because of the small number of corporations that dominate it, but because radio can be utilized in more venues, such as work, school, driving, rural areas without TV, etc., that TV cannot.

That said I expect to hear from the right-wing, Freemarketeers, republicans, and libertarians in a fit of name-calling screeds to follow. Those new to these blogs should google Media Matters and its origins, before listening to the above. Their track record for exposing garbage is phenomenal.

Rich Brown:

“Those new to these blogs should google Media Matters and its origins, before listening to the above. Their track record for exposing garbage is phenomenal.”

It’s apparent that you prefer expositions from gender confused whacked out loopy turncoats like David Brock, bouncing on George Soros’ knee.

The Nation is an extreme left progressive magazine and even they have little good to say about Brock and Media Matters.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020527/hitchens

Iconic Sludge-Hitchens hasn’t written for The Nation in quite some time and is not well regarded by other Nation staffers. The following is a quote from an article on Hitchens in Wikipedia-”Hitchens and The Nation staff

Among his most severe critics is one-time colleague and friend Alexander Cockburn, a weekly contributor to The Nation. On August 20, 2005, Cockburn wrote:
What a truly disgusting sack of shit Hitchens is [— a] guy who called Sid Blumenthal one of his best friends and then tried to have him thrown into prison for perjury; a guy who waited [until] his friend Edward Said was on his death bed before attacking him in the Atlantic Monthly; a guy who knows perfectly well the role Israel plays in US policy but who does not scruple to flail Cindy Sheehan as a LaRouchie and Anti-Semite because, maybe, she dared mention the word Israel.[17]

While the article you reference by Hitchens refers to David Brock’s book Blinded by the Right and is accurate in some of his description of Brock’s character flaws as a republican operative. The FACTS ARE UNDISPUTED, in his book. Blinded by the Right exposed exactly how the republican spin machine operated at the time and how it was funded.

The truly great thing about Media Matters and something you make no effort to dispute is that they record everything from the right-wing pundits like Gush Faux Pas, Sheer InHannity, Glenn Dreck, and Boil ORightly etc.
and use their own recorded words to show exactly where they are lying. Something you can’t or don’t bother to dispute.

So anyone that bothers to go a little deeper into the research will be able to get a fairer picture than the broad brush of bigotry that you paint with.

Mr. Prater:

You’re absolutely correct about young journalists today. I graduated from J-school a generation ago now and things have changed to an extent that would have seemed unfathomable to me then. I heard an interview on NPR sometime back where a journalism professor in California said many of his students actually accept as true, without question, any information they find on the web. It’s sad for our society. It’s not as if we really have a democracy (we have a plutocracy), but at least we have the facade of one. But even that facade is only kept intact by the press keeping the public informed with accurate and pertinent information. Personally, I think the “public journalism” movement of heavily favoring positive news has been pushed too much, but it sounds as if Kenrick favors it.

As for “A Centrist,” I’m tired of hearing that old saw about the media being liberal. I guarantee, if you polled the owners of this nation’s radio and television stations and newspapers, you’d find the majority of them — and I would not doubt a large majority — to be conservative and Republican. Then, you’d have to ask why they would hire a lot of liberal reporters and allow news with a liberal slant to get most of the airtime and space. But I doubt you’d like the answer. It’s because news with a liberal slant, overall, is sexier and sells better. It all comes down to profit today. Even a lot of editors — as toadies to the publishers — tend to pay more attention to the bottom line than standing behind their reporters and what is right, which is to get the right story, correct and as objective as humanly possible.