Throwing things at CNN

Why do I let it get to me? Whenever I go to Canada, my only source for news is CNN. Even knowing that CNN is the United States' modern equivalent to the Soviet Pravda, I watch anyway. Eventually after awhile I can't stand it anymore and turn it off or turn to something else.

This week I decided to try an experiment. On the news programs, whenever they did a segment on politics and the presidential race, I decided to try keeping track of some basic questions:

Did they spend more time on Democrats or Republicans?
Did they present any usable information about candidates' stands on issues?
Did they tend to be positive or negative in reporting about each candidate?

Here's what I gathered, between their morning program with John Roberts and Kieren Chetra (sp?) and Wolf Blitzer's program in the evening.

From a time perspective, they spend more time talking about Hillary and Barack than about McCain. My estimate on the ratio is about 4 to 1.

Issues? No. I learned nothing about any candidates' positions on issues. With the two Democrats all they talked about the fighting between the Obama and Clinton campaigns and fretted about how it was bad for the Democrat party. I laughed in one segment where they had all their "policital analysts" on, not one of them a conservative, and the "analysts" let slip more than once an "us" or "our" when referring to the Democrat party.

When they talk about the flaps over Barack's pastor or Hillary's big Bosnia lie, they are mostly focused on urging the campaigns and the rest of the media to shut up about both. They fret openly that the big fights on the Democrat side might open the door to a McCain victory, which they have made clear is their vision of Hell on Earth.

Interestingly, the only policy stuff I got to hear was a sound bite from McCain. He was talking about why he feels it is so important not to abandon Iraq at this critical time. I thought, "wait for it..." and they didn't disappoint. They brought in their "panel", the most vocal of whom was their own communist curmudgeon Cafferty, who pretty much just made fun of McCain's stance and denounced him as just another George W. Bush. With nobody even giving a thought to offering a counter argument to his rants.

Policy information about Obama and Clinton? None. Nada. Oh sure, platitudes like Obama's continued themes on "hope" and "change". And general vague statements about Hillary's wonderful plan to fix Healthcare. Nothing of substance.

No wonder Canadians have such a skewed view of the US. CNN being their only source for US news, they have no idea how badly CNN and their media cousins distort things, let alone that there are actually points of view on current events that strongly differ from those so carefully propagandized at CNN 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.