[Flipside]

In this particular case, I also wanted to point out how ridiculous and counterproductive the concept of "dangerous youth!" is.

Agreed, our youth are the biological product of the parent, and the phsychological product of the world they are bought into, societies with rigid, intolerant attitudes will produce people that are a mirror of that. If there were such a thing as 'evil youth', then the finger has to be pointed at the factors responsible for shaping that youth.

[General Battuta]

It's an open question as to whether American politics are actually growing more radical and polarized. The data I have available seem to suggest - IIRC - that there is definite and extreme polarization amongst the elites and the bare minority of the population that is politically active. I'm not sure right now whether that polarization spreads to the majority-moderate listless proles.

[Flipside]

I think the fight is really going on at the level of interaction with the system, for example, in the more 'polarised' states, there is a big argument about teaching creationism as a science. This is nothing really to do with the factuality of Creationism, never has been, it's about feet in doors, or to use the American term, the slippery slope.

I'll agree that it's not the whole of American society, but the problem is, in my opinion, a sensationalism-led media combined with personalities that are more than willing to provide that sensationalism, and a viewing public who, in reaction to this sensationalism, feel they are expected to adopt equally polarised views on the matter.

[Kosh]

I'm thinking our media, TV in particular, needs a major overhaul. Compared with what is was 10 years ago, it used to be that more often than not there were balanced and fairly sensible debates like Capital Gang. But now? Starting with Fox it just turned into pointless shouting matches. I'm saying Fox because they were the first to start this trend on TV and the other channels like CNN followed suit starting a race to the bottom. I'm not calling for regulation or anything like that, the root of the problem is that people are still watching it.

[Kolgena]

Are there any good news networks left in the USA? I can't think of any, but I also don't watch much TV, let alone TV from another country.

To be fair, Fox is freaking awesome to watch if you just want to see how stupid some things can get. Remember, Fox is NOT a news channel, it's registered under entertainment, which is why they're allowed to slip in some untruths.

[Scotty]

I get my news from here.  It's probably the least biased place for news I'm likely to find on the explored intarwebz.

[NGTM-1R]

Are there any good news networks left in the USA?

CNN is more or less straight with you, but a number of their reporters have an addiction to the sound of their own voice. (Wolf Blitzer, I'm looking at you.) The new Indian (that's Subcontinent, not Native American) guy CNN has is actually fit to stand in the same room as Ed Murrow and Walter Cronkite, however, and it doesn't get much better than that even outside the US.

[Kosh]

Are there any good news networks left in the USA?

CNN is more or less straight with you, but a number of their reporters have an addiction to the sound of their own voice. (Wolf Blitzer, I'm looking at you.) The new Indian (that's Subcontinent, not Native American) guy CNN has is actually fit to stand in the same room as Ed Murrow and Walter Cronkite, however, and it doesn't get much better than that even outside the US.

Fareed Zakaria is awesome, but from what I recall CNN was decidedly inferior to the BBC. Maybe that has changed in the last few years.

[General Battuta]

this is the bee bee ceee

[NGTM-1R]

Fareed Zakaria is awesome, but from what I recall CNN was decidedly inferior to the BBC. Maybe that has changed in the last few years.

Does the BBC have better than Fareed? Because that was the actual context.

[Flipside]

The BBC started going downhill when they started laying off people for being 'too old' to read the News. It meant that many of the most impartial and experienced News personalities left the BBC for not meeting the 'Glam-factor'. I sort of started going off the BBC at that point.

[Kosh]

Fareed Zakaria is awesome, but from what I recall CNN was decidedly inferior to the BBC. Maybe that has changed in the last few years.

Does the BBC have better than Fareed? Because that was the actual context.

I wasn't referring to any specific anchor, I was reffering to the quality of the news content in general. But my info is several years out of date so things may have changed.

[Nuclear1]

Keith Olbermann earlier tonight:

Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona. We need to put the guns down. Just as importantly we need to put the gun metaphors away and permanently.

Left, right, middle - politicians and citizens - sane and insane. This morning in Arizona, this age in which this country would accept  "targeting" of political opponents and putting bullseyes over their faces and of the dangerous blurring between political rallies and gun shows, ended.

This morning in Arizona, this time of the ever-escalating, borderline-ecstatic invocation of violence in fact or in fantasy in our political discourse, closed. It is essential tonight not to demand revenge, but to demand justice; to insist not upon payback against those politicians and commentators who have so irresponsibly brought us to this time of domestic terrorism, but to work to change the minds of them and their supporters - or if those minds tonight are too closed, or if those minds tonight are too unmoved, or if those minds tonight are too triumphant, to make sure by peaceful means that those politicians and commentators and supporters have no further place in our system of government.

If Sarah Palin, whose website put and today scrubbed bullseye targets on 20 Representatives including Gabby Giffords, does not repudiate her own part in amplifying violence and violent imagery in politics, she must be dismissed from politics - she must be repudiated by the members of her own party, and if they fail to do so, each one of them must be judged to have silently defended this tactic that today proved so awfully foretelling, and they must in turn be dismissed by the responsible members of their own party.

If Jesse Kelly, whose campaign against Congresswoman Giffords included an event in which he encouraged his supporters to join him firing machine guns, does not repudiate this, and does not admit that even if it was solely indirectly, or solely coincidentally, it contributed to the black cloud of violence that has envellopped our politics, he must be repudiated by Arizona's Republican Party.

If Congressman Allen West, who during his successful campaign told his supporters that they should make his opponent afraid to come out of his home, does not repudiate those remarks and all other suggestions of violence and forced fear, he should be repudiated by his constituents and the Republican Congressional Caucus.

If Sharron Angle, who spoke of "Second Amendment solutions," does not repudiate that remark and urge her supporters to think anew of the terrible reality of what her words implied, she must be repudiated by her supporters in Nevada.

If the Tea Party leaders who took out of context a Jefferson quote about blood and tyranny and the tree of liberty do not understand - do not understand tonight, now what that really means, and these leaders do not tell their followers to abhor violence and all threat of violence, then those Tea Party leaders must be repudiated by the Republican Party.

If Glenn Beck, who obsesses nearly as strangely as Mr. Loughner did about gold and debt and who wistfully joked about killing Michael Moore, and Bill O'Reilly, who blithely repeated "Tiller the Killer" until the phrase was burned into the minds of his viewers, do not begin their next broadcasts with solemn apologies for ever turning to the death-fantasies and the dreams of bloodlust, for ever having provided just the oxygen to those deep in madness to whom violence is an acceptable solution, then those commentators and the others must be repudiated by their viewers, and by all politicians, and by sponsors, and by the networks that employ them.

And if those of us considered to be "on the left" do not re-dedicate ourselves to our vigilance to eliminate all our own suggestions of violence - how ever inadvertent they might have been then we too deserve the repudiation of the more sober and peaceful of our politicians and our viewers and our networks.

Here, once, in a clumsy metaphor, I made such an unintended statement about the candidacy of then-Senator Clinton. It sounded as if it was a call to physical violence. It was wrong, then. It is even more wrong tonight. I apologize for it again, and I urge politicians and commentators and citizens of every political conviction to use my comment as a means to recognize the insidiousness of violent imagery, that if it can go so easily slip into the comments of one as opposed to violence as me, how easily, how pervasively, how disastrously can it slip into the already-violent or deranged mind?

For tonight we stand at one of the clichéd crossroads of American history. Even if the alleged terrorist Jared Lee Loughner was merely shooting into a political crowd because he wanted to shoot into a political crowd, even if he somehow was unaware who was in the crowd, we have nevertheless  for years been building up to a moment like this.

Assume the details are coincidence. The violence is not. The rhetoric has devolved and descended, past the ugly and past the threatening and past the fantastic and into the imminently murderous.

We will not return to the 1850s, when a pro-slavery Congressman nearly beat to death an anti-slavery Senator; when an anti-slavery madman cut to death with broadswords pro-slavery advocates.

We will not return to the 1960s, when with rationalizations of an insane desire for fame, or of hatred, or of political opposition, a President was assassinated and an ultra-Conservative would-be president was paralyzed, and a leader of peace was murdered on a balcony.
We will not.

Because tonight, what Mrs. Palin, and what Mr. Kelly, and what Congressman West, and what Ms. Angle, and what Mr. Beck, and what Mr. O'Reilly, and what you and I must understand, was that the man who fired today did not fire at a Democratic Congresswoman and her supporters.

He was not just a mad-man incited by a thousand daily temptations by slightly less-mad-men to do things they would not rationally condone.

He fired today into our liberty and our rights to live and to agree or disagree in safety and in freedom from fear that our support or opposition will cost us our lives or our health or our sense of safety. The bullseye might just as well have been on Mrs. Palin, or Mr. Kelly, or you, or me. The wrong, the horror, would have been - could still be just as real and just as unacceptable.

At a time of such urgency and impact, we as Americans - conservative or liberal - should pour our hearts and souls into politics. We should not - none of us, not Gabby Giffords and not any Conservative - ever have to pour our blood. And every politician and commentator who hints otherwise, or worse still stays silent now, should have no place in our political system, and should be denied that place, not by violence, but by being shunned and ignored.

It is a simple pledge, it is to the point, and it is essential that every American politician and commentator and activist and partisan take it and take it now, I say it first, and freely:

Violence, or the threat of violence, has no place in our Democracy, and I apologize for and repudiate any act or any thing in my past that may have even inadvertently encouraged violence. Because for whatever else each of us may be, we all are Americans.

[NGTM-1R]

This man deserves something. I do not know what, but he does.

[Flipside]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12144607

Little bit more information.

Part of me feels like a little light has finally come on, the question remains as to whether people choose to see it or not.

[Grizzly]

Are there any good news networks left in the USA?

CNN is more or less straight with you, but a number of their reporters have an addiction to the sound of their own voice. (Wolf Blitzer, I'm looking at you.) The new Indian (that's Subcontinent, not Native American) guy CNN has is actually fit to stand in the same room as Ed Murrow and Walter Cronkite, however, and it doesn't get much better than that even outside the US.

CNN is also watched world wide. If they do not have a political bias because of this or they are watched world wide because they don't really have a political bias I wouldn't know.

[Flipside]

Must admit, reading some comments on other sites makes me think that maybe people won't see the wood for the trees.

From :
"He was an atheist, therefore he was left-wing liberal scum!"

To :
"Sarah Palin has this womans blood on her hands!"

Some people never learn, that's all I can say...

[BengalTiger]

I don't think he has anything to do with Palin, the Tea Party or any other political figure/organization:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/us/politics/09shooter.html?_r=2&hp
“He was a political radical & met Giffords once before in ’07, asked her a question & he told me she was ‘stupid & unintelligent,’ ”

So did he shoot Giffords to get some payback for being called an idiot?

[Kosh]

Out of curiousity what question did he ask? I can't open the article since it demands a login.

[Turambar]

yeah CNN that i watched at dinner with the parents made it seem like he was just a regular non-affiliated (libertarianish) nutcase