USA Network News (was Today's LTAR)

[Dib9@aol.com]

In a message dated 98-07-20 11:58:13 EDT, jibguy write:

<< Correct.   But in that case, stations were paid $$$$ by the networks to air
 the spots. So many networks are just "spot distribution services in the name
 on news."   -  In the case of USA, no payments to stations were made, to my
 knowledge.  USA' s roster of stations, then (and likely still now) were small
 market stations, and fringe larger-market stations.   WJIB was actually its
 best affiliate.
 ---jibguy >>

I worked at WOXO/WTBM and they run USA Radio Network News.  The network also
distributes some religous programming that is carried on WTME/WKTQ.  I found
USA Radio Network News to be the most blatantly biased news outlets that I
have ever heard.  The newscasts definitely have a conservative bias.  I assume
this is a result of the fact that the network is carried by many Christian
stations around the country.  The network actually had two feeds of the
newscast.  The news was the same on both feeds but there was one feed with
spots for Christain stations and one feed with spots for secular stations.

I am sure that many of you will be surprised that I would complain about about
a newscast with a conservative bias, but I think all news should be objective.
There is plenty of room for opinions on the editorial pages or in talk shows,
but I think the trend for the news to provide "analysis" which is in fact only
opinion is a real problem.  I don't want to get into a debate about whether
the media has a liberal, conservative, or corparate bias, but what I really
dislike is the fact that the people producing news (print & broadcast) think
it is there job to tell us what we should think about the news instead of just
reporting the facts.

Dan Billings
Bowdoinham, Maine

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