Reply #32: I agree with your assessment

[hughee99]

of how things are gone in the past, and certainly Hearst is an excellent example of someone who was not afraid to make his point of view known through his newspapers. My fear, which seems to becoming more and more of a reality each day, is that the Fox effect will become the standard for all news organizations. By this I mean that they start with the point of view, then go out and get the facts, and then report only those facts that support that point of view. If all news organizations follow this example, then our objective media just becomes PR machines for various political groups, and much of the country will get it's information from whichever PR machine can get the most people to tune in. You would then have a large population of voters making their decisions based on what one PR machine says, and a small number of voter who will remain diligent and savvy enough to listen to the crap from both sides to figure out what is really going on. As the "informed" voter becomes a smaller and smaller minority of the voters, this can only eventually lead to the end for any democracy (yeah, I know, representative republic), no matter whose political viewpoints win out.