<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">Well, duh, I did not know and would probably not have noticed had I watched TV news, which I don't.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">It seems that news, according to ABC, NBC, and CBS, consists of what politicians are talking about.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">In last Sunday's NYT, Nicholas Kristof (easily Googled) reports that independent issues reporting, defined as not related to some politician's utterances or the debates, totaled 36 minutes, all networks news shows combined.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">So 'news' is what some pol said, then what some opposing pol said and so on.  Where are people getting issues news?  Not from TV. </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">Coverage of issues is not the concern of network news; ratings is.  Duh.  </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">So any survey of people who get their news from these networks is determined, it would seem, by the person's political views rather than independent evidence, which maybe is supplied only by newspapers and magazines, who also have to keep up their ratings.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">If I were to be asked my views on, say, global warming, the very last thing I would do would be to ask myself what my favorite politician thinks, but apparently I am in a very small minority.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">love  bill/dad/hey you!</div></div>