Interesting article in which it is quite frankly admitted how the corporate owners of FoxNews and MSNBC exercise editorial control over their news programs:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/01/business/media/01feud.html?_r=2&src=twt&twt=nytimes

The reconciliation -- not acknowledged by the parties until now -- showcased how a personal and commercial battle between two men could create real consequences for their parent corporations. A G.E. shareholders' meeting, for instance, was overrun by critics of MSNBC (and one of Mr. OReilly's producers) last April. . . .

In late 2007, Mr. OReilly had a young producer, Jesse Watters, ambush Mr. Immelt and ask about G.E.'s business in Iran, which is legal, and which includes sales of energy and medical technology. G.E. says it no longer does business in Iran.

Mr. OReilly continued to pour pressure on its corporate leaders, even saying on one program last year that "If my child were killed in Iraq, I would blame the likes of Jeffrey Immelt." The resulting e-mail to G.E. from Mr. OReilly's viewers was scathing. . .

Over time, G.E. and the News Corporation concluded that the fighting "wasnt good for either parent," said an NBC employee with direct knowledge of the situation. But the session hosted by Mr. Rose provided an opportunity for a reconciliation, sealed with a handshake between Mr. Immelt and Mr. Murdoch.

So apparently the order came down from on high and they have obeyed it.


As the years go by, the movie "Network" seems ever more prescient ...

Arthur Jensen: [calmly] Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that . . . perfect world . . . in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.

Howard Beale: Why me?

Arthur Jensen: Because you're on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.

Howard Beale: I have seen the face of God.

Arthur Jensen: You just might be right, Mr. Beale.

   It never ceases to amaze, how personal fears drive world-views.  Those who have developed a hard-on for *anything* "corporate", for example, view this sinister diatribe in your post as reality.  Then there are those who have decided that anything "Christian" is a threat to civilization everywhere, and of course, their little minds then swirl with visions(evidence) of emerging theocracies at every turn.  And funnier still, the "twain" shall never meet, so to speak.  These nabobs wander happily amongst each other, each one oblivious to the other one!  So pointing out the foibles of one's paranoia to the other one, bounces off like BBs on battleships.  And *that* is always the first clue, this complete inability to exercise even a shred of introspection, with regard to the ability to compare one's obsession with that of another, in the remote possiblity that an equally small shred of acutal clarity would emerge from it.  One would then suppose in the cold light of it, that they dare not be introspective.  That would appear to be the most salient conclusion to be drawn.

gus.