Addressing directly the media bias issue, specifically those in the McCain thread and similar thread about Obama, Palin, etc. in the past few days:
It's in the nature of the work that any sort of reporting will have some bias thrown in. When casting light on a subject, it is incredibly difficult to frame a story such that it states purely facts with no tinge of personal opinion from the reporter/writer/editor or even the disconnected CEO who owns the media company. When such "unbiased news" does appear it is often so bland that no one pays attention to it, for lack of an angle.
It is for this reason that I can say (opinions, of course) that Fox News is about as conservative as CNN is liberal. And it is
especially for this reason that I feel it is a real dis-service to yourself and those you argue with if you rely on the news from only one source or political slant.
My attitude is that since any media outlet is bound to have its biases, we should really be looking at several news sources (or as many as we practically can anyways) and making judgments ourselves ~ deciding like well-informed consumers of news which stories are connected, which ones are "true and factual," and which ones we can discard as thinly disguised op-ed pieces.
No one who eats McDonald's all their life can be considered an authority on which burgers and fries are the best; any In-N-Out, Burger King, Checkers/Rally's, Sonic, or Carl's Jr/Hardee's fan can tell you that *it's lunchtime, damn I'm hungry*
Here's my personal arsenal of choice for political debate (as I'm sure you guys have noticed):
iGoogle News Feeds.
This is by no means the only source of readily digestible news for rapid-fire debate regurgitation, but it's certainly one of the handiest. Please ~ before threads about Palin/Obama/terrorists/who-is-right-and-wrong get further drawn out of context and peppered with angry personal attacks, let's take a look at the facts... ideally as many as we can pick out from as many angles as possible.
