>Good morning Tom,

>The facts? Let me see – I watch Telemundo (Spanish), BBC, Deutsche Welle (German), CNN, Fox, and local CBS, ABC, NBC and independent news sources as well as read local and national newspapers and magazines. The reporting on a specific topic can be very different from each of these sources. They do not often agree with each other. What are the facts? I have no clue. I just attempt to understand what is being said or written and what political motivation is behind these different sources of the news. For many news sources political motivation defines advertising revenue and audience.

I know this is the case in many US based media. I'd expect the BBC however to the fairly unbiased since it IFAIK is not commercial that it is influenced by fundings. I don't know the Deutche Welle and Telemundo. Speaking, understanding and communicating in Dutch and English is troublesome enough for me.

Anyways I don't think there is much to disagree with the dutch news. Again, in general it will only tell you the facts, not a biased analysis. They will tell you that two airplanes hit the world trade centre and the twin towers collapsed. It will not tell you who's fault it is. It might however qoute other people or newssources and mentions it is a qoute: eg. "The experts at whitehouse suspect it is a terroristic attack planned by asoma bin laden". Then the news will continue to list facts about Bin laden: "Osama bin laden is held responsible for numerous attacks on american buildings throughout the world". IOW, the wording is very carefull. It does not mislead you and states facts as facts, qoutes as qoutes and opinion as opinion. There is a good structure to distinguish between those things. The TV news itself always stays neutral, letting the viewer draw their conclusions.

>International sources of news tell me things that news sources within the United States fail to mention. Many of these topics concern things that involve the United States.

Interesting. Can you give an example? What can be the motivation not mentioning these things in the american media ?

>It seems like many people I know like to watch or read from one news source due to his/her political outlook. Find the one that represents what you believe and then you will be told the facts! :)

Well, you'll find you've got about nothing to choose from here in holland, because AFAIK news up here is free from political bias. Papers might differentiate in levels of accesibility, but I still have to see a paper that clearly has a political bias.

>What are the facts? The facts are whatever I am willing to believe. Surely the media would not mislead us? :)

Maybe, but if all different media essentially are telling you the same thing then there is not much to draw another conclusion, is there?

Walter,