Jay,

>I'm not familiar with your political system, but if you have one, how could you possibly know that your news is not influenced by it through the broadcaster or its employees?

If it was, it would raise a political scandal. Anyways, it seems hard to believe for americans that the TV news is free from political bias. Again it list things as they are. If they someone interviewed gives an opinion, it is clear that this is his "Opinion". It is not uncommon to have two contrdictionary opinions directly following eachother, just to give you both side of the story and make it clear that those are opinionan. For example in the palestinian conflic, issues are told from two sides, not just from one. This is esspecially true for some info-tainment programs that really try to give you in depth information from both side of the story.

As for our political system. It's a democratic system where you can vote for the parties. We have several big parties (about 5 or so, not just two). Depending on the votes, they earn seats in our 'Tweede kamer'. Depending on the seats they start forming a 'Kabinet' (simular to the white house), by assigning ministers who make the proposals and decisions. Our equivalent of the president is our prime minister (like tony blair) which is not directly choosen by the citizens. In a way I think our political system is much like the british.

Our elections are very different from yours. You won't find any personal attacks here. It is purely a fight on political contents. Without any exception our prime ministers have been very capable and don't rely on quick speech, good looks, etc (In fact our prime minister has more than once been compared to harry potter because of his looks). The campains do not cost hundreds of millions of euros, no hypes, no dutch flags, no patriotism.

In stead of listening to a biased source like me, you maybe should talk to the other dutch folks up here.

Walter,