I believe that the media overall is roughly neutral, but much of the conservative media has such a ridiculous viewpoint (Fox News, Wall Street Journal Editorial Page [WSJ is my second favorite paper, but the editorial page sucks], anything with Fox in the title, New York Post, Chicago Sun Times, anything owned by Rupert Murdock) on much of their stuff (like that because the constitutuion doesn't specifically talk about creating a health care plan means the federal government can't do anything about it, in short, anything the founding fathers couldn't predict isn't allowed, sorry electronics), like Obama being Hitler, democrats hating America (Ann Coulter said she her biggest regret was that Timothy McVain didn't go to the NYTimes building), evolution being a farce, that the moderate liberal media is taken much more seriously.
The most respectable form of conservative media I find is the WSJ, and yet, its editorial page is so ridiculous compared to the rest of the paper that you find that the party is just appealing to a tiny segment and a decent part of the country.
Meanwhile, there are extreme liberal groups all over but there are much more resptectable moderate sources. The New York Times is almost neutral, with a slight liberal bias, and it is one of the best newspapers out there.
And Delorted1, your saying that because they don't have cartoons is pretty false, political cartoons from both sides are used effectively and are pretty well dispersed. However, justy because they don't have satire program doesn't mean they don't have their own method. Stuff like Crossfire was canceled because of it being too offensive, so yes, Republican satire generally doesn't work. However, imagine a democratic talk show radio host like Rush Limbaugh. That is something democrats could not succeed at.
Just because Rupert Murdock has made his papers appeal to a base of people who are insanely conservative doesn't mean there is a large majority of democratic papers. Its just besides the WSJ, the other papers have lost or didn't have a large readership because they alienated everyone but their base.
When someone like Sarah Palin can be believed by her base for saying a president wants to kill her child with down syndrome, it shows you how misinformed much of the population is that supports her. Stephen Colberts persona is hilarious because in many ways, it is accurate of the religious right, and they have alienated the rest of the party.
Reagan was famous for saying that he never left the democratic party, its values switched so he left them. The same is true with many republicans, who viewed themselves as moderate republicans. My neighbor used to be fairly influential in the Republican party, even knowing Carl Rove on a first hand basis at one point and being considered a fairly influential man in the party. In last 3 years, however, he left the party with almost the exact same quote as Reagan, he didn't leave, the party left him. It went for the extremes and lost a decent part of its base as a result.
EDIT: When Rush Limbaugh, a man who preaches ideological idiocy, was viewed by many as the unoffical leader of the Republican party, somethings wrong. When most of the people running for the nominee this year said they didn't believe in evolution, somethings wrong. When you have the party agree with people like Ann Coulter who supports the killing of liberals and the disenfranchising of women, somethings wrong. The moral majority that Reagan created has become the immoral minority, because it left its values.
