THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

VOTING BY OTHER MEANS | 2000-12-23

Ted Turner's far-left Cable News Network (CNN), now has two major competitors, MSNBC and Fox Network News. Those competitors, especially the latter, deserve our support.

Fox Network News, believe it or not, has a conservative bent. We have dreamed for years of some slight break in the solid liberal front presented by the media. There has been talk of conservatives buying a network.

Fox is not far right enough for me - who could be? -- But it is a major step forward.

As usual, practically no conservatives seem to have noticed.

I mentioned Chris Matthews last week. He has the most popular program on MSNBC News Network. During election time he actually beat CNN in ratings!

Matthews is not a conservative, but he is far, far fairer to conservatives than any CNN program will ever be, and he makes our points sometimes. His program is the sole surviving program of three similar programs MSNBC had early on. The other two had Standard Issue Liberals like Charles Gordon in charge.

Those standard liberal programs died. Matthews' program survived.

CNN has two networks in competition, and they are both moving to the right to compete. I think this bodes very well for the future.

In the days before cable, there were three commercial networks, all three far left, and Public Broadcasting which was even farther left. But the number of competing information sources is increasing rapidly because of technology. Nobody should know that better than those of us who use the Internet.

These outlets give us opportunities regular conservatives would never recognize.

We need to take advantage of the opportunities technology is giving us. We need to discuss them and support them.

The most important vote we cast this year may be turning our cable dials away from CNN.