Well, here's a small examlpe of how they learn things. Channel 9's noon "news" program just ran "coverage" of Ron Reagan's speech to the Democratic National Convention last night. They showed about ten seconds of video of the speech, with the anchor's voice-over explaining that he was speaking in support of stem-cell research, which they insist on calling "embryonic stem-cell research" just so you never forget that the GOP says it's related to abortion.

Channel 9 didn't let you hear a single word of Ron Reagan speaking for himself, or one direct quote. They did, however, say that Michael Reagan - the arch-conservatiev hate-radio talk host who apparently has some serious jealousy issues with Ron Reagan - opposed the idea.

The "news" program then played about twenty seconds of Michael Reagan from CBS's The Early Show going on about how Ron has never supported Republicans, didn't vote for George Bush, and saw this issue as a way to keep Bush from getting re-elected. He kept referring to the "Democrat Convention," using that deliberate GOP misreading to avoid the word "Democratic" when talking about their opposition party.

So in reporting on Ron Reagan's speech to the convention last night - which neither CBS nor any of the other networks aired live - Channel 9 didn't let you hear any of the speech or its content, but let you see ten seconds of pictures of it with their own summary, and then let you see and hear his professionally-conservative half-brother rip him apart for twice as long as you saw the pictures.

At the end of the report, the anchor, back on camera, said, "Michael Reagan also opposes his brother's position on embryonic stem-cell research, saying it's been shown to cause cancer in laboratory rats." What? Research causes cancer? Not a specific attempted therapy, but the research itself? As ridiculous as this is, it was presented with absolutely no context, no facts, no attempt to indicate whether it might or might not be true - in the same report that refused to let you hear why Ron Reagan supports stem-cell research. You didn't get to hear any of Ron Reagan's talk of the upcoming medical miracles that may be possible if we only look, but you get to hear his knuckle-dragging hate-radio-hosting half-brother say, without any kind of support, that it causes cancer.

Mind you, this is just one, typical, 45-second report in the noon "news" program, very subtly but definitely slanted to discredit Ron Reagan without letting you hear his message, just the opposing case. Multiply this by four "news" stations and about a dozen "news" programs per day, and you start to understand why people here can be happy to vote for the most regressive politicians in the country.