exactly my point --- these shows are wholly opinion ... and most are foisted on the public as "news shows" .... of course lots of viewers will readily accept it as news and spread it as fact at the water fountain tomorrow at work ...
I never considered Countdown (or Fox News, the now-finished Larry King, etc.) a NEWS show. To me, a news show features many different stories and, by definition, is NOT entirely political on most days.
I've complained for years that, even though we have four "news" cable channels nationally (CNN, Headline News, MSNBC, Fox News Channel), there is
not really any news to be found anywhere during any part of the evening. Headline News - which was formerly the "most newsy" of all channels with tons of different soundbites often repeating a lot - is actually the least newsy of all of these channels in the evenings.
I will miss Keith GREATLY. Yes, he was a type of "leftie demagogue" who was often vilified by "the right" (and there's a reason I won't use the word "conservative"), and he was one of only two easily-found "demagogues" on that side (Ed Schultz is the other), but those on the right are fine with the 4,129 (OR SO IT SEEMS) demagogues they have speaking for them and easily accessible in most or all radio or cable markets.
If I want to hear a demagogue who feels and believes like I do, I have to search with great difficulty. However, I can't HIDE from the demagogues who want the United States to fail. They're all over the media, especially radio. [Latino Americans, can you tell me what the political trends of Spanish-language talk radio are in the U. S.? I don't know and I've never seen it talked about.]
"Liberal" talk radio does have a few "demagogues" as well - think Mike Malloy right away - but their national appearance on terrestrial ["normal"] radio stations is limited very much by geographic region, and mostly limited to larger cities.
Admittedly it was a long time ago that I last did this, and I was using a better radio than most of the public has available, but a few years ago I tuned across the dial and I found Rush Limbaugh on 22 different stations at the same time in the middle of the day. It's very hard to find somebody who speaks for the rest of us.