Right Wing

In its "first large-scale change since 2001," Fox News is launching a major redesign of its website. Fox News vice-president of national ad sales Roger Domal said, "In addition to just freshening up the site and making it easier to navigate ... it's a reaction to what advertisers want." Fox News hopes the site "will enable it to become a significant competitor in the online news space. This month, the site doubled its advertising sales staff in New York and San Francisco ...

Investigative journalist Robert Parry writes that "the U.S. news media's reaction to Ronald Reagan's death is putting on display what has happened to American public debate in the years since Reagan's political rise in the late 1970s: a near-total collapse of serious analytical thinking at the national level. Across the U.S. television dial and in major American newspapers, the commentary is fawning almost in a Pravda-like way, far beyond the normal reticence against speaking ill of the dead. ...

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting funded two new right-leaning shows - "one hosted by Tucker Carlson, who speaks for conservatives on CNN's 'Crossfire'" and "one moderated by Paul Gigot, editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal" - while cutting "NOW with Bill Moyers" from an hour to 30 minutes.

Last year, as the debate over a Medicare prescription-drug bill heated up, the American Association for Retired Persons (AARP) sided with the Republican plan, which marked a major step toward the party's goal of privatizing Medicare and decimating employer-based health coverage. Why did AARP support the plan, which will cause millions of seniors to lose more generous employer and state-coordinated drug benefits while providing only limited help to others? Barbara T.