Some part 15 radio stations look for free or inexpensive newscasts to fill out the program schedule. Some stations differentiate between "right wing" and "progressive" brands of news, labels which have meaning in their minds.
In the greater world of news and journalism the bigger division is between "mainstream news" and "alternative news."
Mainstream news refers to the oldline newspapers and TV networks & affiliates that "officially" tell us what is happening.
Alternative news has come to mean "independent, grassroots, internet news."
All of these distinctions have come alive for my station as I've tracked the events from Ferguson, Missouri, and taken the time to compare mainstream reporting with alternative sources that have sprung up to cover the continuing protests.
Long story short, you get two different stories.
Unfortunately, both mainstream and alternative news feeds carry biases. I've learned that it's best to get all the raw 'facts' (such as they may be, even those are slanted by bias, particularly by omission), and then come to your own conclusions.
That's one of the reasons why I no longer carry a news segment on my station. Implicitly, the views of the segment are cast onto the station. No thank you.
Interesting point, Artisan. I don't doubt it.
And upon digesting your idea, it seems that when compiling these news feeds we might have our own leanings, we might want the narrative to come out a certain way, and so we rig the game by editing newscasts by a private recipe.
It's not cynical, it's true!
That the listener already knows his opinion even before being informed by a news update, and simply "hears" the news that agrees with him.