CBS, ABC, NBC, started as networks that had multiple different kinds of programming, and a news division to tell us what was going on in the world.
news divisions that were supposed to be non profit, to keep them unbiased.
while someone far right might have felt they leaned left, that was just "working the ref", and fact is, they all sided heavily with the hawks, they only had news 1 hr a day, and other than Sunday mornings when no one was watching, there was virtually no editorial commentary at all.
CNN was the first network dedicated to news, and for the first couple decades their pundit shows had pretty much equal representation on both sides.
in fact their 1st pundit show i can recall, "Crossfire" tended to lean heavily right, just because it had a far more aggressive host for the right, Pat Buchanan, than the unbelievably pathetic string of guys they had representing the left.
MSNBC was started as a partnership of Micrososoft, (thus the MS), and NBC, and was targeted at nerds who wanted programming about computers.
when that programming model failed to get ratings, it morphed into a news channel to compete with CNN.
only after Fox came along and sucked up all the right wing viewers, did MSNBC trend left, to fill the remaining void with CNN being pretty much neutral, and CNN concentrating more on hard news than commentary.
Fox News was the one exception as to it's birth..
Fox News was started for the sole purpose of being a right wing propaganda outlet.
Murdoch approached Gingrich and the rest of the right in congress to let them know that, so they could help make sure Murdoch's foreign nationality didn't get in the way of his owning US media, and to grease the skids so Murdoch could own greater concentrations of media than was previously allowed...
ever since then, it's continued to be a purely quid pro quo relationship, with Murdoch pimping 24/7 for the right on tv, radio, and print, in return for the legislators and regulators on the right granting him access to far more concentrations of media ownership than ever would have been allowed, absent that quid pro quo business deal.
now one might presume that Rupert was just a staunch conservative to begin with, and was just promoting what he believed in his heart.
but alas, that was not the case.
Rupert leaned left, far left some thought, and was considered to be more a socialist by those that knew him.
his going full monte for the far right was just a purely business deal on his end, to gain legislative and regulatory favors from the power brokers on the right, as his business and power ambitions far outweighed his inherent political leanings.
Fox News was not started as, and never has intended to be, a "news" channel. (though it does have some hard news content).
it was started strictly to be a propaganda outlet for the right, and it nor it's siblings in radio and print have ever deviated from that course, nor ever even pretended otherwise.
