Doesn't this sound like IMO?

Yes it does....

No, it doesn't. And you'll never make me believe it.

I think most of us are aware that it is next to impossible to find an unbiased source in the media.

I don't think anyone could persuade me to be other than a moderate Republican but I listen to the other side all the time. I'm on another forum where the split is 50-50 and the posters are very knowledgeable about what is going on in this country politically.

The internet has definitely changed things, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. One thing the 24/7 news cycle and the internet has done IMO, is people realize that most politicians have agenda's and many times that agenda is NOT the good of the country.

It sure does remind me of many posts here in IMO.
It's kind of like reading your horoscope in the paper. Believers tend to remember the ones that come true and disregard those that don't.

Yes, that definitely sounds like IMO!

For your other set of questions, I don't think it's a waste of time to debate the issues, even if the other person/people are as unlikely as I am to completely change their/my mind. The reason for social debate on issues isn't always to completely change someone's mind, but to open their minds to at least understand why I/they believe what they/I believe. (I hope that wasn't too confusing!) Even if it does nothing to change their mind, hopefully it at allows them to see that the other side has a valid point of view or opinion. Not always the case, but that's what I've always hoped for anyway.

I think people are becoming more rigid in their beliefs, but I think that has more to do with the political climate for the past 8-10 or so years than the internet. I think that it is becoming the norm to see our political leaders be completely closed to the other side of the aisle, whether it was Bush's foriegn policy decisions or Obama, Reid and Pelosi's pushes with the stimulus and health care reform. In the cases of both sets of political leadership, they weren't willing to give one inch to the other side, no matter if the other side had valid and even good ideas. It was/is a my-way-or-the-highway attitude. Even if we (normal people) disagree with some of the leader's tactics, ideas, or policies in the US we have such a strong 2 party system that we (normal people) feel that we have to choose sides too.

I hope that this changes soon. It hasn't always been like this, and I'm afraid that our sames will start to be outweighed by our differents if this continues too much longer. It will be interesting to see what happens if Congress is evened out or even if Republicans control how both sides of Congress how they will learn how to work together again.

That's an interesting article...For me, I don't only listen to the media that is biased in favor my own beliefs. That gets boring for me, especially for commentary, not straight news- like I used to listen to the young turks show online, and they are liberal, their reflections on current events almost always exactly match my first reaction to the given current event they discuss..
So it gets boring for me to listen to them speak in a very persuasive manner about why they think what they do, because I just don't need convincing, I already agree with them.
I do listen to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity when I'm in the car, because I usually always feel the opposite they do on issues, and it's more fun that way..
But as far as comedians, I really like liberal ones like Bill Maher

I have slowly been giving up on convincing others, because I've come to the conclusion that no matter I say, they will go as far as changing the topic and clinging onto something irrelevant, just in order to prove that what I'm saying is totally wrong.

I like to read quotes from Mark Twain and Will Rogers, and, IMO, the same rigidness has been around for a very long time. Like Ut0pia, I enjoy watching Bill Maher - I like to check his facts and he's proved to be correct, so far. I like to get my facts from odd places, such as RFD-TV programming (US Farm Report/ AgPhd/ GA farm monitor, etc) as well as FreeSpeechTV and WorldLinkTV. I also watch lectures on UCTV and NAUS. Surprisingly enough, watching those stations can sometimes change my mind & opinion
For example, I saw an FSTV documentary on solar energy development (I used to think it was all positives ). It turns out that not all solar is equal. The less expensive systems require much more water for cooling the panels and thus necessitate the need for pumping our most-precious aquifers and it's the foreign companies intending to do just that - they use the lure of "cheaper electricity" to keep the citizens pacified, and gloss over the fact that water shortage in the West is very real and only going to get worse

The debate is interesting, even if it's only to try to get an understanding of the opposing viewpoint. I fully respect an opposing viewpoint if that person is speaking based on their true fundamental values and they have facts to support their argument. What frustrates me about some debates is when a person doesn't have the facts to stand behind their statements and they stick to their emotional argument with no effort to discover the facts.

My guess is that the internet has enabled more people to participate in the debate, but I don't think that it's made people more aware that differences exist. If you look back on history before the Internet, there have been many movements where people fundamentally disagreed and it was well known at the time (women's and civil rights movements, wars, etc).