One thing I missed after canceling pay TV is the way I used to watch news. You just turn on the TV and there is news. So I created http://tiltview.com to gather current news and play it without having to do any work.
Everyone's view is fair and balanced in their own eyes.
The more editorial programs on public radio (This American Life, On The Media) are more opinionated, and the quality of local news is only as good as your public radio station, but NPR News is as clean as an organization as there has ever been.
Here is a well done statistical study on the subject (jump to the end for nifty charts):
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/groseclose/Media....
It's so obviously biased and emotionally charged. Makes me cringe. But it's pretty detectable bias so it's easy to disregard.
I think quite the opposite, it gives you the illusion of being informed when in reality you are just viewing a tiny slice of the world as through a soda straw.
If you really want to be informed it takes a hell of a lot more leg work.
I record the 6pm news on Tivo every night. Sometimes I watch it, mostly I don't. If something big breaks, I can watch it on the news.
Generally being alert to blogs and twitter will let you find out all the necessary to follow stories.
People waste far too much of their lives absorbing non-essential news items. In retrospect, most of us would be flat out recalling 4 big news events from the prior year.
What is the matter with you people?
If your work or day to day life doesn't involve interacting with people even a little bit the utility of this is somewhat limited. I doubt there is a very large number of people for whom that is true.
I'm sure it'd also be trivial to introduce skippable ads that were tailored and of interest (in an ideal world...) to viewers.
I find that to be a feature not a bug. Specially when you see people bashing Flash in Android.
Suggestion: consider adding youtube.com/stratforvideo to your mix.