The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
The news are a LIBERAL media? I don't get it.
King Boo Hoo
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I've heard the phrase "liberal media" to describe the overall news scene for like years now. However, I didn't pay it much attention because I didn't watch the news much. Now that I'm following the election, I'm being exposed to a whole lot more traditional news sources, and now I'm confused.
I thought a liberal media implied it would be promoting Democrats during the election, but it just didn't appear like that to me, and I'd like to find out if I'm just biased because I'm pro-Obama so I have a very skewed perception, or if the media really isn't covering this in a very liberal fashion.
-30 seconds of Reverend Wright get played by every media for weeks, causing a huge outcry and resulting in Obama casting Wright away. We find video of Palin getting blessed by a literal witch-hunter, and it barely makes the media?
-Hillary "misspeaks" about Bosnia and is on fire over it for weeks once more, resulting in a large open apology. Palin continues to tell her "Bridge to Nowhere" story all the time despite it having been proved wrong by near-everyone?
-Media sits there trying to dig up every scandal possible on Obama, from what school he attended as a child to where he was born to what friends he had to whether being a bad bowler will influence his presidency. Palin wanders into the scene with more scandals than ANYONE knows what to do with, and that's not a big deal?
-McCain lies outright on numerous occasions without media following up on it. He said Palin was checked out by the FBI or something when he was accused of not vetting her at all, then the FBI comes out and says they really don't do that. McCain openly admits to reporters he never thought Obama was referring to Palin as a pig with lipstick after running the ads saying otherwise, and that gets like no attention.
I have a pretty simple theory. Once upon a time, the news reported the news. Then the news realized a more profitable idea would be to report scandals rather than the news because people want to see that more. Even more recently, the news realized that what REALLY makes people watch isn't just scandals, but a close election. So now they'll report in favor of whoever is losing at the time in order to insure a close race. I mean, that's really the only idea I can come up with. And then when McCain took the lead post-convention it was like the first time I saw the media start to call McCain out on his obviously bogus negative ads. What do you think?
A) Rose-tinted glasses stop me from seeing the news really does deliver the issues fairly, and gives attention, positive or negative, to whichever candidate does something newsworthy (even if it is a scandal).
The media is promoting the losing candidate at all times, hence Obama getting negative coverage for most of the race, but McCain getting negative coverage last week when he was in the lead.
C) The media is pro-McCain because they actually like him more...?
D) I dunno.
I thought a liberal media implied it would be promoting Democrats during the election, but it just didn't appear like that to me, and I'd like to find out if I'm just biased because I'm pro-Obama so I have a very skewed perception, or if the media really isn't covering this in a very liberal fashion.
-30 seconds of Reverend Wright get played by every media for weeks, causing a huge outcry and resulting in Obama casting Wright away. We find video of Palin getting blessed by a literal witch-hunter, and it barely makes the media?
-Hillary "misspeaks" about Bosnia and is on fire over it for weeks once more, resulting in a large open apology. Palin continues to tell her "Bridge to Nowhere" story all the time despite it having been proved wrong by near-everyone?
-Media sits there trying to dig up every scandal possible on Obama, from what school he attended as a child to where he was born to what friends he had to whether being a bad bowler will influence his presidency. Palin wanders into the scene with more scandals than ANYONE knows what to do with, and that's not a big deal?
-McCain lies outright on numerous occasions without media following up on it. He said Palin was checked out by the FBI or something when he was accused of not vetting her at all, then the FBI comes out and says they really don't do that. McCain openly admits to reporters he never thought Obama was referring to Palin as a pig with lipstick after running the ads saying otherwise, and that gets like no attention.
I have a pretty simple theory. Once upon a time, the news reported the news. Then the news realized a more profitable idea would be to report scandals rather than the news because people want to see that more. Even more recently, the news realized that what REALLY makes people watch isn't just scandals, but a close election. So now they'll report in favor of whoever is losing at the time in order to insure a close race. I mean, that's really the only idea I can come up with. And then when McCain took the lead post-convention it was like the first time I saw the media start to call McCain out on his obviously bogus negative ads. What do you think?
A) Rose-tinted glasses stop me from seeing the news really does deliver the issues fairly, and gives attention, positive or negative, to whichever candidate does something newsworthy (even if it is a scandal).
The media is promoting the losing candidate at all times, hence Obama getting negative coverage for most of the race, but McCain getting negative coverage last week when he was in the lead.C) The media is pro-McCain because they actually like him more...?
D) I dunno.
King Boo Hoo on
0
Posts
Reporters and copy-writers tend to vote Democratic, usually around 60-70% Democratic and 10-20% independent or third-party according to a lot of studies I've seen. However, their managers - the editors, the publishers, the network owners - tend to swing Republican. Neither of these facts supports an accusation of bias on either side.
The liberal bias myth - and I do call it a myth, not because it is 100% untrue, but because it is an idea with a tiny grain of truth that has been exaggerated to mythical proportions - is a potent one because media is the playing field upon which politics happen. Republicans then get to play the underdog - and Americans love underdogs; they get to discredit the referee; claim an unfair playing field; and when the media presents to the American public a piece of information that supports a liberal worldview (for instance, evidence in support of global warming), they can discount it as media bias. It's not just an irrational idea, but an anti-rational one... instead of competing fairly in the marketplace of ideas, they can claim that the game is rigged and use all of the rhetorical tactics of other anti-rational ideologues like 9-11 conspiracy theorists and Creationists.
It's fair more important to note that the mainstream media has biases towards oversimplification and sensationalism. It is less important that a Democrat or Republican is a public office and far more important to them that whoever holds that public office has become embroiled in some juicy scandal. It's not important that guns are legal or guns are banned, it's important that somebody went postal in an office building and shot a bunch of his coworkers. The intellectual and ideological content takes a backseat to sensationalism.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Once upon a time, news was only reported 2 or 3 times a day. You had your morning paper, your evening paper, your morning news show, your evening news show and your late night news show. These days you have 5 or more dedicated 24-hour news networks plus their intertubes sites, plus your blogo-people, plus your message boards, plus blahblahblah. The point being that we now have all of this time/space to fill up with news and only so much news to report on. That's why we get to see all these scandals/non-news news pieces like the OJ Trial 2.0 live on Headline News and hear about Britney Spears' little sister's nipples on CNN.
And I say, "How liberal was the media in the run-up to the War in Iraq?"
That shuts him up.
To actually address your question:
1. 24-hour cable news has created an environment in which the media must make up news to report on. It doesn't matter what it is, it could be up-to-the-minute coverage of a hurricane moving 10 MPH, or playing a youtube clip 10,000 times; they need to fill up 24 hours of airtime and that's a LOT.
2. Fox News created a new paradigm in "reporting" - the "we report, you decide" angle in which any attempt to clarify what the truth is is considered "bias." So McCain says "sky is red," Obama says "sky is blue," and if the media tries to tell you who is right, it's biased towards one or the other. Note that clarifying what the truth is isn't bias. The cable news media has gotten scared of being accused of "liberal bias" so they adhere to the FoxNews definition of reporting (though recently this has started to fall apart.) Republicans have taken advantage of this and just say whatever they want, knowing it will only be reported on and not analyzed for truth.
Well, that would explain why there is fluff during off-peak news programming, but these days you'll only find discussion of issues DURING the off-peak, if at all. When Fox News at 10! comes on, you're going to be listening to all the juiciest scandals that occured that day delivered in an hour, not the most important news that went on that day. The 24/7 news programming may have helped the fluff-news we have now by constantly pushing the boundaries of news in their effort to fill 24 hours, but the reason it's on front-page headlines is because the news responds to capitalism which is fueled by consumerism which wants scandals over real news.
It's not a great book by any stretch, but it does bring up some interesting points. The author also claims to have always voted Dem, fwiw.
On the whole, I tend to agree with Feral's assessment, but defining how liberal or conservative a particular bias is held does depend on a comparison to another world view.
If you ever need to talk to someone, feel free to message me. Yes, that includes you.
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1180
So yeah, people are retarded and cling to phrases like "liberal media" because it lets them feel like they are sticking it to the man or something.
That's what a lot of their articles are like.
Compare that to the conservative media watchdog groups like AIM and MRC. You'll find that the conservative ones cherry-pick examples a lot. "Another example of liberal media bias: a reporter criticized Bush today!"
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Mainly I think this is because they draw attention to stories that conservatives would rather not hear about.
you mean reality?
Yes.
I know a lot of conservatives that really enjoy PBS and NPR. I don't know many die-hard Republicans that do, though.
You posted a link to Bias.
Wait one second.
Bwaaaahaaahaaahaaahaa!
Sorry. I just had to laugh. That book is so full of it, it's not funny.
As for NPR, it has skewed conservative the last couple years, as it's continually afraid of republican lawmakers seeing a "liberal bias" and killing its operating budget. People who would talk about the liberal slant of NPR are, again, not concerning themselves with reality.
Its a book full of bullshit (I've read it) and the author is lying about his political orientation. He's still around for Fox News.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
The issue is that calling the media "liberal" without citing an actual trend (no, I don't give a shit about cherry-picked individual incidents) is dishonest. If you are going to make a claim, the onus is on you to prove it. Just about every legitimate study that comes out on the subject shows the media to be very near center.
Which is great for things getting heard and great for art, however it means people have a billion choices of where they get their news. And if they want to get it from the disciple come to save us from our sins and only him and he publishes on the hour at every hour, well then thats good enough for them. No one reads anything they disagree with anymore.
One of my professors at Georgetown did a study on the news media and found that the news media tends to mention democrats in neutral or positive light most of the time while republicans neutral or negative most of the time. [/anecdote]
A large number were also anti-technology for some reason. I remember arguing with the editorial board for 45 minutes on why broadband Internet was a good thing. Sheesh.
Wii Code: 1040-1320-0724-3613 :!!:
Got a link or a reference to a publication? I'd honestly like to read it.
If we are talking about any time within the last 8 years, then it means shit about bias. The Republicans were getting their way and the country was/is going to hell in a handbasket. I'd be pretty pissed if the media didn't rake them over the coals. And for the most part, they haven't.
Yeah I'm looking for it right now. His name is Professor Farnsworth, which is throwing me off because I keep seeing Futurama references everywhere.
EDIT: Found one of his books, it's called The Nightly News Nightmare: How Television Portrays Presidential Elections. That's not the one he did all the research on media bias, but I can't find his other stuff.
Wii Code: 1040-1320-0724-3613 :!!:
Believe me -- if you actually read the book, it's mentally vapid, not rigorous, poorly written, full of fucking bullshit, and a clear hatchet job from a Republican loon.
IME, this theory is supported when people's perception of the bias seems consistently to correlate to their political leanings. I.e., you don't ever hear someone on the far left tell you the media is liberal, or someone on the far right tell you it isn't, etc.
And, again IME, centrists tend to believe that there is some moderate liberal bias in some major new sources more so than there is conservative bias or neutrality. Moderate liberals tend to believe there is no bias.
As for NPR, I always stick up for them. If ever there was truly a myth here, the myth is that NPR is some super-liberal news source. Their non-news programming tends quite liberal (they're public radio, for pete's sake), but their news programming is exactly what news should be and is fucking beyond reproach.
I host a podcast about movies.
As a leftist, that seems like a major problem of the American corporate state. I don't really know how it looks to conservatives or centrists, but if you look at modern news sources and don't see that, then I'm scratching my head. There's less reporters in the news room, there's less fact-checking, there's less interest in pushing unpopular stories or taking real risks, and in turn this is what results in what looks like shoddy journalism to anyone, on either side of the spectrum, that is actually looking.
Or maybe your average American conservative is just a mouth-breather who swallows everything Fox News tells them. My mood from day to day can really affect where I fall.
I have that. I really should get around to reading it one of these days.
You really should. Alterman does a great job explaining the media's biases. Plus he rips Goldberg a new asshole.
This.
If you don't see profit motive as the driving force behind what stories are played and how they are spun, I cannot take you seriously. I would go further to suggest that any sort of liberal leaning in the media is because liberals seem to be more interested in the news than your average conservative. Thus a bigger market for liberal leaning media exists.
On the other hand, Yar, I think you've also hit the nail on the head. Most of the conservative bias examples around here I've seen (they didn't attack them enough on this issue!) can be explained easily by the profit motive. There is a balance the media finds where it makes the most money and it most likely lays on the "moderate liberal" setting, a setting where you hit the majority of the large liberal market while not disenfranchising the moderate conservatives that watch news too much.
That said, Rupert Murdoch is a goddamn genius. I wonder how much money he's made off Fox News.
Oh, I couldn't read through the whole thing, but I'll stick by my comment that it raises some interesting points.
One anecdote, iirc, involves talking to a fellow news person about the 1972 presidential election and hearing something to the effect of "I don't know how Nixon won, I don't know a single person who voted for him." This sounds very much like what I hear from the CBC staff I know and the one BBCer I used to chat with about the staff mostly sharing a common political view, as Feral pointed out.
I seem to recall one point of the book was that the reporters weren't trying to rig the news in a particular direction, but rather that they tend to share a common point of view and try to present both sides from what they view as the center. Since reporters in the US are generally not Republican voters, the center for reporters leans to the left of the population. Although it says nothing about management and the economic realities of the news industry, it seems to be a reasonable theory.
I'll be the first to say that it's not a great book (like I already did), but if someone wants to read books about media bias, it would be somewhat ironic to read books from one point of view and not any other.
If you ever need to talk to someone, feel free to message me. Yes, that includes you.
Yeppers. With the exception of a few obviously biased organizations (Fox, The Nation, etc.) the paramount motivator of the media is money. If Obama is getting a free ride, as some allege, I don't think it's because of liberal bias, but rather because he's THE story of this election. If too much attention has been put on Palin, as some have suggested, it's because she's THE story of the last couple weeks. If there's alot of criticism of Wall Street, as some have alleged, it's because it's THE story of the last week or so. And sooner or later a photogenic white girl will be kidnapped or there will be another raid on a religious compound or we'll find out someone else is gay, and that will be THE story for a while.
IOS Game Center ID: Isotope-X
The media prints/broadcasts stories to make money. While this can be broadly connected to right-wing interests (they have more money) that's not what the media really is.
Whatever political bias you may be able to find is secondary. It's like saying high-class prostitutes are right-wing because they fuck a lot of rich guys, and the rich guys are kinda right-wing.
Actually their ratings started going down with Olbermann, which is why he got replaced with that woman from Air America for major political coverage. I personally can't stand Olbermann. He's only amusing when he's making fun of the Michigan Wolverines or random "oddly enough" news, not political affiliations for which he doesn't agree.
Oh and I have a man-crush on Joe Scarborough. I'm thinking the 2012 Republican ticket should be Huckabee/Scarborough. Dy-no-mite!
Wii Code: 1040-1320-0724-3613 :!!:
To be fair, there's shit going both ways here. Hillary's speech about dodging sniper fire was an outright lie, not a "misspeak" or mistake remembering. She wasn't anywhere near sniper fire. At the same time, yea, people are kinda ignoring the Bridge to Nowhere story, and instead focusing on the Pakistani Prez calling her gorgeous. :P
There are things attacked the other way, however. Trent Lott was absolutely destroyed because he was trying to say nice things about an old man on his 100th birthday. Instead, people zeroed in on Thurmond's history as a segregationist, and believed Lott was a racist. A bunch of foolish bullshit, considering it really was a speech intended to be taken figuratively, and considering that no one screams about Robert Byrd, a formerly active klansman.
So hey, shit flows both ways.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/