Media Bias Watch

You told me that my sources are biased. How are your sources unbiased? You're assuming I haven't read the blog. I did. I just happen to think it's a bunch of hooey. It's someone's opinion about Bush's proposed "reform" when Bush himself hasn't even released the details about his own reform. And it doesn't take into account that the stock market is investment which carries risk, and social security is insurance which carries no risk.

The fact is, anyone can create their own private account right now, it's called an Individual Retirement Account. Nothing is stopping anyone at any time from taking a portion of their wages and investing it in an IRA. But taking that money from what would go into Social Security and giving it to the government to invest for you...how is that a good thing? As people in Britian if their attempt at this worked. The fundamental issue is that there would be no problem if Bush's administration hadn't raided the Social Security funds as if it were theirs to spend.

If you have the unshakable opinion that the media is biased, then nothing anyone says is going make you reconsider your position.

"Every survey ever done of American journalists has borne that out." Well, surveys of American people bear out the perception of a media bias. I will not argue that there is a very definite perception of media bias, and I am even willing to concede that some newspapers and some news programs are liberaly bias (are you willing to concede any of your points when presented with facts that pointedly show them to be in error?), but there are also many, many newspapers that are unabashedly conservative, all the cable channels are conservative, and until the Jones Radio Network and Air America Radio started up, ALL talk radio was right wing-nuts. Now there's left wing-nuts on talk radio, too. The moderates are going to have to start their own network now to get any air time.

"Ten multinational corporations own virtually all broadcast, internet, or print media in this country—General Electric, Viacom, AOL/Time Warner, Disney, AT&T, News Corp, Liberty, Sony, Bertelsmann, and Vivendi. Who really thinks Jack Welch or Rupert Murdoch is going to appoint radical left-wingers to run their businesses? These companies depend on other big corporations for their advertising revenue—big corporations who don’t want news that equates to bad PR. They also have huge vested interests in parts of the conservative agenda, such as deregulation, that will further increase their already vast influence and profits.

Let me make something clear—when the media gives saturation coverage to Chandra Levy and her relationship to Gary Condit, D-CA, but shows no interest in a dead woman (Lori Klausutis) found in the office of Joe Scarborough, R-FL, that’s not liberal bias.

When George Bush’s DUI became public knowledge, the story became "Did Al Gore leak the story as a dirty trick," and not, "George W. Bush committed a crime, and successfully covered it up for over 24 years." That’s not liberal bias." from Liberal Bias In Media Is A Myth

If you're getting your information about liberal media bias from organizatons like The Media Research Center, you should know that they, themselves are biased and slant everything conservative/right wing.

Here's a quote from William Kristol "The liberal media were never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures."

You said, read the papers, listen to NPR, then read this blog. If you yourself took your own advice and have been reading the papers and NPR, you'd know that this blog is hooey. I can only assume that you're shopping around for the kind of information that validates your opinion, not looking for information upon which to form an opinion.

I do not get my news from blogs. I get my news from news sources, like, actual news articles and actual news stories. If you are going to tell me that I get my information from biased liars and that your information is impeccable, then there's not point in continuing this conversation. You are coming pretty close to becoming uncivil. I wonder why that is?

And to those who think that George Bush is a good 'ol cowboy, are you aware that he was born in Conneticut? His family is Yankee Old Money.

I do sincerely apologize if I came across as uncivil. However, I cannot help but question the veracity of sources who completely ignore the way the vast majority of journalists vote and what their opinions are on the major dividing issues of our day. That seems dishonest to me. If news purveyors’ voting patterns, coupled with an examination of content or omission of key facts from their reporting, are not indicators of how news is presented, then how can we hope to demonstrate anything?

You bring up the Condit scandal, but scandal reporting isn’t really indicative of the phenomenon I’m referring to, so that misses the point. All media outlets report scandals; they can’t avoid it without losing face and/or audience. How could you expect the press to ignore a story like the Condit story? First of all, would they have any credibility with the public if they sat on it, like CBS did in a fit of partisan self-righteousness? CBS, via the person of Dan Rather, has since thoroughly discredited itself in a blatant instance of partisanship. Second, how do you expect 24-hour news channels to fill all those hours when there’s a missing intern in Washington D.C. who had an affair with her boss? With stock market reports? If it involves sex, politics and crime--and especially if they intersect *within the Beltway,* which seems to be the focal point of all American journalists--it’s front page news, whether you and I like it or not. Thus has it ever been; thus will it ever be. The media have become the establishment now, and journalists like to talk all snooty in the Columbia Journalism Review, but I studied journalism in college and graduate school, and I can tell you that from the beginning this has been their m.o.

Frankly, I don’t like it either. I hate “true crime” reporting. Just give me the bottom line, please. Report when there’s a news development (i.e., someone is charged with a crime or there’s a verdict) and quit endlessly interviewing people who are merely speculating or dwelling on gruesome details. I can’t stand to watch cable anymore. Michael Jackson’s trial is beginning! Run away, run away!

Scandal-dishing aside, when you examine how the media routinely report on domestic and foreign policy, the bias becomes quite clear.

If you’d like, we can both use this thread to post examples of media bias in one direction or another. Obviously, we already know some publications tend conservative and others tend liberal. Washington Times vs. New York Times, for example. Washington Post would be more of a moderate-to-liberal paper. If you disagree with those assessments, you can say so. The Associated Press occasionally comes out with editorials masquerading as news. The BBC and Guardian, IMO, would be radical left. NPR is just plain snooty. But seriously, I note they take a default left-wing position on such issues as abortion, euthanasia, religion, race, etc.

Opinion pieces, blogs, radio talk-show hosts, and Bill O’Reilly (whatever he is) are off-limits in this thread; we’ll stick to news articles only.

I get an e-letter from Honest Reporting that tracks media reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That tends to be one of those dividing line issues. If you like, I will post a few prime examples here, and you can demonstrate how charges of bias in those examples are groundless.

Short version: Ain't no such thing.

Long version: Everyone brings biases to the table. The reporter. The editor. The publisher. In the end, the one who holds the purse strings makes the decision, and that's the publisher.

I really prefer the British situation, where papers make no pretense whatsoever about their slant. EVERYONE knows the Guardian is left. EVERYONE knows The Economist is moderate-right (some would argue further right but I think The Economist mostly stands for capitalism over politics). And so on. It's not an insult there, everyone knows where a publication stands. There are some publications here that wear their biases on their sleeves--The Nation, The Weekly Standard, etc--but I would wish that the papers and TV outlets would be a little more honest.

Lynn Siprelle, Editor

"If you’d like, we can both use this thread to post examples of media bias in one direction or another."

"If you like, I will post a few prime examples here, and you can demonstrate how charges of bias in those examples are groundless."

I'm really sooooo not interested in dissecting individual news story biases that it's hard for me to sustain the effort to even type this.

My point was and is that corporate media ownership = conservative bias. And 88% of Americans get their news from corporate media. Individual news stories in newspapers don't matter, IMO. Only 11% of the country reads newspapers. Liberal bias there is hurting who?

Thank you for your offer, but no. I'm fascinated by your tenacity and your obvious enjoyment of vigorous debates, but I've made my points clear, I think. Like I said, an independent investigation into the current state of America's media situation right now, with an open, questioning mind, will illuminate those points. But I won't to the investigation for you--you're an intellegent person, you can do it.

Have a great day.
_____

"If you want yor children to be bright, read them fairytales-- if you want them to be brilliant, read them even more fairytales" Albert Einstein