6781

Either the media is fair and balanced (hint - it isn’t) or it leans one way or the other.

If you don’t believe it’s liberal, then you must believe it’s conservative, and that is ludicrous.

What do you think? You keep saying it isn’t slanted to the left but don’t seem to want to pick a position for it.

Also, it was my impression McCain didn’t really incite anyone, and in fact went out of his way to try and tell people in his crowd to knock it off when they were acting hateful. Which isn’t to say McCain is a good choice because he is a horrible one, and in fact he is probably a horrible person as well.

6782

Yeah that’s basically what I think it is. When I’ve watched news shows with conservative friends, we all recognize that Fox News is retardedly biased, we all find biased things in CNN, we all usually think that network programs are pretty good but occasionally have biases in both directions, and they often think MSNBC is biased and I sometimes do. As for the commentators, not the news peoples, obviously you have representatives of all stripes on all the news channels, including Colmes on Fox and Scarborough on MSNBC, although frankly I don’t think CNN even has a liberal commentator that I can recall off the top of my head.

Newspapers are also a lot more split than people like to make out. Probably the two biggest US newspapers are the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal, one of which is considered liberal and the other conservative. But even the Times, in the run-up to the Iraq war it was effectively a mouthpiece for the Bush administration’s talking points. And the 2nd tier in famousness are probably the Washington Post and Chicago Tribune, again, one of which is liberal and the other conservative.

While liberal radio is growing, conservatives still dominate radio in pretty overwhelming fashion, in terms of listenership at least. And it’s pretty hard to pin down the internet because it’s just a reflection of who goes on the net, so while there are more liberal sites, the site/blog and readership count mostly just reflect the persuasions of the people on the net.

Again, while it’s true that individuals working at news media outlets skew liberal, you have to remember that the people who really call the shots skew conservative, all of them skew towards controversy and crap, and all of them are building up the belief that they need to report sides of things instead of facts. I think this tends to balance things out, or at least to make it so that the various sides to things get catered to in some way or another.

Edit: I don’t really think the media is overall fair and balanced, but I do think it’s balanced in that there are enough biases and opinions presented nowadays in most sources so that a balance gets worked out. I don’t think this is necessarily fair, because fair I associate with real facts being reported. Like, Fact: Sarah Palin is monstrously unqualified for the position she’s been nominated for. But the media doesn’t say that, they bring on two people, a Democrat and a Republican, and they let them argue whether Palin is qualified. Balance, but not necessarily fairness.

6783

Eisenhower > Reagan

6784

I could kind of get behind some conservative view points, but their current incarnation isn’t anything like that.

6785

speaking of reagan, the only good thing about this current economic crisis is that reaganomics is dead. way to increase our federal deficit, you stupid jackass.

6786

What Liberal media?

Republicans have loved holding up keywords as evidence of truth as opposed to bothering with the backing argument. So: what’s your backing citation which means that everyone who disagrees with you is “ludicrous”?

The media in Seattle generally seems pretty conservative. Maybe media in different markets have different biases.

You may be confusing “left of whatever I think” for actual “liberal”. The political band generally under discussion is actually pretty narrow.

edit: removed “lately” from “have loved” because … it’s not like this is new. This is part of Politics As War.

6787

shaddap, fishjie. Reagan’s shit is tight as fuck

6788

But the worst thing about this crisis is that reaganomics is totally not dead. There are lots of people who just refuse to learn the lesson that low taxes plus high spending on programs that don’t help people plus lack of regulation and oversight equals disaster, despite the fact that we’ve already experimented with that twice and gone into recessions and huge market crashes at the end of both times.

I saw on CNN yesterday a Republican strategist get asked the question, “Why is the Republican brand so bad right now?” And the dude answered, “Because of a lot of external things, like the economy dropping.” No, douche, the economy dropped because of the Republican brand! But he refuses to learn that lesson, and so does every other fiscal Republican in the country. It’s kinda depressing, really.

6789

only the republicans who voted against the bailout can still preach laissez-faire. the rest of them can STFU and die in a fucking fire.

6790

You said the way we can change the bias in media is by “Accurately reporting things as we see them”, but then in another post you said journalists don’t even see they are biased. So, if they are not even seeing their own bias and believe they are accurately reporting things… then what the hell is your solution?

Also what do you even mean by bias? You said there are more liberals than conservatives in journalism right? Besides the fact that you offer no research to back up your claim, what could we possibly do to amend that? Fire liberal journalists until there is the exact same number of conservative journalists?

I define bias as preferential treatment towards a party and I believe most of the liberal journalists you talk about have enough integrity to report the news as fair and neutral as can be humanly expected. (which is far more than I can say for a lot of their conservative counterparts) Considering what your party does though, you really have little room to talk. You want to talk about the kings of selective memory and manufactured scandals then you have to give it to the republicans. Remember the swift boating? Remember Al Gore inventing the internet? If the liberal media is so powerful and so all encompassing as you say then you’d figure Bush wouldn’t have even gotten a single term.

On a final note, you say liberals aren’t in tune with the majority of America? I say it’s the Republican party that isn’t. Democrats always tend to offer more government programs that would benefit the majority of society, Republicans tend to sell more tax cuts for the rich in exchange for forcing religious beliefs on the entirety of the population. Even if that doesn’t sell you individually, that sells the majority of your base. If you took out the divisive abortion and gay rights issues out of elections republicans would lose just about every time.

6791

You aren’t even paying attention to what I’m posting. This is what I’m talking about. You’ve forgotten already what I’ve said and twisted it to fit something that you have in mind.

"Well, we could start by accurately describing it as such when we see it. "

That means YOU AND ME. The viewer. We need to be able to accurately describe media bias as such when we see it, rather than cloud it over because it happens to defend our particular viewpoint.

I doubt that would be possible. Academia produces journalists and academia is overwhelmingly liberal.

But we should recognize this bias as existing and behave accordingly, rather than pretending it’s some made-up bogeyman by the bad guys.

hahahahahahah. you believe this why? on what basis, what grounds? are journalists superior to the average mortal or something? please.

This is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about. You haven’t the slightest idea what political party I represent but you’ve already decided I’m a republican based on your own political biases - with absolutely nothing solid upon which to make that assumption!

I don’t think journalists have any more integrity than the average person. Why should they? They’re people just like you and me, and get ahead by sucking up to their superiors and peers.

6792

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6737097743434902428

I’m just now getting around to seeing this Outfoxed movie. Wow.

6793

I know i linked this before months ago, but its a really good read into why republicans suck at governing.

6794

Yeah it’s not like there’s a term called “journalistic integrity” or anything. Also couldn’t help but notice you skipped over the fact that we’ve had a REPUBLICAN administration for the last 8 years and a REPUBLICAN House for 6 of those years. I guess the liberal media was out on vacation during that time.

6795

The Stock Ticker on CNBC has more noteworthy news then 20 hours of any of these news networks. They don’t have a liberal bias, they have a bias towards people who don’t want to find out what the news really is.

6796

A meaningless term. It may go far enough that most journalists won’t outright lie and create fake sources, but it doesn’t mean they won’t let their biases color their reporting. They will, and do. Bet on it.

You mean the Republican administration coddled and protected by the media OH WAIT NO IT ISN’T THEY’RE CONSTANTLY ROASTING THEM

Seriously, what is the point of bringing up the Republican successes in legislature and executive branch? How is that relevant to whether or not the media has a liberal bias?

If you aren’t going to respond to my post then just say so.

6797

The biggest promoters of the War in Iraq were the media, including all the ridiculous crap leading up to the war like made-up sources that anyone could have checked and going on until well into our occupation. Neocons and members of the Bush administration literally just sent ideas to even supposedly liberal outlets like the NY Times, and they just lapped it up. If the media were so liberal or so anti-conservative, Bush wouldn’t have gotten away with any of this, but instead they were only too happy to parrot whatever nonsense was coming out of the neocons’ mouths.

Now that everyone hates Bush (deservedly so), the media isn’t afraid to run him into the ground. Big whoop. When it came time for their supposedly liberal side to come through, it didn’t, and boy howdy, it sure didn’t. The mainstream media is about making money and promoting controversy and balancing opinion instead of fact to do it, not about bias one way or the other.

PS why didn’t you respond to my post near the top of this page?

6798

I left in the better link: even with that, it doesn’t in any way delve into anything other than that N number identify themselves as X “political label”. There’s no weight given to any given media member. And no real definition of what views aren’t reflected by the media. So you’re tossing out an interesting survey that actually doesn’t prove your point.

I think the link I linked to last time was probably much more interesting since it’s a more detailed analysis of what’s actually going on. You get newsrooms with serious budget cuts (The Wire Season 5!) and business/conservative interests hand the newsrooms pre-written stories that they just kinda run or don’t delve into deeply enough. (I had a friend roasted by Weyerhauser cronies: it’s a very interesting space, and much more complex than you give it credit for.)

Wouldn’t anyone? This Republican administration has fucked up pretty monumentally.

6799

Also, as far as swift boating is concerned, I voted for Kerry but I found the circumstances of his medals and such questionable at best. He seemed a bit of a glory hound and definitely the type to exaggerate his contribution.

6800

I did, I just brought up the fact you didn’t respond to part of my post where I brought up this exact point. Again, yeah they’re roasting Bush… now, after no WMD’s, complete mishandling of katrina, and a massive economic melt down.

LISTEN CLOSELY: It’s not bias, it is warranted.

In fact, if I recall McCain was ahead before the crisis and then after the economy went out the window yes, they started roasting him too.

You still don’t see the point I’m trying to make: What good is a liberal media if they can’t even stop the worst republican president EVER from being elected

TWICE

They are either completely ineffective to the point of being unimportant, OR they don’t have a significant enough bias to affect an election. Either way the whole idea of the liberal media is mostly a scare tactic by the G.O.P so it’s base can safely ignore the “lies” of all news outlets not named FOX.