Do you think the mainstream media are in the tank for obama?

14 Comments

Leave Fox News news out of your consideration. They make no bones about being conservative. But the "mainstream media", that is: TV, newspapers, and news magazines will look you straight in the eye and claim they do NOT have a liberal or left-wing bias.

Here's your chance to weigh in on that assertion.
Are they showing a favorable bias toward Obama in the run up to the November election?

No, they just report the unbiased news. 1
Well, maybe to a very slight degree. 6
Yeah, I guess so. But hey, big freaking deal. 4
BIG TIME. They have a wet slobbering love affair with him. 21
I'm not too sharp on politics. I really can't tell. 3
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Comments ( 14 )
  • FreDraken
    11 years ago

    Good point. I PARTICULARLY get a kick out of newbie college students thinking they're embarking on a 4-year adventure which will vastly expand their intellectual powers; where ALL points of view are open for discussion and exploration; where all points of view are given a fair hearing. They all think that their individuality will be recognized and they'll flower as original and insightful thinkers.

    A few gifted or aggressive ones will find that to be true eventually, but for most, after about six weeks on campus, they realize that 90+% of the professors are lefties and if they want to 'fit in' or 'have any friends' then
    they'd better drink the ideological Kool Aid along with the rest of the students. Otherwise they'll wind up feeling like a guy wearing a 'Right to Work' T-shirt at a union picnic.

    Then they join a crowd at an auditorium who's shouting down David Horowitz or Ann Coulter or any other conservative who's been invited to speak.

    The thought might briefly flicker across their mind that, "wait, we're supposedly the paragons of TOLERANCE, right? Well, here we are proving that we have virtually no tolerance at all for people who think differently than we do, right?"

    Then they realize that they'd better not voice those thoughts to anyone or they could wind up being shunned. There's no one more lonely or in more pain than a shunned college student.

    So they go along to get along. Then, because everyone they know thinks pretty much just like THEY do, THEY THINK THEY ARE MAINSTREAM.

    Then, time passes and they get jobs with the media. Lo and behold, they're in an organization with people who think pretty much like they do.

    Once again, "hey, we're MAINSTREAM; it's those right wing conservatives who are totally out of touch with normal people ... like us."

    Their belief system colors their reporting of news and opinion and entertainment. This is how it all happens. It's pretty painless, really.

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  • dom180
    11 years ago

    I believe that the US news media is neither strictly unbiased nor strictly pro-Obama. I think the possibility of liberal bias is talked up and the possibility of conservative bias is talked down - in reality I think the two are about equally prevalent.

    In fact, it makes sense for the media to favour whichever party is in government (or whichever party is likely to win the next election) because staying on the side of the government would mean the government would be less likely to legislate against the media (it's what Rupert Murdoch has been known to do in the UK). I don't think the media bias is fixed on the left or the right.

    Out of curiosity, what makes you think there is a liberal bias in US media? I'm also not sure why you exclude political commentary shows when such shows usually discuss current events (i.e. "news"); why is that?

    All from a non-American perspective.

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    • FreDraken
      11 years ago

      Just from today:

      Breaking the news this morning that Mitt Romney has chosen Paul Ryan as his running mate, ABC’s Good Morning America in a single hour employed no fewer than SEVEN “conservative” labels to label Ryan and his supporters. But four years ago as Barack Obama tapped Joe Biden, there wasn’t a single “liberal” label to be found on GMA’s coverage that Saturday morning.

      Here are the types of bias:

      Bias by commission
      A pattern of passing along assumptions or errors that tend to support a left-wing or liberal view.

      Bias by omission
      Ignoring facts that tend to disprove liberal or left-wing claims, or that support conservative beliefs.

      Bias by story selection
      Ignoring facts that tend to disprove liberal or left-wing claims, or that support conservative beliefs.

      Bias by story placement
      A pattern of highlighting news stories that coincide with the agenda of the Left while ignoring stories that coincide with the agenda of the Right

      Bias by the selection of sources
      A pattern of placing news stories so as to downplay information supportive of conservative views.

      Bias by spin
      Including more sources in a story who support one view over another. This bias can also be seen when a reporter uses such phrases as "experts believe," "observers say," or "most people think."

      Bias by labeling
      Emphasizing aspects of a policy favorable to liberals without noting aspects favorable to conservatives; putting out the liberal interpretation of what an event means while giving little or no time or space to explaining the conservative interpretation

      Bias by policy endorsement or condemnation
      When a reporter goes beyond reporting and endorses the liberal view of which policies should be enacted, or affirms the liberal criticism of current or past policies.

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      • dom180
        11 years ago

        I personally don't think not labeling liberals as "liberals" but labeling conservatives as "conservatives" is biased at all. There are a lot of words that are practically interchangeable with "liberal" (such as "progressivist") but not many that are interchangeable with "conservative". How the news speakers choose to label someone doesn't really betray any bias in my mind. How does calling a conservative a "conservative" but a liberal something else betray bias? (non-rhetorical question)

        Listing types of bias does not prove that the left use them and the right don't. Do you think that the right don't employ any of those types of bias either? (also a non-rhetorical question)

        As a side-note, I think you're guilty of bias by your own definition.

        - Story selection bias by only giving an example of liberal bias.

        - Spin bias by describing each type of bias as if it could only apply to liberals (e.g. "emphasizing a policy favorable to liberals" which is not a balanced definition, as opposed to "emphasizing a policy favorable to one side of the debate over the other" which is not presumptive of liberal guilt).

        - Selection of sources; from a quick Google search I found our that your first paragraph in your response to me was just a copy-pasta from a single anti-liberal (unbalanced) website (http://newsbusters.org/blogs/rich-noyes/2012/08/11/abc-wraps-ryan-conservative-tags-no-liberal-labels-joe-biden-2008), hardly a wide range of accurate sources, and that all of your definitions are just copy-pasta from one other site which is also biased (http://www.fairpress.org/identify.htm). That's only two sources, both of which seem to be pro-conservative and none that seems to be unbiased or are pro-liberal, therefore you are biased for only including anti-liberal sources.

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        • FreDraken
          11 years ago

          > How the news speakers choose to label someone doesn't really betray any bias in my mind. How does calling a conservative a "conservative" but a liberal something else betray bias? (non-rhetorical question)<

          Conservatives are frequently labeled 'conservatives' because the liberal media wants people to think, "ah, no WONDER it's such a cruel/greedy/weird/oddball/elitist plan/scheme/event/policy/whatever because it's put forth by CONSERVATIVES and THAT'S the kind of people they are!" That's the implication which the MSM advances. It's in their makeup. Right down to the DNA level.

          The implication that virtually NEVER using 'leftist', 'progressive', or 'liberal' advances is that THOSE are MAINSTREAM attributes; that 'everybody knows' that those are 'normal', so it would be superfluous to mention them.

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          • dom180
            11 years ago

            Okay, that makes more sense. That relies on the implication that being mainstream is desirable though, and a lot of people who are stereotypical "spitting-with-rage leftists" thrive on thinking of themselves as individual and not mainstream at all.

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        • FreDraken
          11 years ago

          Of COURSE I did copy/paste. Unlike Fareed Zakaria, I'm not paid to come up with my independent research and opinion. I thought that what I found illustrated some of the points that I would have made (though clumsily) had I invested over an hour to think about it. And to what end? DUH! Very few people with opposing viewpoints ever concede anything on a blog.

          I didn't think I had to present myself as an 'unbiased researcher' so I don't apologize for not using a "wide range of sources". I had a point to make; mainly to people who haven't thought too deeply about the issue; not to "spitting-with-rage leftists" like my dreadlocked friend Luis, who still has a shrine to JFK and wears a "Free Mumia" t-shirt.

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          • dom180
            11 years ago

            I prefer debating with people who have original thought as opposed to regurgitating whatever a website has told them. Debating with someone who is biased (i.e. someone who has already made their mind up) or only uses biased sources is pointless because they'll never make concessions if they've already made their decision.

            If you can't illustrate your point in an unbiased way that means your point is unfounded. If you have to make your point in a biased way to bring someone round to your side then your point is wrong.

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            • FreDraken
              11 years ago

              Actually there is little 'original thought' in current politics, particularly with regards to the differences between progressives and conservatives. (Of course if you don't do much reading of political opinion online then you wouldn't know that. You might think that YOUR observations represent original thought.) And with the internet at hand, just when you think you have a completely original angle, if you scour the net enough, you'll find others have camped there first.

              The people who make a career of thinking about and explaining the differences have so thoroughly plowed the ground, that what a tyro comes up with is overwhelmingly likely to be weak, sophomoric, or just a poor attempt to illustrate a point much better made by professionals. Therefore, when making a point to a person of an unknown level of knowledge, using a point well-made by a respected thinker is a good use of your time and the person you are addressing. Now, if the person you're addressing is a real fan of the subject matter and snaps back with, "oh, come on, dude. You're just regurgitating the points John Harwood made in his New York Times column of May 16, 2010", well, I mean, whaddaya gonna do?

              I can imagine you in geometry class, continually interrupting the teacher to inquire whether he independently derived the current theorem, because otherwise he has a bias by teaching someone else's work. Then doing the same in a history class, followed by English and manual arts.

              >If you can't illustrate your point in an unbiased way that means your point is unfounded.<
              Well, that's interesting. Could you make the point that black women are better 100 meter sprinters than Asian women without showing a bias.
              Could you make the point that blacks are just as competent at calculus as Asians without showing a bias? Or would you decline to even TRY, which would show a bias all by itself?

              But really, your assertion is quite wrong, but it's so simplistic and silly that I'm very willing to accept that it could well be original with you.

              A Nobel prize-winning economist like Paul Krugman could explain to you why he feels that Keynesian concepts are more valid than Austrian school and you would just get in his face and call him biased because he failed to establish that everything he said was not his independent thought.

              >. If you have to make your point in a biased way to bring someone round to your side then your point is wrong. <

              OK, I think drunk driving is wrong. But then, I may be biased because my wife was T-boned at 120 mph by a drunk driver and I still haven't gotten over it. But because of my bias, my POINT is unfounded and WRONG.
              So therefore it is invalid for me to assert that drunk driving is wrong.
              Is that how it works with you?
              You might want to play around with the statement and qualify it a little before you get it cut into stone somewhere.

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  • anti-hero
    11 years ago

    "Leave Fox News news out of your consideration. They make no bones about being conservative."

    Then why do they call themselves "Fair and Balanced"?

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    • FreDraken
      11 years ago

      Because they talk to liberals and explore liberal viewpoints without ridiculing and mocking them.
      I'm talking about news shows. Hannity is not a news show.
      The ED Show on MSNBC is not a news show either.
      Rush Limbaugh or Democracy Now! are not news shows.

      These are political commentary shows.
      On radio, that whole genre has been much more successful for conservatives than for liberals. All the libs could come up with after several miserable failures was to try to get the so-called "Fairness Doctrine" reinstated. It failed.

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      • NeuroNeptunian
        11 years ago

        "Because they talk to liberals and explore liberal viewpoints without ridiculing and mocking them."

        Ridiculing and mocking them is exactly what they do.

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      • anti-hero
        11 years ago

        I think they should note that the commentary shows like O'Riley are indeed not fair and balanced.

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