leejo

Criticism for criticism's sake isn't fair and balanced either.

Beatnik

None of those sites have 'Fair and Balanced' on their masthead.

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H-Hour

Leejo touched on a point I want to raise: Objectivity is important, but neutrality is dangerous. The last thing I want is some journalist who doesn't care one way or the other about an issue deciding what is or isn't newsworthy. During Israel's withdrawal of Gaza, journalists from around the world flooded the scene, and the Israeli military coordinated the journalists' access in much the same way the U.S. military coordinated access in Iraq. So a journalist accustomed to a desk somewhere back in the U.S. is suddenly sent into a conflict, given a narrow framework with the broadest concensus by his news company, and set loose. He will appear back home on the news as some "on-the-ground" expert, when he's really only in the country for a week or less getting just the shots and sound-bytes he needs, looking for exactly the stories he expects to find. This is not the news I want.

I'll take biased, but experienced news reporting over careless, lazy news reporting any day - and I'll do the ground work on what the competing consensus' are myself.

Apo's point brings up the real crux of the issue. The real lie is the idea that all of us are "left" or "right", and that one of these two groups will satisfy our needs as political leaders, news outlets, and sources of information and analysis. The lie is the idea that we are to be passive receivers of a two-sided debate and that we are then to choose from these two sides.

But we are poorly informed because we are lazy. "The news", as it is represented in this thread (CNN, FOX), should be the end (and sometimes the beginning) of our process of understanding, but too often it is the whole process.

The news should be the end of our process because the news is not designed to make you understand. It is designed to keep you updated on a situation you already understand. It should be the end because before you trust any news source talking about global warming or the war on terror, you should already have done your own work on understanding these issues.

It might be the beginning in the case of investigative journalism, which can unearth unknowns through conjecture and less-than-solid proof. Seymour Hersh's exposure of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam is an excellent example of how journalism can report without all the facts, and lead to a productive wider investigation. Investigative journalism, however, should be seen as just that: investigative. A process. Not the final word. It can be dangerous and useless if it fails to spur wider investigation.

But without further investigation, no media source is going to serve anyone's needs. Sure, everyone has their slant. If you want to work towards building a better system of media, I'll definitely support you. There are certainly interesting developments in the democratization of media (though certainly not un-biased developments). In the meantime, we need to teach media literacy. We need to teach people how to identify value statements, how to wade their way through an editorial with critical analysis. We need to teach people how to find alternative sources of information.

Apophis

Do you realize the sources you quoted are the very same organizations that fund and support Air America radio? You're citing organizations that live to try and tear apart FNC and any Republican in office. If your place a network like Air America on the fringe, surely you would place highly politically motivated organizations like this in the same boat?

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Apophis

Well said, H.

I didn't want to have to get into the whole quoting and citing references. I realize that when it comes to commentary and News-tainment, different mediums and different companies have different slants. They all have motives and they all want market share. I will 100% admit this, but very few seem to be willing to admit that this same dynamic exists with the Democrats/liberals.

Some would have you believe that slant is 100% owned by FNC and the Republicans and no one else. The more I think about it, the less inclined I am to actually dig up examples.

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Beatnik

Apophis I said nothing about it being a one-sided monopoly on bias. I even went so far as to point out that the video links were to sources that were liberal activist groups. However, those groups do not put off their info as unbiased or 'Fair and Balanced', and the content of those clips speaks for itself.

This thread was originally about Fox being objective and (later) my irritation at the moniker 'Fair and Balanced'. I get peeved when people try to pass off FN as being anything other than a sounding board for the republican party. We can obviously disagree on that, but I think my last big post makes a pretty strong argument.

I think this is different than say a liberal bias in CNN, etc. in that there's no organized agenda to shape stories by management, or with the cooperation of the democratic party. Maybe on AA there is, but no other major news outlet operates that way.

It's very scary to me that so many people (it being the largest cable news channel) are willing to blindly accept what is being trumpeted on Fox News, as much as it would alarm me to have Air America be the #1 news outlet in its format. Things are not alright, we're getting dragged in the wrong direction on many many issues, and the biggest cable news channel does nothing but make excuses for the administration and never raises so much as a finger to question it.

It all comes down to critical thinking and exposing yourself to a variety of sources of info. Thank jeebus we have the internet and alternate forms of communication. And there is a huge problem in the sensationalism of most cable news outlets (the news-tainment you spoke of), as well as the nature of our government itself. But we are all obviously pretty plugged in to what's going on, and that is a good thing.

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CingularDuality

BS

And I'll give you two examples from issues that I'm passionate about. Liberalism has become accepted in almost every reach of journalism.

Look at how editors across the nation force their writers to ignore the legally correct term "illegal alien" when dealing with immigration stories. Instead, they use the term "undocumented immigrant" as if to legitimize those folks that ignore the laws of our country. And most of the time, they use just the word "immigrant" to refer to illegal aliens! Sure, there are times when you might want to refer to immigrants (legal and illegal) in general, but that's certainly not the most precise term that could be used in most stories. Editorial decision? Sure. But that's where the bias becomes engrained in the journalistic culture. Liberal political correctness, in this case, has reduced the journalistic value of news stories. There are plenty of examples of this sort of liberalism throughout the mainstream media.

My other example is based on gun control. The (deliberate?) spread of misinformation regarding "assault weapons" is disgusting. How many positive stories do you hear that involve guns? Do you realize that guns are used to stop crimes thousands and thousands of times a year? If you do, it's not because you heard it from the mainstream media. They'll usually only report on criminal use of a firearm and ignore all the times that they are lawfully used to stop crime.

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Apophis

This is just horribly wrong. There are a LOT of shows (including O'Reilly) that criticize the administration to no end on a whole slew of issues. Not a single night goes by where someone isn't slamming him for something. Last night it just happened to be on immigration issues.

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ScratchMonkey

Which highlights the phenomenon of negative reporting, slanting an issue by omission of stories that would favor a different viewpoint. You don't have to explicitly criticize a policy if you just avoid reporting anything that favors it. The is the journalistic equivalent of "opportunity cost" in economics, where what you don't spend money on is both important and unstated.

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USN_Squid

Apophis mentioned this already, but I think it's worth repeating and using some numbers to back it up and that is that if you yourself are left or right leaning in your views you may not see all the bias that favors your viewpoint. It's very difficult to completely remove your own biases and be truly objective. I bring this up because the majority of Americans DO think that the news media is biased to the left and I think that FNC fills that gap in the market for a different viewpoint. I don't want to derail the threads focus on FNC, but the question of general bias was brought up.

I couldn't link (or didn't want to register) the original poll results. These snipets were taken from here, but I only used quotes from respected polling organizations. I'm sure someone will discount them as irrelevant anyway because it comes from an advocacy group in opposition to their views. But who else would parse, combine and publish survey results that damn the media in general? CNN? Not likely.

• Three Times More See Liberal Bias than Conservative Tilt: A Gallup poll conducted in February 2003 asked whether, “In general, do you think the news media are — too liberal, just about right, or too conservative?” As the other polls had discovered, far more respondents identified liberal bias as the problem (45 percent) as worried about a conservative tilt (15 percent), while 36 percent said coverage was about right.

• Plurality of Democrats See Liberal Bias: In a July 2003 survey, Pew [The Pew Research Center for the People & Press] found that twice as many Americans (51 percent) believed news organizations have a liberal bias than a conservative bias (26 percent). Not only did a majority of Republicans and independents hold this view, but a plurality of Democrats (41 percent) thought the media had a liberal bias, compared with 33 percent of Democrats who saw a conservative bias.

• Journalists Think They’re Doing Well; Public Disagrees: A 1998 survey of 3,000 Americans sponsored by the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) as part of a $1 million project “to improve the credibility of newspapers and journalism” found three-fourths of the public (78 percent) agreed that the media are biased. When asked specifically about the slant of their hometown newspaper, nearly half (47 percent) said their local paper was more liberal than they were, with 34 percent perceiving the newspaper as more conservative.

That ASNE study also determined that a significant percentage of journalists disagreed with the public on whether it journalists’ principal duty was to analyze and interpret the news or to report the facts: “While 93 percent of average Americans express a desire to get their news ‘straight up,’ believing that ‘the major job of newspapers is to get the facts right, not to tell me how to interpret those news events,’ only 68 percent of journalists believe in this mission.”

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Beatnik

I won't argue that many journalists are very ignorant on the issue of guns. Is that necessarily evidence of 'liberal bias' though? Just out of curiosity, are you talking about LEO's using guns to stop thousands of crimes, or private citizens using guns to stop crimes? As far as 'political correctness' goes, that sounds like an awfully narrow example of editors "forcing" their writers to ignore the use of 'alien' vs. 'immigrant'. I see no conspiracy here, other than professionals splitting hairs on terms describing people in the country illegally.

Apophis - actually I tuned in to O'Reilly for a bit last night and did indeed see some nitpicking on Bush. I stand corrected.

I'm not defending the sanctity of media in general by any stretch of the imagination. And I never made a claim that there was no bias in mainstream media. Media overall is in a terrible state right now, and political coverage is shallow at best. But is having Fox News actively partnering with the political party in power to shape its message doing you a service? Or is it patronizing its viewers and telling them what they want to hear, at the expense of accuracy?

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El_Gringo_Grande

Does anybody think that media SHOULD be biased towards the left?

That haveing the majority of news outlets being conservative would be a bad thing?

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Apophis

I don't think the media should be biased in any direction.

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Beatnik

This is a bit off topic, but I feel obliged to include a couple other conclusions from the link you provided, and let each reader decide if this 'liberal bias' is necessarily a bad thing:

"Lichter’s research found that “75 percent disagree that homosexuality is wrong, and an even larger proportion, 85 percent, uphold the right of homosexuals to teach in public schools.” (!!!)

“54 percent do not regard adultery as wrong, and only 15 percent strongly agree that extramarital affairs are wrong,” the authors disclosed. “Thus, members of the media elite emerge as strong supporters of sexual freedom, and as natural opponents of groups like the Moral Majority.” (The relevance of this particular factoid escapes me)

Journalists More Pro-Gay than Public: In 1995, the Times Mirror Center found a values gap when they compared the views of 228 top journalists and media executives to other groups: “The public is divided as to whether homosexuality should be accepted (41 percent) or discouraged (53 percent), as are members of Congress, top business executives and local community leaders. But members of the national media feel it should be accepted by an 83 to 4 percent margin, and this view is almost as prevalent among the local media (75 percent to 14 percent).”

“More than half (51 percent) of the journalists said abortion should be legal under any circumstance; 40 percent said it should be legal under certain circumstances, and four percent said all abortion should be illegal. The U.S. public at large appears to be much less likely than U.S. journalists to see unrestricted abortion as legal and more likely to say it should always be illegal,” they reported.

I'd be interested in seeing similar 'liberal' vs. 'conservative' comparisons going back to the 50's on issues such as segregation and interracial marriage. Or civil rights.

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CingularDuality

When an investigative reporter doesn't bother to take 5 minutes to learn about the mechanical difference between a legal sporting rifle and what was banned under the "assault weapons" ban, that is evidence. He/she is willing to interview dozens of people, to wire a cameraman with a hidden camera to go into a gun store, to dig through the trash to find gun sales invoices, but NOT going to educate herself on what a rifle does? That's bias.

And I didn't even think of all the times that cops use guns for good.
Of course it's a narrow example. But it's an excellent example of this kind of liberal bias. And this attitude permeates journalism. Find me a mainstream news report that uses the legal term "illegal alien" instead of "willing worker" or "undocumented immigrant". Think about how many other politically correct terms they do this to...

And I'm not talking about a conspiracy, I'm talking about a trend. I don't think reporters or editors get together and say, "OK, how can we spin this story to be favorable to the demorats?" I think it's just a cultural thing within the confines of journalism. That doesn't make it any less wrong, however.

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