If you were a bookie... Polls and bets on the 2004 elections

i find it interesting that, above all of their previous vietnam history, that mccain and kerry are quite good friends. reality trumping political rhetoric.

makes you wonder... what does mccain get about kerry that others don't??

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nimh wrote:

"Stolen Honor" was made by Carlton Sherwood, a Vietnam veteran and former reporter for the conservative Washington Times who is also the author of a book about the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

[/quote]

i couldn't tell you anything about carlton sherwood. but i could tell you a little bit about my highschool friend, stephen, who went from happy go lucky freak to to befuddled moonie in way less than 12 steps.

washinton post. owned by sung myung moon.

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nimh wrote:

It certainly is a political intervention in media programming that, in its directness, is quite unparallelled.

Just imagine what you would say if the owner of ABC ordered all his stations to broadcast Fahrenheit 9/11 the week before the elections. Thatd be quite the upping of the ante compared to "memogate". We wouldnt hear the end of it - "the liberal media"!

Nonsense, and well below your usual standards, Nimh.

We have already seen the bias of CBS news, which even goes to the extent of publishing fake "evidence" over essentially trivial matters they are trying to make into a campaign issue. Leaked memos, allegedly from ABC executives, directing the news staff to be more critical of certain aspects of the Bush campaign than the corresponding parts of Kerry's have recently become public. The activities of Sinclair, a very minor player in that world, are hardly up to the CBS/ABC norms of bias spewed out daily.

All of the media and the entertainment industry, of which it is an associated part, is biased one way or the other. While there are substantial portions that are conservatively biased, the great majority is liberal, as has been verified by numerous survrys of the political leanings of the people who own, manage, and staff the various print, TV, film, and radio media. The very existence of Farenheidt 9/11, as an accepted element of the entertainment establishment demonstrates this point.

I note that the shrill indignation of the liberal establishment, when confronting conservative bias, far exceeds that of conservatives seeing the same from them. Why is this? Simple - conservatives are long accustomed to liberal bias on the part of the media. It has become a permanrnt part of the scene and much is hardly noticed. Only in the last decade or so has an avowedly conservative media establishment arisen. Perhaps because it is still a bit new to them, liberals react to it so much more.

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New thought.
Australia's PM, John Howard won reelection Saturday, increasing Conservative representation in both houses of Parliament, all by a margin almost 5% of voters. This, too was billed as a "close" election, fought over many of the same issues as those here in the States.

Australia and the U.S. are different places with differences in some aspects of our political traditions. However, we are more like one another than (say) the U.S. and either France , Netherlands, or Germany, etc.. What, if anything, does the decisive Howard victory in Australia indicate for the forthcoming U.S. election?

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Good point, georgeob1. To follow our resident Ozzians, I really thought Howard was toast. And, look at the pudding... He swept conservatives in with him.

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Australian election: I wouldn't say it's indicative of our forthcoming election whatsoever... but his re-election does seem in contrast to the "majority thought the war was wrong" mantra.

Nimh, F-911 is out on DVD... which means that everyone who wants to see it will.

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I think that the Aussie representation here is not indicative of the majority at home.

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I believe the actual outcome of the Australian election was a good deal better for their conservatives than was either predicted by their (or our) pundits or suggested by the media reporting of the campaign.

This aspect of the Australian election may indeed be an indicator for ours.

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McGentrix wrote:

I think that the Aussie representation here is not indicative of the majority at home.

You might well be correct -knowing just a couple of Australians personally and never having been there, I lack of any knowledge to give such a statement.

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nimh wrote:

It certainly is a political intervention in media programming that, in its directness, is quite unparallelled.

I would share your outrage if the Bush campaign had forced, bribed, or otherwise compelled the Sinclair Broadcast Group into broadcasting this film. But here, the 'intervention', as you call it, comes from the group itself. What's wrong with expressing strong political opinions, and what's wrong with the broadcasters wanting their opinion to have an effect?

As to your point about broadcasting "Fahrenheit 9/11" shortly before the election, my reaction is the same as in the case you cited: Why not? It's a free country.

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It all comes down to a what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander thing. Those who do it will squawk when the other side counters with something similar, but they really have no moral standing to complain.

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Thomas wrote:

I would share your outrage if the Bush campaign had forced, bribed, or otherwise compelled the Sinclair Broadcast Group into broadcasting this film. But here, the 'intervention', as you call it, comes from the group itself. What's wrong with expressing strong political opinions, and what's wrong with the broadcasters wanting their opinion to have an effect?

As to your point about broadcasting "Fahrenheit 9/11" shortly before the election, my reaction is the same as in the case you cited: Why not? It's a free country.

freedom of speech, thomas. you can bet that the sinclair folks most certainly will not broadcast f/911, or outfoxed for that matter.

i really don't remember stuff like this going on before bushy got into the white house.

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Gee, I wonder why the only objection to this comes from the distributor of the DVD. Odd, huh?

Quote:

Variety: Moore to come
Oct 7 2004

'Fahrenheit' pay event irks DVD distrib

By JOHN DEMPSEY, GABRIEL SNYDER

Michael Moore's dream of getting "Fahrenheit 9/11" onto television the night before the presidential election is close to fruition.

Documaker is producing a three-hour pay-per-view event that will run Nov. 1, the night before Election Day.

"The Michael Moore Pre-Election Special" will consist of a screening of "Fahrenheit 9/11" bookended by interviews with politically committed celebrities who'll talk about the charges leveled in the movie and the importance of voting in the presidential election of 2004 ...

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Thomas wrote:

I would share your outrage if the Bush campaign had forced, bribed, or otherwise compelled the Sinclair Broadcast Group into broadcasting this film. But here, the 'intervention', as you call it, comes from the group itself. What's wrong with expressing strong political opinions, and what's wrong with the broadcasters wanting their opinion to have an effect?

Hmm ... we are talking here of a politically-motivated intervention in the broadcasters' editorial policies by the owner of the business. You will find that such political intervention into editorial practice is almost as much frowned upon when it is done by the commercial owner as when it is done by a government party, and for good reason. Editorial independence after all is one of the main criteria by which freedom of the media is measured. If you look at the principles used by international bodies and journalist organisations, you'll find that a commercial party (the owner) interfering with an editors' or journalist's job, telling them what to cover or not to cover in what way, is considered an infringement of journalistic freedom and independence just as well - all the more so when it's on political grounds.

Of course there are classic examples of 'bad practice' nevertheless: the UK press, especially the tabloid press, come to mind (Murdoch); Berlusconi's media also do. But in general, for example, the EU, OSCE, Council of Europe use editorial independence of the media as a touchstone to evaluate the democratic standards of acceding countries with. The same goes for organisations like the International Federation of Journalists - they rightly protest if journalists are told what to cover and how by owners, too. It seems hypocritical to blast the Slovak, Ukrainian or Serbian media for lack of media independence and then approve the same practices in our own marketplaces as just business.

A media landscape in which each media's coverage and programming would be determined by the political conviction of its owner may still ensure a diverse media - assuming there's millionaires of all kinds of political stripes - but no longer a free media. Owners ordering editors and journalists to broadcast a specific piece of political propaganda - and classify it as "news" so as to avoid the regulations on political broadcasts - should have no place in a democracy that prides itself on its free media.

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Sorry nimh, but I don't see how you get from "owners have a say in what their media outlets broadcast" to "the media are no longer free". For example, it isn't unusual for Mr. Sulzberger to write Op-Eds in the New York Times, and I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't influence what content gets published in his newspaper.

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Thomas wrote:

Sorry nimh, but I don't see how you get from "owners have a say in what their media outlets broadcast" to "the media are no longer free". For example, it isn't unusual for Mr. Sulzberger to write Op-Eds in the New York Times, and I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't influence what content gets published in his newspaper.

Err, wouldn't those last two examples be of significant different scope?

Writing an op-ed piece is quite something different from dictating journalists what they should write in their reports.

Issue one here is that op-ed pieces are clearly marked as representing opinion, not news reporting. Op-ed pieces are intended to represent personal opinion. Regular news stories are supposed to not do so.

Issue two is the principle of interfering with editorial independence. It is one thing to have your opinion published in an op-ed piece. It is something else to order editors and journalists what they should write about, what not, and how they should write about it.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen. In the UK, one of the tabloid's owners is notorious. One summer, he ordered the editors to publish one scandalising news story about asylum-seekers every day, in what he openly admitted was a political campaign. Another example is the owner forcing scandalising headlines to be placed over what in fact were pretty objective, fact-oriented pieces on asylum-seekers. This is in clear breach of standards of journalistic independence.

Basically, 'tis something different when Mr. Sulzberger tells the NYT reporters what to write in the regular news coverage about Bush than when he writes his own op-ed about the man. You can refer to the outrage above about the ABC memo to see that right-wingers object to the blatant imposition of political goals over journalistic independence represented by the former just as much.

Journalists should be free to fulfill their task: to report objectively. Many don't - for sure. And when they don't, you can bring them to task for it. But it is always a no-no for owners or governments to order them to suspend their task of objective reporting and deliver political propaganda on request instead. That is a serious breach of journalistic freedom, yes.

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nimh wrote:

Basically, 'tis something different when Mr. Sulzberger tells the NYT reporters what to write in the regular news coverage about Bush than when he writes his own op-ed about the man.

Fair enough, I have no example of Sulzberger doing this. But from reading (some of) the correspondence between Marion Dönhoff and Gerd Bucerius, I gather that Bucerius frequently intervened in what Die Zeit reported, which section editor to hire and which one to fire. And Die Zeit has been the best German weekly ever since World War II.

nimh wrote:

You can refer to the outrage above about the ABC memo to see that right-wingers object to the blatant imposition of political goals over journalistic independence represented by the former just as much.

Sure. And think these right-wingers are getting things wrong too.

nihm wrote:

But it is always a no-no for owners or governments to order them to suspend their task of objective reporting and deliver political propaganda on request instead. That is a serious breach of journalistic freedom, yes.

Well then, I guess we have to agree to disagree on this. You seem to believe that intervention by the owner is fundamentally the same as intervention by the government, while I believe the two cases are fundamentally different regarding the freedom of the press.

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In the latest daily tracking polls,

- Zogby has no change compared to yesterday, with Kerry at 46% and Bush at 45%
- Rasmussen has Bush down 0,1% at 49,5%, but Kerry down 0,4% at 45,5%
- WaPo has Bush up 1% to 51%, and Kerry unchanged at 46%.

Doesn't look good. The WaPo poll now has Bush increasing his lead by 1% for three consecutive days. The Rasmussen poll has had Bush increasing his lead by anything between 0,3% and 1,4% for four consecutive days. All that in the days following the last debate. And when a shift in the tracking poll takes place gradually rather than with a spike, its more likely to reflect a real change.

Zogby's the odd one out, with a three-point move to Kerry in three days' time. It also includes a higher number of undecideds - probably pushes respondents to an answer less. Could mean that what the other two are showing is Bush winning "leaners" - new supporters that are not quite sure of their choice yet.

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I sorta go along with the thrust here, but one thing nimh brought up to which I take exception is the assertion it is a no-no for OWNERS to influence, or even to dictate, the editorial stance and the selection of what is to be reported on by the media which they own. The concept of Free Press extends bindingly to Government alone. Government should have no say in what is reported, or how it is reported, but the Market, The Public, should be free to choose from among the spectrum of viewpoints provided by a truly unrestricted media. There are some thorny bits to that - hatespeech and the fomenting of violence are not desireable, for instance, and admittedly should be subject to reasonable controls - but other than that, put it out there, whatever and however one or another outlet feels appropriate to its particular philosophy, and let The Public decide, with their subscription dollars and their support of advertisers appearing through whatever media outlet which viewpoints flourish, and which wither for lack of interest or even outright rejection. A Free Press should be free to do and say as it pleases, and a Free Society should be free to assess, judge, and accord to each outlet such reward or rebuke as that society deems appropriate. No one should be able to tell an owner what or how to publish, just as no one should be able to tell The Public what it may or may not consider.

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timberlandko wrote:

The concept of Free Press extends bindingly to Government alone.

Not according to most codes of conduct / codes of practice ...

No time to look up quotes, but for the businessman owning the newspaper to dictate to the journalists what to write about which topic in their regular news reporting is definitely contrary to most if not all such codes.

A journalist is not simply another employee ... his professional integrity requires him to do more than just follow orders. Basically, if he's merely an employee, he does and writes whatever the owner tells him to. But if he's a proper journalist, his responsibility extends to the readers - and to something as ephanescent as "the truth" - as much as to the owner.

timberlandko wrote:

Government should have no say in what is reported, or how it is reported, but the Market, The Public, should be free to choose from among the spectrum of viewpoints provided by a truly unrestricted media.

Journalism as a profession implies more than pushing and furthering respective political POV's, do we agree? If so, journalistic freedom also goes beyond having different owners push different political agendas to Joe Public.

In Russia or the Ukraine, where those media that are not steered politically by the government in their reporting usually instead defend or propagate the interests of this or that business tycoon, depending whose 'protection' they are under (eulogizing him, slandering his competitors, denying corruption charges), is there truly "free media"? Journalistic 'freedom' there often comes down to the choice between writing down what the government wants you to write or writing down what Oligarch A or B wants you to write. Joe Public doesn't even enter into the equation.

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If you were a bookie... Polls and bets on the 2004 elections

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