If there is no liberal bias in the media...

Re: If there is no liberal bias in the media...

Scrat wrote:

If there is no liberal bias in the media why did the editor of the Los Angeles Times, John Carroll, instruct his staff to refrain from displaying their liberal bias in the LA Times?

Maybe John Carroll has a conservative bias himself and he wants his journalists to display his bias in their articles, not their own. Or maybe any liberal bias the LA Times might have is not indicative of a liberal bias of the American press as a whole. After all, you probably wouldn't accept the conservative bias of the New York Post, the Washington Times, and the National Review as evidence for a conservative bias of the American press as a whole.

On a slight tangent, your question appears to imply that you have a problem with liberal biases. If so, why?

-- Thomas

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steissd wrote:

CdK, there are almost no reports about Israeli civilian casualties in the media, especially in the European ones.

I don't know which European media you consume. But here in Germany, our radio stations and daily newspapers have been reporting about Israeli casualties something like two or three times a week lately. (I don't have a TV set.) I gather that's about the frequency at which these casualties occur in real life. Are you saying that Palestinians kill Israelis a lot more often than that? Surely your bold statement -- that there are almost no reports -- appears to imply this.

-- Thomas

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Mr. Thomas, I used the "Google search", one of the most powerful search engines; but it brought very few articles on the events mentioned, that were not affiliated to Israeli, Jewish or Christian Fundamentalist Web sites. This made me thinking that the media were ignoring the Palestinian terror. Of course, I looked for English-language sources only, since I do not speak German.

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Maybe it's how you are looking, steissd. Try this:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=bomb+israeli+dead

(I used "bomb", "Israeli", and "dead" as keywords. Many, many, many hits.)

6th result:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/world/newsid_1900000/1900715.stm

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steissd wrote:

CdK, there are almost no reports about Israeli civilian casualties in the media, especially in the European ones

That is simply not true.

steissd wrote:

(thanks God, I cannot read French, since if I have been able to read a French covering of the events, I would become an anti-Semite).

That is a bias. Oh the irony....

steissd wrote:

If I did not know what really happens (every year I spend in the ranks at least one month), I would think that IDF was indiscriminately killing everything that is alive. And the reality is very far from this.
The difference in casualties between Israel and terrorists is explained by higher professionalism and better equipment of the soldiers.

Steissd,

In the media you decry I have not been led to conclude that Isreal kills indiscriminately. As to the casualty rate my conclusions are similar to yours.

I guess you'll claim it's a miracle, but the "biased" media you complain about has done well in giving me the information.

It's a sad dumb way to argue to say that people's opinions are suspect due to the "bias" they draw their sources from.

I can't tell you how tired I am of the fallacious ploy of saying that one's opinion would be different (read "you'd think like me") if one could see through the "bias" or get news from "nice unbiased balanced news".

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Thomas - I assume you read Mr. Carroll's memo. Did it read to you as if he were asking anyone to tilt their coverage to the right? I thought it was a pretty straightforward, well documented memo. He points out specific examples of bias and admonishes his staff of the need to avoid even the perception of bias.

I find the responses here fascinating. They range from attempts to paint my words as something they are not to efforts to assert that this is no big deal either way. The latter group would like to pretend that no one has ever claimed there wasn't a liberal bias out there. The former just wants to craft an argument they know they can win. Either way, both groups miss the point.

Big names in US media have decried and denied the presence of a liberal bias. Here is an example of someone inside admitting that in this specific case the perception that there is a liberal bias is valid. I found that information pertinent to a debate about media bias. I did not offer it as proof that all media is liberally biased.

I would hazard a guess that, had I complained one week ago that I felt I perceived a liberal bias in the report on the abortion/cancer link found in the LA Times, the majority here in A2K would have argued the point with me, claiming that it was my conservative bias that led me to think so. I find the knowledge that the paper's own editor believes the report was biased a more credible source for that point of view than am I. I also find it telling that he points to the article in question as part of a larger problem, not as a single errant case of biased reporting.

If that means nothing to you, fine. Cool

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Scrat:

No one painted your words as something they were not, and you just provided the proof that your strawman argument in the opening clause of your first post was intended to posit a liberal bias in media. You mention "big names" whose remarks you assert sustain your contention, but go no further to provide substantiation. And you continue not to respond to those who have made telling points against your diatribe. Those who have responded to you here, making a hash of your thesis, which you would not at first admit to arguing, but now present in it's full glory, have uniformly suggested to you that there are media outlets with a liberal slant, and those with a conservative slant. If that's news to you, i can only sit in bemused wonder at your naivetée (i use two "e's" on the assumption that you are female, as implied in an earlier post). You came here to pick a fight on this subject, and you tried to ambush people with a very sophomoric forensic trick. I have no respect for you now, because you have surrendered your honesty to dogmatic adherence to partisanship. You exhibit no scholarship in what you write, you provide no substantiation for your contentions, and you falsely characterize what others have written in replying to you. What a thorough-going waste of everyone's time it has been to do you the courtesy of a considered reply. You'd be more at home back at AFUZZ, where these sorts of trollish dialogue are the order of the day.

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scrat all media has bias, primarily due to sales, but when a media like FOX constantly tells us they are NOT biased "we report-you decide" its a dead giveaway that they are biased, everyone knows the NY Times slant and the other major news sources that are left-right or down the middle and it is encumbant on the reader to make what use of it they may and yes we radical socialist liberals jest at Faux news while you on the far right whine about the liberal press. mostly i would say to everyone "get over it"

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Setanta - You are hilarious! What diatribe? I posted a memo by an editor of a major newspaper and solicited comments. That's a "diatribe"? ROFLMFAO!

Are you sure you are reading the same discussion? Exactly what "thesis" did I offer, and how has it been deconstructed?

If I don't respond to a post it probably means I found nothing of interest in it. I respond to you purely because you are fairly representative of most of the folks here--you pretend I've written things I have not, then set about arguing with those straw men (with a tenacity I find rather funny, I might add). Laughing

If you genuinely know of no "big names" in the media who have stated that there is no liberal bias, I would be happy to offer you a few citations.
Beyond that, all I can tell you is that I understand what you claim I have written, and it simply ain't so. Cool

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Dys - Let's assume for now that Fox News has a conservative bias. What do you think about the memo I cited?

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i simply think that its a given that all media are biased usually towards their market. FOX news as carved out the angry white man as their market and it works for them

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Very relevant discussion:

Political leanings or bias in media sources

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dyslexia wrote:

i simply think that its a given that all media are biased usually towards their market.

Very relevant point!

E.g.

The NY Times is often accused of a leftist slant. They were accused of being insensitive for running a feature on Palestinians on a day in which an attack on israelis occured (I do not think it was intentional, as far as I know the NYT is owned by a Jewish family).

Advertisers threatened to boycott and for the next wekk or two the NY Times ran a series of features and other tearjerker type articles on Israeli suffering.

I think it's a good example of market driven media.

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When one starts from a nebulous supposition and a favorite theory, there can be no objectivity in the reporting of it. The very first sentence scrat posits "if there is no liberal bias in the media why did the editor of the Los Angeles Times.........?", besides its deplorable lack of punctuation, starts out with a presupposed position and then runs away with it.

I notice you've lost your nuts, scrat?

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dyslexia wrote:

I simply think that its a given that all media are biased usually towards their market.

If we assume you are right, let's see where that takes us...

DYS' ASSUMPTION: All media are biased towards their market.

If that is true then it must follow:

1) The print news media is dominated by large circulation, "big" city newspapers.

2) Big cities are liberal markets.

3) Big city papers are liberally biased, to suit their markets.

4) The newspapers that dominate print news media in the US are liberally biased.

5) The print news media in the US is dominated by a liberal bias.

(NOTE: This conclusion is premised on what Dys has written. Feel free to fault his premise or my logic in drawing conclusions from it, but don't complain to him about my logic or to me about his premise.) :wink:

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mamajuana wrote:

its deplorable lack of punctuation, starts out with a presupposed position and then runs away with it.

I notice you've lost your nuts, scrat?

Mama, my money is on the exclamation point as the nut thief. It's illusive behavior points to the obvious guilt. Wink

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How about this alternative view: All TV networks and most big newspapers are owned by corporate entities. Such entities are, by and large, conservative. Therefore, the media skew to the right.

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Scrat --

That's fair enough, so far as it goes. Frankly, I'm more inclined to believe that newspapers are more beholden to advertisers in their market -- advertising generating a great deal more profit than subscribership, so it is generally in a paper's best interests to stay away from opinions that might put off a substantial portion of their moneyed, consuming readers.

Most of the really large markets, though, have two papers, one that stands just barely left of the American center and another that stands just barely to the right of it (at least, if you go by opinions expressed on editorial pages). In two of the cities I've lived in or near where this has been the case -- San Francisco and Seattle -- both of those papers have been owned by the same company. So if you like your paper to favor tax cuts, you buy one newspaper and read about why you should favor them. If you like your paper to oppose tax cuts -- well, there's a paper to tell you why you should oppose them, too. In either case, the money ends up in the same pockets.

Honestly, the range of opinions that could be promulgated by major newspapers is so vast compared to the tiny range of opinions that actually are put forth that I tend to suspect the motivations of all of them. Hell, at least Fox News, as much as I hate their politics, seems fairly consistent in their agenda. MSNBC and CNN make me want to wretch in their blandness and the inconsistency in what they choose to cover, and for how long they choose to cover it.

(I've a theory -- totally unsubstantiated, just a hunch, so please don't bother to take me to task on it -- that MSNBC breaks news stories in obscure locations on its website, and a couple of days later decides whether or not to put it on TV based on how many hits it gets... Just what I would do if I was a money-grubbing media conglomerate.)

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Scrat wrote:

dyslexia wrote:
I simply think that its a given that all media are biased usually towards their market.

If we assume you are right, let's see where that takes us...

DYS' ASSUMPTION: All media are biased towards their market.

If that is true then it must follow:

1) The print news media is dominated by large circulation, "big" city newspapers.

2) Big cities are liberal markets.

3) Big city papers are liberally biased, to suit their markets.

4) The newspapers that dominate print news media in the US are liberally biased.

5) The print news media in the US is dominated by a liberal bias.

(NOTE: This conclusion is premised on what Dys has written. Feel free to fault his premise or my logic in drawing conclusions from it, but don't complain to him about my logic or to me about his premise.) :wink:

It is not based on dys' writings. It's based on your own assumptions, namely that big cities are uniformly liberal.

Oddly enough I'm inclined to agree with much of what you are trying to write, but the fact that you want to say it and cover your butt at the same time opens huge holes in your posts.

Here's a simple way to say it:

Creative professions tend to draw liberals. In art, culture and education many (but not all) people are of a liberal inclination.

Other professions tend toward a more conservative base. Such as the military.

It's a "so what" to me. I don't whine about the military "having a conservative bias".

Thing is, people have a disposition toward certain schools of thought.

Liberals aren't liberal because they read liberal papers, they read liberal papers because they are liberal.

Conservatives are not conservative because they listen to talk radio or watch rightwing news. They do that because they are conservative.

The above is just my opinion, at the core of my post is the question of whether media is a microcosm of life or if it dictates it.

Life imitating art? Or art imitating life?

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Scat

Quote:

2) Big cities are liberal markets.

Yeah, DALLAS is a liberal market Laughing

, so are Ft. Worth and Houston, oh, yeah, Miami and Hotlanta, GA. all about as left as you can be Laughing

let's see how about Cincinnati or Oklahoma City or Tulsa? Radical lefties all? Kansas City, Omaha? Wait, I've thought of one, New Orleans unless the subject is abortion. Look at all these big city lefto markets--- Nashville, big time, Knoxville, you betcha, Charlotte/Raleigh/Durham, these are all hotbeds of opposition to the current administration.

Tell me again, why did I move to NYC?

Joe

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