Conservative Bias in the Media

Am i mistaken, or is the title of this thread "Conservative Bias in the Media?"

Am i mistaken, or is Scrat the author thereof?

Am i mistaken, or did Scrat write: "There is a difference between discussing ideas and stating that media have standing editorial policies?"

Am i mistaken . . . ?

Look . . . up ahead . . . that signpost over there . . .

TWILIGHT ZONE

People who use the edit button to fix typos that have been noted by other posters are ignorant cretins and should be ground up for dog food.

heeheeheeheeheeheeheehee . . .

Yeah, but there is always the edit button . . .

Yes, there is.

Setanta - Once again you make an unsupported inferrence. Spotting conservative bias in the media and commenting on it is a very different thing from claiming that a specific media outlet has a standing editorial policy calling for biased reporting.

Seriously, you are a hell of a lot smarter than this silly "I'm going to pretend not to get it just so I'll have something to argue about" nonsense.

Scrat

Editorial policies (use 'habits of thought', or 'preferences' if you like) aren't all going to be availble in handy power point presentations. Some of them are going to show up in content carried and content left out.

For example, the Canadian papers I speak of (owned by Canwest, the Asper family, purchased from friend Conrad Black, who is tied to our friend Mr. Perle via business and the Jersalem Post) carry very specific data and figures on Israelis killed. Almost never - no exaggeration - is comparable information on Palestinians part of the coverage.

I doubt one would find any memos from owner to editors on this. But it is operational policy, simply understood and unstated.

Al Franken said it best in his little spat with Bill O'Reilly:

"Asking if the media is conservative is like asking if al-Qaeda puts too much oil on their hummus. That is not the point."

Fer chrissake, what a putz ! ! !

HUMOR[/b]

Look the word up, read and try to understand . . . then take the weekend off, and get over yerself . . .

for a check on bias in the media use google search for the topic at hand (franken-o'reilly). i read the first 5 hits and got quite a variety of reportage of said exchange. the CBS appeared to be the most neutral in coverage.

Anyone who believes that there is no bias, or ought not to be any bias in the news media, apart from having no realistic evaluation of human nature, is ignoring the weight of history. Since the scribes put reed styli to wet clay in Akkadia three thousand years ago, personal considerations of those doing the writing have informed the "facts" reported.

This is why i found this ridiculous, and an object for satirical comment. Scrat is on his/her second thread on bias in the media in about a week's time. My, my, ain't reality a bitch.

Setanta - All I can tell you is that if you actually intended it as humor (?) you need to work on your act. It's pointless for an unfunny man to tell his audience that they don't understand humor.

Yeah, Boss, right . . . whatever floats yer boat . . .

Conservatives feel there is a Liberal Media Bias (which there is! =p) and Liberals feel a Conservative one. Rightly so, because news should be reported down the center. News analysis on the other hand...

Yer all livin' in Lala land if you believe there ever has been, or ever will be, objective reporting in the media. I read history, and one is obliged to apply certain standards of evidence in evaluating what one reads--who benefits from this characterization of events? what does the author have at stake? How close to events and persons is the author--there are quite a few questions one needs ask oneself in judging the value of historical testimony. One needs to apply the same standards to the daily newspaper. To contend that there is no bias, or to contend that there is a bias, but that it is all one side, is to play fast an loose with the truth--either knowingly or as the result of a pathetic naivete . . .

As we are all human beings with different perceptions, there HAS to be bias in what we are reporting. When we confront a scene, there are so many factors that play into that scene.

What a person finds relevent, and how he perceives what is happening comes out of his history, experiences, and biases. A good reporter will keep these biases down to the minimum, but it can never be completely ignored.
There is no doubt that newspapers will prefer to hire reporters who have similar biases to the management. Because of this, a paper will not have to instruct a reporter to slant the news. It will just happen naturally. I would also expect that papers with different agendas will tell reporters to play up or down some subject.

I remember a story that I heard during the time of the Soviet Union. (It may be made up, but it illustrates the point) Seems that there was an Olympic event, where there were only two contenders............an American, and a Soviet.

The American won. The Soviet papers reported, "The Soviet athlete came in second, the American next to last"!

Phoenix

That's quite cute. It reminds me of a comment made by a Soviet union official from some years ago, "We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us."

Setanta

Let's acknowledge that no opinion is objective, nor possibly so. But the subject at hand isn't entirely meaningless. Coverage of the war by CNN was distinctly different from coverage by the BBC (or even our CBC for that matter). I think one can make valid claims about bias, but they would have to be based on something more substantive than the anecdotal (or than on Ann Coulter's sexual repression).

What valid claim can you make, BLatham? It is not unreasonable to assume that we are all adults here--therefore, make a reasonable judgment about the reliability of your sources of information, and get on with it. The entire "bias in media" nonsense has the stench of yet another reactionary smoke screen. It's actually an effective tactic, in gutter debating--attack your enemy with a charge before it is leveled against you. Most of these "If there is no liberal/conservative bias in the media, then . . . " rants are of the same rhetorical order as "Have you stopped beating your wife?"

Setanta

Earlier on, on one of these bias threads, there were a number of quotes from folks on the right (Kristol, etc) who explicitly voiced that the 'liberal media' claim was a rhetorical strategy ('reactionary smoke screen', in your words) used to assist promulgation of the right side's views and arguments. So, you are right of course, it's use is most commonly fallacious (as in 'Muslims only understand force' or 'Republicans have really small penises').

Media studies is one of the many areas where my education is regretfully deficient. But I'll assume that there are fairly dependable measurement criteria developed to ascertain broad changes in leaning. For example, it would seem relevant and important if a paper, over some longish period of time, quoted Palestinian officials 10 times, but quoted Israeli officials 4000 times.

I'll not deny that thesis, i'll only point out that one needs to apply a rigorous standard of evidence. You know what my obessive subject is--i apply this standard, and have very little respect for anyone who does not apply a reasonable standard in reading the news. There are certainly those who get fed what they are inclined to believe in the first place--those people are not worth the time to attempt an adult debate.

Agreed. By the way, above I noted in brackets two claims and labelled them both as fallacious. I suspect one might be correct.