I recommend a book which may shed light on this situation: Coloring the News : How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism by William McGowan. Excerpt from a review
Call me confused, but I see no debate here. Will december or Hail Ants please point out the “Bias” they seem to be claiming.
One data point can’t demonstrate bias, period.
So if we’re comparing how “the liberal media” handled this incident, compared to the way they’ve handled others, then we need some of the other incidents in order to have multiple data points.
If we’re comparing how different news outlets treated that one remark in this story, oliversarmy (who I hope is here to stay ;)) has provided evidence that supports the conclusion that there’s no clear pattern.
And december’s quote of a book review adds exactly nothing here.
[hijack]
Say, when is there going to be an analysis of the bias level of the conservative media? They’ve got their radio and TV shows (Rush, Ollie, Pat Robertson, all the other televangelists that do ‘news and opinion’ shows, a host of conservative magazines, and a fair number of newspapers. And Fox News, or so I’m told - I don’t watch enough TV to know firsthand.
I would venture a WAG that the conservative media are far more biased than the liberal media; in fact, the conservative media are mostly unabashedly conservative, and proud of it. Why is it that only the ‘liberal’ media are held up to some standard of objectivity by the very people who make no pretense of objectivity themselves?
[/hijack]
I mentioned the book Coloring the News, to raise the possibility that race was may have been downplayed in some reports for fear of offending African-Americans.
Hail Ants wrote
ISTM we could debate
– whether events are reported differently based on race,
– whether events should be reported differently based on race.
– whether there’s too much difference in reporting by race
I, for one, agree with all 3 propositions. I do think race makes a difference in reporting. I also think it’s appropriate for the media to bend over backwards, to some extent, to avoid promoting prejudice. In some cases, however, I think they have gone too far
Hail Ants, are you following a different story than the rest of us? What’s bizarre about the case in Fort Worth that I heard about isn’t that she hit someone; it isn’t even that she hit someone and drove away. The bizarre part is that she wathced him die a slow, preventable death.
If you wish to inject race into this scenario, you should first notice that race is not widely reported with this story. When I first heard about it, the skin colors of the participants weren’t part of the story. Still, if you insist on a racial component, try asking why she didn’t call for help. (I mean 911, not the friends she called to dispose of the body.) Maybe, if you want to make this about race, you should ask what was she afraid of - maybe she thought the criminal justice system would treat her worse because she hit white man. I doubt this makes any sense, for then she would likely fear what the criminal justice system would do to her if she killed a white man. This just leads us back to what makes the case bizarre - why did she let the man die?
And that’s just not a question about race.
By the by, have you seen reports of the skin color of the woman who told the police? If racial bias were prevalent, her skin color would likely be in the news as well.
I see on preview
december, what we should be learning is why Hail Ants thinks different skin colors would make a difference in this case, as Hail Ants seems to believe such a proposition is true. A significant part of the problem is that skin color doesn’t have anything to do with this case - any combination of commonly found human skin colors would still lead to the same reporting of this incident.
As someone else mentioned race never even seemed to be a factor in this case. But for the sake of argument, where in this story do you see a case for offense other than the obvious to wit she let a man bleed to death which I’m sure people of all races find repugnant.
Please demonstrate how any of those factors are at play in this case.
On preview, it seems the “quote feature” left our your quote from Hail Ants, but seeing as it was totally without support, it’s probably a good thing.
The only bias I see demonstrated is by the OP, yourself and Fox News.
I get irritated when people on the left buy into the idea that mainstream news sources are liberal media. The right has used this lie so effectively for so long people say it without even thinking.
I see three theories of liberal bias so far:
-race was downplayed which I see no evidence seeing as the respective pictures accompanied the stories I saw. To downplay race one would have to assume it was a factor in the first place.
-if races were reversed it would have been labeled a hate crime and I, of course, challenge anyone to come up with an equivalent example that actually demonstrates this theory. This is quite different from the superficially motiveless attack in that the motive for her actions is, while deplorable, plainly evident.
-a failure to report on issues important to the right but again, to demonstrate bias but I don’t see how the statement provides any reason to believe the crime was racially morivated.
So what we really have, at least in this post, is people who see liberals behind every tree.
** ISTM that the lack of reporting of race might be evidence of media bias in this inter-racial crime.
I fully agree. However, the OP was about a side issue, namely the media treatment of the story.
Well, this last sentence is a good statement of the debate.
I cannot prove whether or not race was an issue in the reporting of this case. However, consider a diffeent example. A few months ago, in Jasper, Texas, where James Byrd was murdered, there was a somewhat similar case with the races reversed. A white man, Ken Bimbo Tillery, was given a ride by four African American men. They proceeded to beat him up and then run him over, killing him. The Tillery case received almost no national publicity.
I have no doubt that the Tillery murder would have been a big story if the races had been reversed.
please link to the original news story (not an op ed piece from a conservative think tank, please), describing the facts of the second case.
In the Jasper case, the 3 guys in the truck had ties to white supremacy groups, and targeted Mr. Byrd 'cause he was black.
I don’t know how to use the absence of something as evidence to support a proposition without first knowing that it should be there and second knowing why it is missing. Here, I don’t know that the media has a definite racial bias, and I don’t know why a racial bias hasn’t been seen (though I suspect it’s because the media understands that race isn’t a motivation of this crime).
What is ISTM?
**
The difference is that the conservative media you refer to does not offer an opinion under the pretense that it is unbiased. No reasonable person listens to Rush hoping for an unbiased report of the news. I propose that most people listening to Brokaw, Rather and Jennings are hoping for an unbiased report of the news and not an opinion.
The reason that the mainstream news is held up to a standard is because they claim to be un-biased. The right wingers like Rush make no such claim.
If you want MHO, we should do away with “unbiased” news people entirely. Everyone is biased, so journalists should just admit it and let the viewers decide. I hate to sound like an advertisement for Fox, but they really are the only news channel that even attempts to do this. How successful they are is debateable, but other stations only show the one point of view as if no other exists.
nevermind - I found it. I also found what had to be your souces, december, which almost word for word you posted (‘why isn’t this a hate crime, the only difference is in the race of the participants’ type of thing.)
In case the link doesn’t work, google Tillery murder, and you’ll find a link that doesn’t work any more for the Dallas Morning News, but hit the ‘cached’ version and you find www.dallasnews.com/texas_southwest/ap/stories/AP_STATE_0359.html+Tillery+murder&hl=en"]this which spells out the pertinent details of the case. ( added on preview, see that you found another news source).
In the Tillery case, both the victim and the murderers were at a known drug house, (tho’ they apparently didn’t know each other), Tillery asked for a ride, offered $5, during the ride they say he refused to pay, they upped the price, all argued, and Tillery got beaten and run over.
as opposed to the Byrd case where three men (at least one of whom had ties to white supremacy groups), picked up a man they had no prior connection with, then proceded to beat him and drag him to his death. here
The differences include: in the one case, there was known links to race-hating groups, they picked up a man of the hated racial group and he ended up dead. Why would 3 men (two who had race hating tatoos) pick up a hitchiker of the other race?
in the other case, all 4 were at the same location, apparently there was some agreement about a ride, and then perhaps a disagreement about the costs etc, arguement leading to a death.
There’s also the level of violence. In the Byrd case, the man was still alive when he was dragged over a road, and body pieces ended up all over the place. The other man was run over (yea, they’re both as dead, but the level of, oh, I don’t know hate seems distinctly higher in the Byrd case).
and, gee, even your source says the investigating officer didn’t see a racial connection in the Tillery case, and since he was also the investigating officer in the Byrd case, his opinion should carry some weight, n’est ce pas?
So, bottom line, your prior posting suggesting that there was a racial motivation /bias involved seems to have no credibility. What a surprise.
I dunno, Fox News’ “We report – you decide” tag line sounds a lot like it’s trying to push the appearance of impartiality to me.
That hasn’t stopped Rush from describing himself as an unbiased reporter of news. And I’d venture that a large part of his audience thinks they’re getting unbiased reporting from him.
Wasn’t it the Annenberg School of Communications which reported that Rush’s listeners (a) considered themselves the most informed on news events, and (b) consistently tested as the worst informed on news events?
DeBaser please reconcile your post with “Bill the No-Spin Zone Reilly” …
It’s ok, I’ll just wait over here.
Deabaser, what in the hell do the words “fair and balanced” mean in your language? Fox certainly does not acknowledge a bias.
All news is biased, the question of whether the mainstream news has a liberal bias is a different matter.
December, since you can’t show bias in this case you pull out another comparison that doesn’t show it either? Of course we have to switch theories of bias because they pretty clearly didn’t underplay the racial angle.
So now your position is that one case demonstrates bias because a particularly vicious crime got more press than a run of the mill killing. One case getting a ton of attention doesn’t take us that far, in the right circumstances dragging a dog could get you to the national press or throwing a yappy little peke into traffic could make you a national villain. Yes, the press gave more attention because there was an ongoing political debate over hate crimes but one could as easily argue that the political debate gave the excuse to focus vast amounts of attention on a tawdry crime.
Perhaps you would care to lend your media analysis skills to the Chandra Levy case next.
wring, please don’t put words in my mouth. There’s no need to decipher what my prior post might have been suggesting. It meant exactly what it said, namely:
I stand by this conclusion. There were several similarlites to the Byrd case. It would have been big news if four White men had murdered a Black man in Jasper using a car.
One case certainly can’t prove anything (unless some editor said that race played a role in the manner of reporting.) However, the book I cited describes numerous other cases where race definitely was a factor in the reporting.
ISTM = It Seems to me
I question this statement. I’ve often heard Rush point out to the radio audience that he’s commenting from his POV.
I sort-of agree with your second point, rjung. Most of his audience probably does believe that he’s reasonably accurate, or they wouldn’t listen.
sorry, [be]december** but even with the French judges scoring added in, your post suggested nothing of the sort. You posted in a thread about bias in the media. You said that if the participants had been of opposite racial characterizations, the media would have handled it differently, however, even your own source concluded, based on the evidence of the crime, that it was not racially motivated. There’s horrible crimes committed every single day. It would be fairly easy to demonstrate this. Some get national exposure, some don’t.
You’re the one suggesting that racial factors motivated the ‘play’ this story got. The data suggested that while there were similarities (number of people involved, partial similarity in method, same place), there were quite a few distinct differences, other than the racial make up of the participants (allegiance to racially based groups, level of violence on the body etc.) To demonstrate that the racial characterizations of the participants was the deciding factor, please indicate/demonstrate why the level of sickening violence in the one, the allegiance to racial hate groups in the same case were not the most significant factors. If all you have is your ‘feeling’, color me unimpressed.