If that reflects public opinion in general, then no, it isn’t bias at all, just responsible reporting. The old saying that “There’s 2 sides to every story”, implying that the 2 have to be defined and given equal time, is fallacious.
Especially because there are very often many more than two sides to every story.
The French, as I recall…
Anyway, in support of UncleBeer, here’s an example of gun reporting that was, well, slanted (borrowed from this Reason Online article):
Really, what’s so awful about reporting that an honest citizen with a gun stopped a criminal?
Both the French government and the South Vietnamese government invited military advisors and personnel to become involved. The fact that the US didn’t hold the elections doesn’t change that fact.
South Vietnam and North Vietnam are constructs of political strategies? No kidding. Can you find a state that ISN’T a construct of past political strategies?
Thanks for the link, Max.
Ummm . . . I guess I’m still waiting on an example of the media advocating gun control.
Okeedokee. The Hampton Roads Pilot and the St. Louis Dispatcher editorial boards support increased gun control.
These are editorials, however, and not what I think of when I think “news story.” Since stories were what Unc mentioned, I’m interested in seeing some actual news stories that advocate gun control.
Is there a serious blind spot on the left? Must be. Seems there’s consistent media spotlighting of the so-called “right-wing (read: conservative)” bias of FOX News. I say consistent, although perhaps insistent is more appropriate. And why is this so? Because FOX won’t come out and just satisfy the elite media that they do indeed have a more conservative POV than say, CNN or CBS. Which drives the heavily registered-democratic party media crazy. Gee, if FOX would only admit what we all know, we could just dismiss their tromping of CNN in ratings as just a demonstration of more fundamentalist intolerance by those nasty 'publicans". Did I miss any of the latest buzzwords? I’ll have to check and get back.
So. We’ll all agree that, Thank God, FOX is more conservative than CNN or CBS. Again, Thank God. Now, why is the left incapable of acknowledging the liberal bias of CNN and CBS? Because they’re used to seeing their viewpoint reflected in the evening news on all the major channels, not just these two. These two are just more solidly left than the others. Did FOX come along and steal viewers from fellow conservative cable or network news? Don’t make me laugh. They gave half the country a voice that is sadly missing from the so-called elite media.
By the by, anyone here catch CNN’s Bill Press(talk about a left ideologue!) on Bill O’Reilly? Said exactly what I just wrote above: the conservative Republican segment of this country is inherently intolerant of opposing viewpoints (hah! Pot, meet Kettle) and that accounts for the success of O’Reilly and FOX News. Showed his true bitter colors, he did.
Characterized by whom? And what is “fiscal conservatism”?
This argument is typically advanced (see other recent GD threads on this subject) by persons who attempt to minimize the impact of left-leaning media bias. The suggestion is that social issues (gun control, abortion etc.) are somewhat slanted to the left but that the “corporate media” have a right-wing bias on financial issues. The implication is that the two biases cancel out, or at least that neither the Right nor the Left get a significant net benefit from major media bias.
Since major media coverage of business issues including mergers, layoffs, labor unrest, product safety and the like is not biased in favor of business by any reasonable perception, this argument lacks foundation. When pressed, supporters of this fantasy cite the fact that major media organizations are corporate-owned, and therefore must exhibit a pro-corporate bias, which in some inexplicable way is supposed to benefit the right wing.
I’ve invited proponents of this theory to provide supporting evidence in previous threads on this subject, without success. Perhaps in this thread such evidence will be forthcoming.
**
I don’t see how one can compare FAIR to Rush Limbaugh; one is a rather obscure left-wing media watchdog organization and the other is a hugely popular egomaniacal talk-show host (guess which is which). It would be more reasonable to compare FAIR to Accuracy in Media, another relatively obscure media watchdog group that’s about equally outside the attention of the mainstream press.
On what evidence do you base the statement that right-wing think tanks are more influential in the mainstream media than left-wing ones (i.e. the oft-quoted Brookings Institution)? And are you referring to commentary or straight news coverage?
When discussing media bias, I think it’s important to define terms. It makes a major difference in my view whether commentary (clearly labeled as such) is perceived as favoring liberals/conservatives, or whether day-to-day news coverage is affected, the latter in my view being far more insidious and harmful in terms of loss of public trust, as well as backlash manifested by the creation of would-be Rush clones.
Gadarene said: *With the knowledge that people’s opinions or arguments might change over time, I’d like to propose that to the extent someone’s statements on this thread conflict with their statements in the past threads, the more recent statements should not be seen as any less legitimate.
For example, if I said a year ago that Rush Limbaugh is a vacuous blowhole, and I say now that he is a much-maligned prophet of our age, it is wholly unfair to contest my current opinion by brandishing my former one at me. Let’s just assume that to the degree the statements differ, it represents a change in my position, and no hypocrisy exists in having abandoned or modified old ways of thought. Sound good to everyone?"*
I’m more than happy to consider any of your past statements on the subject inoperative. Just let me know which ones you prefer be ignored. 
At least you’ve lately come to acknowledge a major media bias on social issues, though you still temper that view with the “socially liberal/fiscally conservative” mantra.
That’s progress of a sort.
Fiscal conservatism doesn’t have to do with pro-corporate, anti-corporate, but more to do with balanced budget, etc.
This is the extent to which I’m going to reply to you in this thread, Jack:
I’ve always posited a general socially liberal-fiscally conservative nexus. That doesn’t represent “progress” of any sort whatsoever. And quit trotting out that “they cancel each other out” boogie man. Nobody’s saying it, and you’re embarrassing yourself.
Really? In that case, let’s look at media treatment of the vanished budget surplus and what’s been said about Bush and the effects of his enacted and proposed tax cuts on a balanced budget. Are you suggesting that there’s been a “conservative” media slant against Bush on the grounds that he’s busting the budget? How then do you explain the media outcry during past Republican administrations which attempted to cut social spending to reduce the deficit?
Has partisanship suddenly been redefined as “fiscal conservatism”?
Well, Jack thanks for putting words in my mouth. Looking back at my post, I don’t recall taking a side as regards fiscal conservatism in the press either way. I haven’t suggested a slant either way. Just defining a term for you, which you don’t seem to understand.
Do you mean to imply the number of stories reflecting a pro-control bias actually reflect the general public opinion? By that huge margin?
Let’s see if I can make these links from the Media Research Center work. They’re from a framed site, so this is gonna be a crapshoot.
This first link explains the MRC’s criteria for branding a story as pro- or anti-gun advocacy, contains the results of an identical study performed on 1997-1998 news stories and has some anecdotal content, too.
Study: Networks Use First Amendment Rights to Promote Opponents of Second Amendment Rights"
Here’s the transcript of a segment from Sept 10, 2002, broadcast of Today which has Katie Couric grilling fasion designer Kenneth Cole about his anti-gun stance.
March 8, 2001. Transcript of Bryant Gumbel and Diane Sawyer urge Secretary of Education Ron Paige to enact more federal gun controls.
May 15, 2000. Bryant Gumbel asks Gail Powers (of the Million Mom March), “Why are you only focusing on licensing and registration, why aren’t you going for more than that, why aren’t you going, for example, for a total ban?”
March 15, 2000 again. Cokie Roberts advocates “sensible gun legislation,” anyone will tell you is the battle cry of the anti-gunners. “Sensible gun legislation,” as proposed by the anti-gun organizations is by no means objective.
Another from March 12, 2000. This time, Soledad O’Brien claims that the Million Mom March is “a bunch of mothers” up against the “very powerful and well-funded” NRA. Interestingly, Soledad later publically wondered if their (MSNBC’s) coverage of the Million Mom March was too "moderate.
From a Lisa Meyer’s piece aired on the Friday, May 11, 2001 NBC Nightly News, you’ll note she parrots the definitively debunked “twelve children per day killed by guns line”:
and
and
I can go on. All this adds up to a preponderance of opinion and bias expressed by the national news networks that the only solution is more gun control. The lack of opposing viewpoints shows their support for these measures.
Finally, here’s another highly detailed study from the same group.
http://www.mediaresearch.org/specialreports/news/sr20000105.html
[Edited by UncleBeer on 12-03-2001 at 06:28 PM]
While not all of these are national television news figures and I have no doubt that some of this is probably taken out of context, this is pretty damning.
“Four weeks after the Columbine High School shootings, a month of public outrage, and yet the Senate still remains tangled up in finger pointing over gun control.” – NBC’s Gwen Ifill opening a NBC Nightly News story, May 18.
“Let’s bring the access of guns into this, Michael. I mean, in the city, guns, in my opinion, are seen as the tools of the criminal. But in many rural and suburban areas, guns are more part of the sporting culture. You see people with hunting rifles on their walls. You see people with gun racks in their car. Is that to blame?” – Today co-host Matt Lauer to Michael Guzy of the St. Louis Post Dispatch, April 30.
“Ollie [North] mentions the prevalence of guns. If you look at these shooting instances, they all seem to have taken place in areas where there is a stronger gun culture. The sheriff himself said, the sheriff out their in Littleton said his community is awash in guns. What do we do about that?” – Today co-host Jack Ford to Rev. Jesse Jackson, April 24.
“Perhaps it will take one more school shooting to move the majority of Americans into a position more powerful than that of the NRA. Perhaps it will take one more school shooting to move us from people who support gun control to people who vote it. But as we continue to let the widows and the wounded do the work, be warned. That next school may be the one your children attend; the next accident could be close to home.” – Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen, November 1.
“Is there any reason, Howard, to believe that this tragic attack on children, for goodness sakes, will trigger any movement by this Congress to enact tougher, meaningful new gun laws?”
“You know, Howard, I asked Congresswoman Diana DeGette of Denver, who certainly has had to wrestle with this, about why her colleagues consistently reject tougher gun control measures. She said two things, they’re too afraid of the NRA and they’re too beholden to the NRA. Does it really come down to that? Do Congress people care more about perpetuating personal power than they do about saving the lives of children?” – MSNBC’s The News with Brian Williams substitute anchor Gregg Jarrett to Newsweek’s Howard Fineman, August 12.
“Littleton, Colorado, is 1700 miles from Washington, D.C., but it might as well be a million. For many survivors of the Columbine shooting, today’s collapse of gun control legislation feels like a slap in the face.” – MSNBC’s News with Brian Williams substitute anchor Sara James, June 18.
“Republicans are betting that this too will pass, that as with Jonesboro and Paducah, Pearl and Springfield, once the white coffins are in the ground and the cameras gone, the outrage will subside. But maybe not this time. In town meetings and talk radio, the public has had its fill of politicians talking resignedly about our gun culture, as if there’s nothing to be done about a subgroup that finds schoolyard massacres an acceptable cost for its right to be armed to the teeth.” – Time columnist Margaret Carlson, May 10 issue.
“Since there are 200 million guns already out there, I don’t think that gun control is going to have much impact. But I think we ought to do it anyway just to make a statement as a society, and even if you save a couple of lives, then it’s worth it.” – Evan Thomas, Newsweek’s Assistant Managing Editor, Inside Washington, May 1.
“Repealing the Second Amendment is no cause for the faint-hearted, but it remains the only way for liberals to trigger an honest debate on the future of our bullet-plagued society. So what if anti-gun advocates have to devote the next 15 or 20 years to the struggle? The cause is worth the political pain. Failing to take bold action condemns all of us to spend our lives cringing in terror every time we hear a car backfire.” – USA Today columnist Walter Shapiro, September 17.
“Get rid of the guns. We had the Second Amendment that said you have the right to bear arms. I havent seen the British really coming by my house looking for it. And besides, the right to bear arms is not an absolute right anyway, as New Yorks Sullivan Law proves. We talk about ourselves as a violent society, and some of that is right and some of it is claptrap. But I think if you took away the guns, and I mean really take away the guns, not what Congress is doing now, you would see that violent society diminish considerably.” – PBS NewsHour essayist Roger Rosenblatt, May 20.
“I don’t understand why we’re piddling around. We should talk about getting rid of guns in this country.” – The Washington Post’s Juan Williams on Fox News Sunday, May 23.
“That smells of bullsh…How much longer are we gonna take that? How much longer are we gonna be wrapping in the flag of patriotism to justify 250 millions guns out there? How much longer?”
– Geraldo Rivera responding to video clip of NRA chief Charlton Heston, Rivera Live on CNBC, May 3.
“Whatever is being proposed is way too namby-pamby. I mean, for example, we’re talking about limiting people to one gun purchase, or handgun purchase a month. Why not just ban the ownership of handguns when nobody needs one? Why not just ban semi-automatic rifles? Nobody needs one.”
– Time National Correspondent Jack E. White, Inside Washington, May 1.
It’s puzzling, then, that you’ve gone to such lengths in the past (resorting heavily to the FAIR website) to deny the first half of that equation. As to the “fiscally conservative” portion of your “nexus”, I ask again for supporting evidence that such a thing exists.
When people grudgingly concede a left-wing bias on social issues, and in the same breath push the idea of a corporate media bias, they are obviously trying to minimize the former by introducing, to use your words, a boogie man. The suggestion is clearly that the “boogie man” negates any advantage the Left has as the result of major media bias. It doesn’t wash.
Frankly, I could care less whether you back up your theories with facts or not. It’s to be hoped that someone will be more forthcoming.
Neurotik, I specifically asked what you were suggesting in bringing up your definition of “fiscal conservatism”, rather than putting words in your mouth. I suggest, though, that the traditional definition of fiscal conservatism as being responsible in the spending of money is not what media apologists have in mind when imputing a business/corporate slant to the major media.
ElvisL1ves said (regarding coverage of gun control): “If that reflects public opinion in general, then no, it isn’t bias at all, just responsible reporting”.
Gag.
If you believe that a proper function of reporting is to reflect public opinion, then what’s your take on the whitewashing of incidents of virulent racism in the southern press years ago? Since it reflected the popular opinion of the time, was it responsible reporting?
The job of a professional media organization is to report in a fair and responsible manner, not to pander to the polls or what the views of most people in the news organization are.
Yes. I agree. (I think the choice of the word “fiscally” may be throwing Neurotik off the trail here…What you are saying is certainly what I believe is true and what I believe the study by FAIR along these lines argued.
Well, I am not sure that the implications, as I see them, would be stated quite so simplistically. Rather, it argues for one that the “is the media slanted liberal or conservative” question is too simplistic to answer in a few words.
I also think that the argument is a bit ill-framed. I.e., you have to say “liberal or conservative relative to what?” If you want to argue relative to the public at large then you may be correct, as they do tend to balance out. (And, it may be somewhat self-fulfilling since there are forces working both to keep the public in line with the opinion of the media and the media in line with the opinion of the public!)
However, if you are arguing relative to the reality of the world, then it obviously depends on your reality of the world, which is why we can argue this til the cows come home. From my point of view, the social conservatism is based largely on ignorance and lack of education (which is why it is posited that the more educated people in the media lean against it) and since ignorance and lack of ignorance should not be given equal time, I see little reason why the media ought not to be biased liberal on this score.
On economic issues, I think there are intelligent people on both sides. There are also vested interests on both sides. The (admittedly perceived) fact that the media leans toward the vested interests on the corporate side is then a bad thing in my view.
I have never understood why you don’t consider “pro-corporate bias” to be right wing for God’s sake! Jesus…if this in itself isn’t an argument for the idea that the left has been marginalized in the media, I don’t know what the fuck is!!! You seem to equate the fact that the Democrats are also pro-corporate with the fact that pro-corporatism is not any sort of right wing – left wing issue rather than with the fact that the Dems are not very left wing…only relative to Republicans…precisely because they are beholden to the same corporate special interests as the Republicans but pulled slightly to the left by their ties to other interest or demographic groups such as unions, minorities, etc.
Anyway, I would argue that the fact that there is a mechanistic reason why the media would likely be pro-corporate isn’t proof-positive that they are, but it does provide us with a strong reason to believe that they would be. Admittedly, there may be a few factors going the other way, like the fact that certain stories of the type “David vs. Goliath” can have resonance with the public and thus the media can be pushed to report them. But, on the whole, I think the mechanistics favor a pro-corporate viewpoint. (I think the “David vs. Goliath” phenomenon is a counter-balance that provides some “stabilization” preventing reporting from running off toward pro-corporate infinity…sort of like the nonlinear terms in an equation often prevent the instability seen in a linear stability analysis from running off to infinity, for those mathematically-inclined. [If your not, just forget I ever mentioned this analogy!])
And, I also think that there is evidence that this is what you get. If you think that the news media reporting the obvious reality of layoffs occurring and such is automatic proof-negative of this thesis, I think you are a bit (?!?) naive.
Well, we can look back on those previous threads. But, my interpretation of reality is a bit different than yours here too. I would say that evidence was presented and you dismissed or ignored it. However, as I argued above, this is in some sense bound to happen because unless we agree on what the objective reality of the world is, we are going to disagree on where the media stands relative to that reality.
I should add that although I have been arguing here about comparing the media viewpoint to “reality” in terms of determining if it is pro-corporate, I believe that a FAIR survey of reporters and of the public-at-large actually showed that the media is actually more conservative on economic issues (in a sound-bite “pro-corporate”) relative to the public-at-large. This is interesting because this is in fact a question that can be answered more objectively (although I know one can always question methodologies of the study).
See: CNN.
Jackmannii: This argument is typically advanced (see other recent GD threads on this subject) by persons who attempt to minimize the impact of left-leaning media bias. The suggestion is that social issues (gun control, abortion etc.) are somewhat slanted to the left but that the “corporate media” have a right-wing bias on financial issues. The implication is that the two biases cancel out, or at least that neither the Right nor the Left get a significant net benefit from major media bias.
As somebody who has advanced that argument, I don’t agree that the “implication” you suggest necessarily follows. I, for one, haven’t claimed that “neither the Right nor the Left get a significant net benefit” from the bias; I think that both get some benefit from it, in different ways.
*Since major media coverage of business issues including mergers, layoffs, labor unrest, product safety and the like is not biased in favor of business by any reasonable perception, this argument lacks foundation. *
?? That’s a pretty blithe assertion there. I’d like some stronger evidence that media coverage on these issues is not actually biased in favor of business than your unsupported claim. For one thing, while most major papers have a whole section devoted to business issues, how many have even one reporter or columnist focusing on labor issues? According to this NPR report, the decline of “labor beat” newspaper coverage and in other media coverage of labor issues since mid-century is pretty dramatic. Media coverage of business, on the other hand, is thriving.
Moreover, as we’ve discussed on other such threads, there’s a solid major-media preference for business-friendly positions on issues like trade globalization, criticism of anti-globalization protest, neoclassical economic analysis, and support for capitalism. To a large extent, of course, this is simply due to the fact that “news” is mostly about the sayings and doings of powerful people and most powerful people tend to be wealthy and/or pro-business, so their assumptions shape the discussion; moreover, downsizing of news staffs means that news stories end up relying more heavily on corporate press releases and less on time-consuming and expensive independent investigation. But the end result is that, as the previously discussed studies indicate, journalists even in traditionally “liberal” media organs tend to be more pro-corporate than the average American. It’s hardly a “fantasy” to point that out.