Indeed. It tells me that you are at least smart enough to realize how easily the same tactics used to dismiss claims of liberal media bias can be employed to shoot down the opposite position.
I also nitpick spelling errors. 
You haven’t?
I’m trying to come up with a good reason why deciding on a consistent standard of evidence is either stupid or pathetic.
Not a lot of success, I am afraid.
Regards,
Shodan
Because evidence is almost impossible to define?
Put it this way: the mainstread media has a liberal bias, if Shodan is a centrist. How am I to prove otherwise, since damned near everybody here is a “centrist”. (Except for Reeder and myself, who are apparently the only actual lefties herein…)
Friend Shodan and crew have picked an unassailable position: if you can’t prove media bias on the part of Fox News, there is none, and we win! Victory boogie commences.
I don’t particularly object to Fox News’ editorial stance. Nor do I suggest that thier news presentation is falsified. But it is slanted in terms of presentation, the priority assigned to what can arguably be defined as “news”. The Downing Street Memos are news, to be sure, but not nearly as important as the earth-shattering significance of the Oil for Food Scandal.
If I am confronted by someone who says “Sure, Fox is biased, but I like that bias, because I am decidedly right wing” there is some hope for discussion and debate. If someone says “I’m a centrist, and Fox News is fair, balanced and unbiased” there is no hope short of lobotomy.
I should not be surprised that, once again, you miss the point. I have not, nor do I wish to, taken any position on the issue of bias in the media in this thread nor the NPR thread. But, though I’ve repeated that ad nauseum, it appears to be of no import to you on your crusade against… whatever your crusading against. It has also offered you an opportunity to avoid the legitimate questions that Marley and Harborwolf have asked, and for that I apologize to them.
In response to your question about the “media” in general, I gave a general response lacking in argument or citations. That probably serves me right for attempting to treat you with respect and give you an answer out of common courtesy.
Once again, color me surprised that you are not having a whole lot of success with that whole critical thinking thing.
Must I repeat myself for the 4th time? Are you truly that dense or so rabid in your position that you refuse to actually read my posts? MY points have not dealt with the bias in the media, NPR, or Fox News, and solely with the appropriateness of pretending to take a stance that you don’t actually agree with, and doing so in a completely different thread. I see no point in continuing this with you, so feel free to get back to the other points raised by other posters in this thread. Maybe they’ll get satisfactory answers from you. I won’t hold my breath though.
It seems obvious to me. First, we all have a moral obligation not to deceive or mislead others. Second, the division of labor in society is such that people don’t have the time to gather information from primary sources themselves, and so this job is delegated to journalists. Given this fact, and given that people must out of necessity rely on journalists to be informed citizens, journalists have a special obligation to make sure that they do not mislead, by act or omission, the people who are relying on them for information.
Could you at least pretend to have looked at the article? The authors defined a proxy that matches the ADA rating (which is based on congressional votes) and found the proxy to match the ratings quite well. The proxy was then applied to news outlets to come up with “ADA rankings” for those outlets. Explicit assumptions, observable evidence, verifiable results.
I looked at the article. Since I’m at work, I don’t have the time to derive their results, even though the model and its assumptions are fairly simple. Off the cuff, however, I think they chose a Weibull distribution for the e[sub]ij[/sub] to make the mathematics easier and not because it is necessarily reasonable.
On its face the methodology is pretty interesting, even if the results are relative only to the ideological measures of congress. Many (myself included) believe that right wing extremism is overrepresented in the legislature.
What interests me now is the impact of news feeders (AP, Reuters, etc) and the relationships these feeders have with major media outlets. Variance in these relationships would seem to indicate the possibility that there are variances in the citation data generating process. In other words, some newspapers toss off more academic cites than others. The marginal impact of a citation in some papers would be much greater, and this might bias the results.
I’d like to read the David Baron article that the authors cite. Do you still have JSTOR access?
Which the bibliography tells me is a manuscript. Drat. I like David Baron’s work.
We do?
Yes, we pay them for it.
Nope, doesn’t follow. Certainly they have an obligation to satisfy their customers and provide for those customers the service for which they are paid. But why is that more of a “special obligation” than in any other profession?
If Fox News isn’t biased then I suppose the OP isn’t a troll.
After a couple of pages of the NPR thread, I had serious doubts that Fox was biased. Any evidence in favor of Fox’s bias seemed to be utterly useless when offered in the other thread. It seemed to me that the consensus of the regular posters of this board was inevitably that Fox was not biased.
This thread was to explore what evidence existed against Fox, and, more importantly, how that evidence was validated. From what I could see, nothing was enough.
I had a personal opinion about Fox’ bias, yes… but this forum is not about personal opinions but what can be rigorously shown by evidence. When I started this thread, I had serious doubts about the possibility of showing by any acceptable evidence that Fox was biased.
Congratulations. Nobody’s provably biased. That and fifty cents won’t even get you a cup of coffee, these days.
I think Fox News is just about normal as far as it goes. They broadcast “whatever” to the public to (in their perception) to gain populairtly as well as ratings.
I watch all the news channels to gain a feeling of what’s happening. Most are prerry damn good.
For the record, the original thread was not about whether or not NPR was biased, but over why the Pubbies were attempting to muzzle it (or whether or not they were actually doing so).
Maybe the best thing would be to start a thread, “Is NPR biased” and have people check in over time with examples they’ve heard on NPR that seem to exhibit bias of one sort or another. That way no one would be burdened with coming up with a huge list of cites to prove his or her point, and there seems to be a fair number of NPR listeners on both sides of the aisle here. Over time, might be some sort of consensus developed.
Or not.
Here is my problem with this thread and the other one about NPR. Nobody is bothering to define any terms. In the context of these discussions, the one here and the NPR one, the only meaning I can derive is that “Conservative” means a tendency to support the present Administration in all its aspirations and actions, while “Liberal” means, not to oppose the present Administration, but rather to fail to support, cheer and generally waive the flag for the present Administration. Otherwise those two words have lost all meaning. Thus Fox news is Conservative because it does in fact support this Administration and NPR News is Liberal because it is not a house organ for the present Administration. In other words, if you’re not for us you’re against us. By that measure NPR has a “Liberal Bias.”
That it seems to me is no way to seek bias in a news reporting organization. By that standard any news report that does not accept the party line of the moment is automatically bias and dishonest. I suppose that is OK if the reporter makes no bones about taking a political position, as does, for instance Media Matters For America and Joshua Marshall’s Talking Points Memo. But when an organization claims to be fair and balanced when it is pretty obvious to any critical observer that it is grinding a knife, it is more than bias, it is dishonesty. In my judgement Fox News is dishonest but you can make your own judgement on that.
When it comes to NPR News (which I regularly listen to) the bitching and moaning from some seems to be that it is not perfect. It is acknowledged that NPR tries to do an honest and impartial job but it is damned for falling short of perfection. That is an unreasonable requirement. It is unreasonable because it requires NPR to attain and sustain an impossible standard in order to be regarded as free of bias, that is, to be regarded as honest. It is also unreasonable because it relieves the listener, or the viewer, to be an critical consumer of information. Maybe the uncritical consumer is the audience Fox wants but in my experience that is not the audience NPR has or has ever sought.
Having said that, let me say that I for one am just about as tired of Daniel Shores blathering on and incessant reminding us that he was on Nixon’s enemies list, as I am of Bill O’Rilley’s never ending echoing of what ever line of bullshit is in vogue this week and the uninformative game of he-said-she-said that passes for rational political analysis every place but NPR and the PBS evening news show.
As far as the funding of CPB is considered, Iowa congressman Jim Leach, a Republican albeit a very moderate one, hit it on the head when he said yesterday, in effect, the Congressional committee’s action was a political hatchet job that had everything to do with NPR’s failure to bend to the Administration’s will and nothing to do with fiscal responsibility.
I’d lean towards not. The problem with your suggestion is one of objectivity. Any sort of bias, at least of the adjectival (I like to make words up) variety is going to be viewed through the bias of the listener. I’m doubting that me and Bricker would agree as to what is a biased report and what isn’t. His views on NPR seem to be well set and I’ve always seen Fox News as somewhat shifty.
For what it’s worth, I think all cable news is shifty. Too many graphics and scrolls and whatnot. Makes MTV news look subtle by comparison.
Also, you have to decide what amount of evidence would constitute actual bias for the network as a whole. It’s safe to say that one reporter does not speak for an entire network. You’d have to work out some sort of percentage and so forth.
All in all, it would solve nothing and keep the hamsters working overtime to keep the thread up.
Lastly, I’ll look at your cited study in the morning js_africanus. It looks to be a study that Shodan cited a while back, only much wordier. Let me get some sleep and I’ll let you know what I think.
Why oh why did I post lastly? :smack:
Bricker and Shodan, I would again like to ask you to take a look at Hentors cite from page 1 and tell me what you think about some of the “errors” listed. Some strikes me as a bit silly, but others are at least interesting.
Wrong construct. We really do not need to have the epithet “troll” dragged out every time somone is dissatisfied with another’s presentation–which is why we have a rule prohibiting one poster from identifying (or suggesting or hinting or implying or providing allusive references to) another poster as a troll. You are in violation of that rule and you shall not do it again.
[ /Moderator Mode ]
Never mind. If you aren’t even willing to concede that people in general have an obligation not to deceive and mislead others, then debate between us will not be fruitful.
Dude… I was unaware of this rule and I won’t do it again but not because of your threatening tone. Next time try a little tact.
Bias does not equal deceive and mislead. Bias does equal propounding a point of view. I have no problem with, and couldn’t care less about any bias that NPR or Fox or CNN or the newspapers or the Colorado Rockies radio announcers have. I simply depend on my knowledge of what their bias is in my interpretation of what they offer me. Oddly enough, I can usually figure out their bias without someone spelling it out for me.