Is this the same John Ellis, who is first cousin of Bush jr.?
“Fox’s murkiest judgment call may have been hiring John Ellis, the President’s first cousin, to analyze election exit-poll results. Lo and behold, Fox was the first network to declare erroneously that Bush had won the election, prompting the avalanche that followed. We now also know that Ellis was discussing confidential exit-poll information with his cousins throughout election night. At Congress’s mid-February hearings on election night coverage, Ailes said in his prepared testimony that Ellis was merely acting as “a good journalist talking to his very high-level sources.””
And as for the alleged “liberals” appearing on Fox: Geraldo Rivera, Alan Colmes, Juan Williams, Cece Connolly (???) , Greta van Susteren, Mara Liason.
Just add Pat Cadell and you’ll have the most ineffectual, bland, self-hating “liberals” on TV. I mean, come on, paring up Colmes with Hannity!?!
And if anyone cares to read O’Reilly’s latest, he can be found here:
Here’s a clue for all of you listeners out there - TURN OFF THE TV. If you don’t like something that’s playing, then simply turn it off! Read a book, call a friend, go for a walk, support the common good etc.
I suppose. My point is not to belittle the point(s) being made but rather to demonstrate the obvious. I happen to watch the news shows (plural) and read Internet news (e.g. Drudge, et al) to stay informed of current events and when I’ve had enough of a particular hosts’ ‘bias’, I simply turn them off. Same rules apply for those people who fear that the amount of violence and sex on television is corrupting their kids and society. Those shows wouldn’t exist if they’ weren’t watched. Most people watch only enough to become sound bite vicitms and worse yet, they vote too!
I think we agree- so what. Although I do not think CNN is very liberal. Certainly more liberal then the Washington Times or Fox News though. They are more moderate-centrist in bias (IMHO). NPR-- now that would be more “lefty-liberal”, again IMHO.
You never did answer the question I asked-- was that your opinion of the Times, were you paraphrasing someone else, just joking around or what? It was hard to tell from context and I didn’t want to guess wrong.
I was exaggerating, though CNN’s leftness is obvious to me. Of course, the whole thread is becoming a farce. Someone posted a link to an Angelfire page as a cite.
I agree that most people take the media bias thing a bit too seriously, especially when it is the opposite of their own personal bias. I guess that is true as a rule about many things though. Have a good one.
I won’t argue with your assessment of these commentators, El Gui. However, you cannot name 6 conservative commentators who are regular news analysts on CBS or ABC or NBC or CNN or PBS – not even “ineffectual, bland, self-hating” ones. This supports my point that each of those 5 stations is more biased to the left than FNC is biased to the right.
Despite the labors of groups like FAIR to suggest that members of the media are Conservative, perceptions of the public at large tell a different story. In a 1998 Gallup Poll sponsored by the American Journalism Review, twice as many people perceived a Liberal bias as opposed to a Conservative media bias. A Freedom Forum poll agreed with the Gallup results with respect to Liberal bias save the latter poll found the public perceived only a slight Democratic bias in the media.
comments by Walter Cronkite
“Everybody knows that there’s a liberal, that there’s a heavy liberal persuasion among correspondents…Anybody who has to live with the people, who covers police stations, covers county courts, brought up that way, has to have a degree of humanity that people who do not have that exposure don’t have, and some people interpret that to be liberal. It’s not a liberal, it’s humanitarian and that’s a vastly different thing.” –- Walter Cronkite, March 21, 1996 Radio & TV Correspondents Dinner.
newsweek bureau chiefs? (same site)
“There is a liberal bias. It’s demonstrable. You look at some statistics. About 85 percent of the reporters who cover the White House vote Democratic, they have for a long time. There is a, particularly at the networks, at the lower levels, among the editors and the so-called infrastructure, there is a liberal bias. There is a liberal bias at Newsweek, the magazine I work for —- most of the people who work at Newsweek live on the upper West Side in New York and they have a liberal bias…[ABC White House reporter] Brit Hume’s bosses are liberal and they’re always quietly denouncing him as being a right-wing nut.” — Newsweek Washington Bureau Chief Evan Thomas in an admission on Inside Washington, May 12, 1996.
Lots of other polls from trade orgs and the like, but these are the big names.
Does it mean they are wrong? No. Does it mean they are out of step with the general public? Yes.
The most important thing is to recognize bias, then work within it. I enjoy reading the same story on CNN, NYTimes, FoxNEWS, Drudge, NewsMax, the straight AP Wire, and Rueters News Service. Sometimes the London Times, to boot. Gives a nice rounded view. I consider it a game to weed through the rhetoric and innuendo to glean facts.
“I won’t argue with your assessment of these commentators, El Gui. However, you cannot name 6 conservative commentators who are regular news analysts on CBS or ABC or NBC or CNN or PBS – not even “ineffectual, bland, self-hating” ones. This supports my point that each of those 5 stations is more biased to the left than FNC is biased to the right.”
There are more than two conservatives on CNN, and i don’t think you should rxpect the same number of news analysts on the networks as you do on the 24 hour cable oulets.
Is it just me or are most of the representatives of the Religious Right (apart from the main bosses) young, very pretty women, well made-up with seductive smiles, while the liberal side presents aging, bespectacled women ?
