Oh, hell no, that’s not evidence of bias! If the reporter let similar deceit from Democrats pass, that would be evidence of bias; and if the reporter ever lets such deceit pass, that’s evidence of shoddy reporting. But there’s no way in hell that it’s biased for a reporter to give the audience the relevant facts. News reporters ought not have the job of providing a means for politicians to spew forth their spin unchallenged: their job is to give the public the information necessary to understand, not the spin necessary to be swayed.
A.M radio caveman shows like RUSH LIMBAUGH and the SAVAGE REPORT constantly repeat the messege that all media is biased toward the left–and is therefore not to be listened to. I’m sure many people beckon that call.
Anyone who turns on their radio and actually listens to calm and informative debate about the issues on NPR might be labled leftist in view of the ultra-conservative paradigm.
This might explain why the callers on shows like Diane Rehm seem largely liberal. The right just isn’t listening.
I am utterly sorry to do this to you, furt, but it’s too on-target to pass up. I know the above is a hypothetical to you but this exact point I heard made on an NPR show just this past week. I hope you can forgive me.
If I understand, you’re asking whether I would admit that NPR is showing bias if they use one set of words for discussing the subjects of a story on females under the age of 18 who obtain abortions, but another set of words for discussing the subjects of a story on females under the age of 18 who have sex. Is this correct?
If so, then, everything else relevant being equal, yes, I’d consider that a sign of bias.
I know that the bolded words are practically an invitation to move the goalposts, and I apologize for that, but not knowing the details of the stories in question, I don’t want to prejudge them. If, as one example, the abortion story concerns the emotional effects of abortion on a single pregnant girl (I’ve decided to drop the “female under the age of 18” because it’s annoying me), and the sex story concerns a legislative proposal in some state senate, then that could account for a discrepancy in the terms used.
I think what most of them would say is that the way to deal with bias is to just be upfront about it. IMO, I’d prefer if all news outlets were reqired to run editorials. I can’t stand O’reilly and Hannity, but at least because of them there’s much less room for confusion about where FOX is coming from, whereas something like CBS news grates because of the pretense of impartiality.
Don’t be sorry. In this case, at least, I’m glad to be wrong.
What you call a pretense to impartiality, friend Furt, is simple professionalism (on a relative scale). That is something I find little of in Fox’s commentary, not as much as I’d like in their news, but which NPR and, to broaden the field and compare TV to TV instead of TV to radio, the PBS evening news has in spades.
I suppose if we were to parse every sentence of every story we could find some dot that can be connected to some other random dot which can be connected to some other random dot to spell out the words “Liberal Bias,” but that strikes me as an awful lot of work. It’s a little like analyzing Walter Cronkite’s eyebrows to conclude he thought LBJ and Nixon were feeding the country hogwash about Vietnam. That was an unnecessary exercise because Uncle Walter flat out said so on a number of occasions. To draw conclusions because one story calls underage women “girls,” while another calls them “teenage girls,” and another calls them “underage women” just smells of special pleading. Life is too complicated to spend time looking for subliminal messages in a choice from half a dozen synonyms if all you really want is a rational to disregard the story.
Your sarcasm is misplaced. I have seen this kind of stuff from conservatives too often for it to be anything but a real attitude among conservatives to believe it to be anything but reality that they see anything not conservative as liberal.
So if the abortion story concerned a legislative proposal - parental notification - and the sex story concerned a legislative proposal - age of consent - you’d agree that bias was exhibited by the different word choice?
I’d agree that NPR is fairly balanced, or at least they make an effort to be, which is all anyone can hope for, really. I’ve never heard any really political whitewashing of either side happening any of their news shows, and I’d say they’re certainaly more balanced than the Daily Show (IMHO).
Granted, my feelings may have been influenced by the calm and professional manner in which they present themselves, as opposed to the hysteria I’ve heard on O’Reilly, Limbaugh, ect. NPR’s right-wing speakers and correspondents don’t seem to be looking for a fight the way many of the conservative radio personalities do, and I’d say that’s a fair indication of balance.
Or perhaps it’s all just in your head.
If I’m reading his post correctly, I think that it has more to do with the subject of the story.
Story #1 is about the emotional effects of an abortion on a single pregnant girl.(female under age 18)
Story #2 is about legislation.
The difference in terminology would come from the differing aims of the story. The legislative story would have to be more bare bones and factual. The choice in wording could come from the text of the bill which would likely use more technical terms than emotive. The pregnant minor story would be aimed at being more sympathetic. Referring to the pregnant girl as a female under age 18 would be needlessly technical.
I think this sort of thing is the reason why using word choice to determine bias is so difficult. There are so many reasons to choose one word over the next that narrowing it down to one is difficult if not impossible.
You’re not reading his post correctly. There is no story about effects of abortion on a single teenage girl. There’s a story about the legislative and judicial actions surrounding an abortion parental notification bill, not focusing on any single person. And there’s a story on age of consent, again not focusing on any particular single individual.
The first story uses “girl” and “teen” instead of “minor” to refer to the affected individuals, even though (obviously) the parental notification bill would affect only minor females.
The second story uses “minor” to refer to females affected by the age of consent law.
Or, maybe, the news is not necessarily created by a Borg collective that so zealously seeks to enforce a standard vocubulary across hundreds of affiliate created content, but rather individual reporters that use different terms, often biased by how emotionally attached they are to a story or their sources or whatever.
Actually, he is. I was offering one example of a reason why I would not see institutional bias. Another reason, as mentioned in my original post on this subject, would be that two different reporters used two different sets of words. As I said in that post,
(bolding added).
If you’re looking at two different stories, you may be noticing a coincidence. Consistency in word choice differences is necessary before I’m going to suspect anything.
A news source might refer to the deaths of American soldiers in a war as deaths, whereas the deaths of foreign soldiers are referred to as kills (or as “securing the area”). That would be evidence of bias if it happens across several reporters across several stories. If the difference only occurred between two stories, it might be coincidence.
I recognize that this is a high standard. I am intentionally setting the standard high.