How do the Liberal media get away with pretending to be neutral?

Great Debates
101

Jackmannii: The comforting justification used by liberals who embrace media bias,

Um, this notion of “embracing” media bias is your own way of putting it. I have not seen anyone in this thread argue that distorting facts is ideally a good thing, although many have noted that given the ubiquity of human biases, some kind of distortion is always inevitable (though we must always keep trying to avoid it). This is not, as far as I can tell, a debate between those who like bias and those who dislike it, but an argument about how much and what kind of bias really exists in mainstream American media.

that a pro-business slant cancels out any “advantage” on social policy,

Who said that? All I maintained, for example, is that media attitudes on social issues tend to be somewhat left of the American political center (which itself is pretty far right), while media attitudes on fiscal issues tend to be somewhat right of that center. I am not arguing that either of these is a good thing, a fair advantage, an unfair advantage, a necessary counterpart to an opposing slant, a “justification”, or any of the other adversarial concepts in terms of which you seem to want to cast this discussion.

is a crock.

Another emphatic magisterial pronouncement that is really nothing more than your own opinion.

the national media do exhibit biases against business, especially big business (see consumer protection reporting for one example).

Can you be more specific? In what way is “consumer protection reporting” (which I presume means coverage of consumer safety issues like the Firestone recall) intrinsically “biased” against business, just because it may report facts unfavorable to business? Though such stories are often big news events (and sometimes, as in the silicone breast implants scare, are insufficiently founded in fact), I think that the attitude behind them is much more one of “Scary Unexpected Threats to Public Safety Sell Newspapers” than one of “Death to the Evil Corporate Pigs.” And they do not even come close to outweighing the overall corporate-boosterism media tendencies that Jeremytt and others here have mentioned.

And even if you were convinced of this dichotomy, why on earth would you accept the idea of slanted “social” reporting unless you were greedy for the perceived advantage it gave your causes?

As I noted above, nobody is “accepting” (in the sense of condoning) slanted reporting of any kind, so you can set your mind at rest about that.

As for the so-called “left-wing editorializing” about Bush and abortion that you claimed your opponents were too scared to take you up on, if that’s the same comment that I discussed with you in one of the abortion threads, I think that’s an awfully feeble argument you’ve got there. A news story about Bush’s restoring the “global gag rule” that ends with one sentence about his “signaling quick action to reverse Clinton’s policies on access to abortion” or words to that effect (apologies for not having the quote handy) seems blatantly left-slanted to you? Clinton removed Reagan’s and Bush Sr.'s “global gag rule”, which as posters on the other thread noted has the effect of hampering access to abortion, and Dubya put it back. And he justified that action by referring to his moral opposition to abortion and his hopes of seeing it further legally restricted. That seems to me to make the comment in the news story a perfectly reasonable prediction of what Bush’s policy actions on abortion will be, requiring no left-wing bias whatsoever to motivate it.

But hey, if you want to see it as a ghastly example of overwhelming liberal bias, go ahead—as Svinlesha pointed out, ultimately all our perceptions depend on where we’re standing ourselves. But the impression I get is that your accusations of “liberal bias” stem primarily from your own fairly extreme right-wing preferences. And naturally, you can retort that the converse applies to me, and we’ll be back where we started. But it will not make your arguments any stronger simply to keep claiming that you’re obviously right and anyone who doesn’t see it must be biased.

102

See, the difference is that I wasn’t just counting up hits–which is completely asinine…

I actually went and found well-referenced papers on non-UFO-conspiracy sites, and read what they had to say. I didn’t post links because there are a whole lot of them, and they are easily found by anybody with access to a search engine. Of course, if somebody asked me to take the time to link them, I’d do it.

103

First off, another ad hominem…

The thing being, that–at least in their assertion of liberal media bias–AIM doesn’t list any sources that I found. They simply do the same thing you do: assert their belief with no evidence. If you’d care to link to a specific article, rather than just the organization, I will reconsider. OTOH, the FAIR articles cites its source for data, and presents the data. All you’ve done is link to someone else who holds the same (lack of) standards of evidence as yourself.

First off, I only go by the evidence, as are most of the other posters here. If you give me some new evidence, I will reconsider…
…and chiding us for not responding to your post in a different thread is simply another form of verbal slight-of-hand.

You see, I haven’t attacked your character. I’ve asked you for evidence, that’s all. You apparently have none, or you might consider linking it. I haven’t resorted to stupid puns on the user name of someone who disagrees with you (the lowest and most pathetic way to lose a debate).

So here’s a challenge:
Quote any personal attacks I’ve made on your person–not a challenge to your actions.
And I’ll post yours.
Sound fair? Or will you weasel around being responsible for your words again?

What you have presented as “evidence” is pages of your opinions with no data, and a link to somebody who also has pages of opinions with no data.

104

You’ve cited one example (silicone breast implants).
Reporting on fears about pesticides (i.e. Alar) and issues affecting the pharmaceutical, tobacco and gun manufacturing industries are more examples (even if many of the criticisms leveled at those industries are valid, too many wind up flavoring news coverage rather than clearly labeled opinion pieces).**

Can you be more specific? Don’t leave out the real estate industry. Local papers are often virtual publicity organs for the heavily advertising realtors. But that’s economics talking, not conservative politics.**

If you don’t speak out against it, you are condoning it (as in the case of racism).
**

Thanks for at least addressing this. While I deplore reinstitution of the global abortion “gag rule” (just one of my many “extreme right wing biases” ;)), I recognize that it affects access to information about abortion, not abortion itself. The reporter provides no evidence whatsoever that this is part of a Bush package to limit or end abortion access. A “prediction” by the reporter belongs on the editorial page. Think of your reaction to, let us say, a hypothetical story in the Washington Times commenting on some tepid Clinton Administration action to enforce the law protecting patients entering abortion clinics, which closed with the following line: “This signals renewed Clinton determination to limit freedom of expression by pro-lifers at abortion clinics”. Again, this crosses the line into editorializing.

Here’s a brand new cite re the Brookings Institution - today’s (Thursday’s) edition of USA Today, page 15A, Thomas E. Mann’s “Look at Bush’s actions, not his words”. It includes the following:

“The thousands of protesters who lined Pennsylvania Avenue on Saturday chanting “hail to the thief” represented millions of Americans who feel cheated by the (election) outcome…a jarring (Bush) disjunction between a rhetoric of unity and behavior of discord…President Bush exudes self-confidence bordering on arrogance…He believes he can seduce enough Democrats in Congress on each of his legislative proposals to ensure passage with overwhelming Republican support. He assumes the country will get over the disputed 2000 election and learn to live with a unified Republican government, without any public apologies on his part.”

Yup, sounds pretty right of center to me. Maybe even reactionary. Of course this is a perfectly reasonable op-ed feature, some of whose arguments I agree with. But it’s more evidence that as a source, Brookings has a liberal emphasis. Just not liberal enough for some.

105

By the way, why should we ignore editorials in a thread about media bias? This is where the conservative bias of the media shines through, IMO. Take the WSJ – there is a slight leftward (by U.S. standards) slant in its reporting. But this is more than offset by its reactionary editorial/op-ed pages. Even the NYT and the Wash. Post – when you consider both their editorial and op-ed pages – come across as moderate or right-moderate (socially moderate-liberal and fiscally conservative).

Are you saying editorialists and commentators are not a part of the media? Perhaps you’re hoping we’ll forget about Rush Limbaugh and all of his clones throughout the country.

Because they get to have the “last word,” pundits play a far more important role in shaping public opinion – at least among elites – than regular reporters.

Also, stepping back, keep in mind that what gets defined as “left” or “liberal” in this country is often considered “moderate” or even “conservative” in other industrial nations.

106

what if their not biased? suppose they are just stupid!

when reagan was talking about star wars and using lasers to blow up russian missles, noone in the media pointed out that the russians might make the missles reflective and the lasers would bounce off.

Dal Timgar

107

There are also plenty of links to stories featuring “archconservative” and “ultraconservative” that are relevant. You’ve chosen not to look into or reference any of them. As should be clear if you have read the posts in this thread, I cited the case of the abortion “gag rule” article in this thread and noted that it had been featured in another thread on Bush and abortion. At least Kimstu was willing to take up the matter.

I have not accused you of personal attacks. In some respects on both sides, this particular debate is not a shining example of civility. At least I am not wailing about it as a diversion from the topic at hand.

108

If that’s your definition of “liberal”, mx-6*, then the reason we never hear anyone referred to as an “archliberal” is that there’s no such thing.

109

Let me step in here and explain a bit about where I got my original information. This disucssion has caught on like wild-fire and I think everyone needs to be on the same wave-length.

It would be extremely helpful if everyone would go to their local library and get a copy of Larry Elder’s book The Ten Things You Can’t Say in America. Read the chapter called, *The Media Bias-It’s real, It’s Widespread, and It’s Destructive. *

Larry Elder is not conservative. He is not Repulbican or Democrat. Actually, he’s a Libertarian with whom I disagree with on most issues. But his arguement in that short chapter in his book is so convincing that I have to agree with him. Look at the countless examples he gives showing the liberal bent the news media have.

It’s rather unfortunate that his book is not public domain, but I highly encourage getting the book and reading it, especially the chapter
on the liberal media.

110

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Ace Face *
**

Please! You’re speaking of my hero, Rush the Truth Detector. But seriously…don’t forget that the talk radio pundits like Rush, Michael “We’re a Christian Nation” Reagan et al have achieved popularity in large part because their audiences felt they could not trust their major news sources and were embittered enough by media bias to embrace right-wing talk programs.

But these shows (and left-tilted talk and commentary programs) are not primary news sources, and most people know what they’re getting - someone to stroke their predjudices. Commentary disguised as news is what we all should be interested in exposing (calling all ombudsmen…).**

My enthusiasm for aping Europe knows more bounds than yours.

111

Ace Face, didn’t you say something earlier about the term “liberal” itself being a pejorative in today’s political culture? You must not have, because if you had, one would think that such a point would merit some sort of response–especially if one were to keep trumpeting the use of “archconservative” and “ultraconservative” as evidence of overarching bias.

Huh. Ain’t that interesting. :rolleyes:

112

Hmm, I seem to have completely overlooked the fact that the post I was responding to was on page 1 of this thread from yesterday.

Whatever.:o

113

I think the reason for ultra being perceived as a pejorative term is the fact that it suggests that the person in question has views that are out of the mainstream of American politics. This would tend to marginalize the person being described. Most Americans like to think of themselves as moderates, and are negatively disposed towards reactionaries of any sort. (I’m surprised that this is even an issue in this dispute. Both sides in politics routinely append “ultra” to their opponents for this very reason.)

The reason for the media using such prefixes is not due to a conscious decision by media people to harm either side. But one’s judgement on who is “ultra” conservative and who is merely conservative depends on how far removed one judges that person to be from the center. Which in turn requires a judgement about where the center is. The center of the journalistic world is to the left of the center of that of the larger public. So a conservative who is just a regular good old conservative on the spectrum of the general public might be an ultra conservative on the spectrum of the journalists. (The same goes for liberals, but works the other way.)

As for the word liberal, I think there was a reaction against it during the Reagan era, but it seems (to me) to have abated these days.

114

It is interesting to read thru this. The Conservatives here are calling the media “liberal”, and the more conservative the poster the more liberal the media seems to get. The Liberals here are calling the media "conservative’- and the more Liberal the poster- the more Conservative the media also seems to get.

Are you folks starting to get the picture here? The media must be ABOUT centrist or else to some posters the media would be “JUUUUUST right”. Yes, the media does have biases, but the only one which appears to be widespread is the desire for flashy, BIG stories that sell papers, or run-up ratings. The media “bias” on the silicone implant thing? Not “anti-big business” but “pro selling papers” as “implants are safe” doesn’t sell anything. Cheap? Too often. Sensational? Yes. Yellow Rags? Sometimes. But politically biased- seems not to be.

They do NOT want the average reader to read the paper or listen to the news & go away “happy”- they want folks riled up. Which is why they often, in the same damn paper- have Editorials that are Liberal on one issue, and Conservative on the next.

Now if you go back to my first post, I said I thought the Media was SLIGHTLY liberal politically, and maybe somewhat conservative fiscally. I think I was about right.

115

I agree with the bulk of your post, Izzy. My perception with regard to this last sentence is of course different, however. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find very many Democratic politicians who self-identify as being liberal. On the other hand, it seems to me that most Republican politicians happily view themselves as conservatives. In my experience, of course.

In any case, it seems as if this still doesn’t necessarily address the difference between absolute and relative numbers when considering the disparity between incidences of “non-mainstream labeling” (would that be a fair way to describe it?). That is, let’s say that over the course of a year’s worth of New York Times articles, the term “ultra-conservative” was used 100 times and “ultra-liberal” only 50. For this to be some indicator of bias, it would have to be shown that the number of mentions of extremist conservatives (a label itself subject to discretion, of course) in the paper overall was fairly equal, in aggregate, to the number of extremist liberals. If, for example, extremist conservatives were mentioned 500 times, and extremist liberals only 100–while the 100 uses of “ultra-conservative” and the 50 uses of “ultra-liberal” still held true–then this would severely undermine the charge of liberal bias. In fact, it would mean that extremist conservatives are appended with the label “ultra-conservative” less often than are their counterparts on the left.

I’m not saying that this is the case, understand–it’s just that I’d like to see greater examination of the context. Absolute numbers mean nothing otherwise.

116

Jackmannii: *The reporter [on the Bush and the abortion “global gag rule” story] provides no evidence whatsoever that this is part of a Bush package to limit or end abortion access. A “prediction” by the reporter belongs on the editorial page. *

But the story makes clear what Bush said his own position on abortion access is! To wit: “taxpayer funds should not be used to pay for abortions or advocate or actively promote abortion either here or abroad.” This is explicitly much more restrictive than the position Clinton held. After that, I really cannot see that a reporter’s calling this action a “signal” of “reversing Clinton’s policies” is in any way a far-fetched or biased interpretation. YMMV.

Mahaloth, Larry Elder’s book itself may not be available online but he has a collection of Web articles entitled “Media Bias”. Some comments:

When the Bad Guy is Black: Complaints that black-on-white racially motivated crimes are soft-pedaled by the media while similar white-on-black crimes are made much more of. But Elder mentions in his article only two black-on-white crimes that he explicitly identifies as being racially motivated. And some of his comments seem rather disingenuous: for example, he says that “Black/white interracial crime is almost entirely committed by blacks against whites. By ignoring this, and holding black criminals to a different standard, the media heightens tension and divisiveness.” But (in addition to providing no evidence for the first statement) he does not address the question of how much of our racially motivated “interracial” crime is committed by blacks, as compared to crimes by black criminals against white victims that don’t involve racial bias.

McCain Media Myth: “The mainstream media dislike the Republican message of individual responsibility, pro-life, limited government, low taxes, defense of the Second Amendment, and opposition to affirmative action.” (If you’re wondering what this has to do with McCain, the answer is, not very much, but the final point seems to be that McCain’s campaign finance reform proposals would be unfair to the Republicans because the “liberal” message gets promulgated by the media “for free” while the Republicans have to pay for advertising air-time. Uh-huh.) Again, Elder basically just makes a bunch of assertions with little or no real evidence in support of the above statement. Some of his claims I think are reasonable, for example, the comment that the media position tends to favor gun control (as I pointed out earlier, btw). Some of them are just ludicrously absurd:

Yup folks, if a politician says he “hates” another politician based on their differences of principle and their adversarial activities, it destroys the credibility of his (and his boss’s) opposition to hate crimes in which racial/ethnic/gender bigotry inspires intimidation and violence!! Folks, I think if Larry Elder showed up on the SDMB with arguments like this, we’d have his ass in a sling in a New York minute, regardless of political persuasion. (Oops, you all know I meant that metaphorically, right? I don’t want to be accused of hypocritically inciting hate crimes here! ;))

George W. Bush-whacked: Complaints that Dubya got a much rougher ride in the media for his apparent ignorance and naivete on political issues than did Democrats who also said some dumb things. Though I think this is probably true, Elder ignores the fact that the Democrats he mentions such as Gore and Bill Bradley have been around national and international politics for a much longer time than George W. Bush, and have managed to convince voters that they are reasonably well-informed: Bush, on the other hand, was far more inexperienced and much more of an unknown quantity in terms of his knowledge and intelligence. So naturally, his screwups were scrutinized much more carefully. (Elder also throws in some misstatements of his own here, such as repeating the legends that Gore said he invented the Internet and was the model for Segal’s Love Story.)

Pete Rose: All-Whiner: Huh? Somebody who understands baseball can explain this one.

The Coke Question: Wonders why allegations of Bush’s cocaine use were such a hot topic when similar allegations about Clinton were downplayed. Does not even mention the huge flap about Clinton’s marijuana use (can anybody really have forgotten “I didn’t inhale”?!). Cites the Freedom Forum survey showing that most of the Washington reporters and bureau chiefs are Democrats: does not get into the question of how “liberal” they may be on specific social or fiscal issues, nor what the biases of others who control media content (editors, publishers, advertisers) may be.

Littleton and the Brando Rule: Comments that after the Columbine shootings everyone was complaining about negligence on the part of the (white) killers’ parents, whereas these complaints are seldom heard about inner-city (black) gang-related juvenile crime. Seems to me that this rather misses the point: we already know that members of violent inner-city gangs are likely to have some serious family problems. The Columbine situation, on the other hand, provoked so much interest (and nosy gossip) precisely because it was not a typical place for juvenile violence. Elder also makes some more overstatements here:

Um, with respect, Mr. Elder, it leaves a lot of other things, too, such as quality of policing, community infrastructure, money spent on education, presence of drug traffic—a whole host of potential differences between two communities which are not dependent simply on whether the people in one community have better “values” than those of the other.

So Mahaloth, I’m sorry to say that after my excursion into Elder’s ideas on media bias I can’t really agree with you on either of your claims about him. I don’t think he’s not a conservative, and I don’t think his arguments in general are very well-supported. He does make some reasonable points, but most of his “analysis” seems to consist of taking a few scattered statistics and pieces of anecdotal evidence and generalizing from them a picture that fits in with his existing notions of what life and the media are like. Maybe the actual book you mentioned has a much higher standard of argument than these Web articles, but if not, I think I’ll pass, thanks.

117

Mahaloth, so glad you’re back. I’d been circling the wagons and holding 'em off at the pass, but they’s lib’rals evahwhere! And…oh Gadarene? When did “liberal”, a term with such a storied and honorable history, become an appelation of opprobrium in your eyes?. There are many politicians and activists from Ted Kennedy on down who call themselves liberals with pride. But what would you prefer to be called? Democrat? Defender of the Lost Republic? Humanitarian?

I see you’re still gingerly tripping through the minefield of “archconservative” and “ultraconservative” (bold, considering your wounds on the “reproducibility” battlefront). Consider that if the N.Y. Times mentions extremist conservatives 500 times in a given time period as opposed to 100 extremist liberals, they’re probably attempting to damn the whole conservative movement by association, whatever precise term they use for “extremists”.

Dan’l, while your “Best Of All Possible Media Worlds” buddies are no doubt glad to have you on board, I advise you that if you are basing your world view on the tenor of the debates here at the SDMB, you are headed for some nasty surprises.

On the matter of editorial page bias being important, I will on further consideration buy into one sliver of this argument. Op-Ed pieces written by members of think tanks should more frequently be accompanied by explanations of what the think tank is and what it stands for. In my local paper, there’ve recently been repeated pro-energy industry columns written by fellows at think tanks, which on closer inspection turn out to derive a substantial portion of their grant income from (surprise!) energy companies.

118

WTF? What wounds? Were they self inflicted wounds, caused by smacking himself in the head over your inability to comprehend a fundamental rule of evidence?

You’re a legend in your own mind, Jack.

119

The way a couple of you are speaking up for Gadarene, responding for him as though he were unable (is this an alternative form of “sock puppet”?) reminds me of a show I saw once on the Discovery Channel, where a group of musk oxen were clustered around a distressed comrade to protect him from a predator. (I seem to remember it ended badly for the musk ox). At any rate, why not let the poor boy speak for himself?

And incidentally Kimstu, let me know just what Clinton policy mandating taxpayer-funded abortions Dubya is all set to overturn. I didn’t see it mentioned in the article.

There’s enough to critique Bush on in terms of abortion rights (the RU-486 “review”, whatever vaunted mind he’s set to spring on us for the next Supreme Court vacancy) without inserting crystal ball predictions of boogeymen into a news story.

120

Um… Gad, I forget…

Am I the left sock or the lefter sock?