# How does media bias work (within the organization itself?) **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 30, 2019, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-media-bias-work-within-the-organization-itself/833277 "2019-04-30T19:53:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2019, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-media-bias-work-within-the-organization-itself/833277/81 "2019-05-03T16:32:21Z")
I think “painfully true” is a better phrase. Because what **puddleglum** says is correct - the media did cover up for Kerry as much as they could. The head of ABC News sent out a memo telling his news staff not to cover Kerry lies but only Bush ones. And CBS did, in fact, rush out the forgery about Bush’s National Guard service without sufficient fact-checking, because (due at least in part to their biases) they thought it was actually true. It wasn’t; it was a forgery, and it only took a few hours to debunk. See also the moderator jumping in to help Obama in his second debate with Romney. The media had left Obama to his own devices before the first debate, having come to believe in their own hype and Obama lost the debate rather badly. Then, in the second debate, the moderator jumped in to help him. Name one time that happened with a Republican. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2019, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-media-bias-work-within-the-organization-itself/833277/82 "2019-05-03T16:47:15Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > This is how it works. People are usually blind to their own biases. People also tend to scrutinize claims that don’t agree with their priors and let pass claims that agree with them. If everyone at the organization had wanted that candidate to win, then no one would have caught the bias. > > Editors are ones who control who gets assignments and what is covered. These editors like stories that are biased in the same way they are and dislike ones that are biased in a different way. Thus the higher in the ranks of journalism people rise the more bias there is. > > Thus the current situation where 90% of journalists are liberals and the media is slanted left. Exactamundo. I’d guess that _if_ there was any sort of calling on the carpet, it would be something like an editor noticing, because his biases informed him, that an article was too liberal, and calling the writer on the carpet for not being neutral. Meanwhile, a lot of more right-wing articles might seem neutral to the editor, because his biases are skewing his perception without him really even knowing it. WRT the idea that institutional media bias is exercised in terms of what stories are run and where, I absolutely believe that. I’ve noticed that CNN has a distinct slant toward international social justice- even on the US CNN page, they’ll run some story about empowering women in Burundi front and center, and the story about something more regional will be buried without a photo, etc… down page. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2019, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-media-bias-work-within-the-organization-itself/833277/83 "2019-05-03T16:56:57Z")
I sense that most posters here in this thread fall into two categories: 1) “No, the media is not biased,” or 2) “Yes, the media is biased, but in a good way - they’re biased for my side.” ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2019, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-media-bias-work-within-the-organization-itself/833277/84 "2019-05-03T17:22:31Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > I think “painfully true” is a better phrase. Because what **puddleglum** says is correct - the media did cover up for Kerry as much as they could. The head of ABC News sent out a memo telling his news staff not to cover Kerry lies but only Bush ones. And CBS did, in fact, rush out the forgery about Bush’s National Guard service without sufficient fact-checking, because (due at least in part to their biases) they thought it was actually true. It wasn’t; it was a forgery, and it only took a few hours to debunk. As this issue is about how media bias work, Dan Rather had to quit or dismissed in disgrace, all the ones in conservative media involved in the Benghazi propaganda effort or the one from the [swiftboaters](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/swift-justice/)\* got promotions or continue to get rich by making or fanning more conspiracies among the gullible republican voters. \*\* - > [@](#): > > How well all of these men knew John Kerry is questionable, and discrepancies between how some of them described Kerry thirty-five years ago and how they describe him today suggest that their opinions are largely based upon political differences rather than objective assessments of Kerry’s military record. For example, Rear Admiral Roy Hoffman is quoted above, yet the Los Angeles Times reported: > > . . . Hoffman and Kerry had few direct dealings in Vietnam. A Los Angeles Times examination of Navy archives found that Hoffman praised Kerry’s performance in cabled messages after several river skirmishes.1 \*\* > **[Jerome Corsi, the conspiracy theorist now entangled in the Mueller...](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/28/18112717/jerome-corsi-mueller-roger-stone-donald-trump-wikileaks)** > > What ties WikiLeaks, Jerome Corsi, and Roger Stone together? Mueller’s team is trying to find out. > **[The Hustlers and Swindlers of the Mueller Report](https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-hustlers-and-swindlers-of-the-mueller-report)** > > Rather than the story of a single crime masterminded by a single actor or entity, this is the story of many grifters, each running his own scheme. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2019, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-media-bias-work-within-the-organization-itself/833277/85 "2019-05-03T17:31:36Z")
Thank you for the example of the MSM covering up for Kerry as described. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2019, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-media-bias-work-within-the-organization-itself/833277/86 "2019-05-03T17:42:47Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > I sense that most posters here in this thread fall into two categories: 1) “No, the media is not biased,” or 2) “Yes, the media is biased, but in a good way - they’re biased for my side.” Nowadays reality has (mostly) a liberal bias. > **[Cruz: Trump is a 'pathological liar'](https://www.bbc.com/news/av/election-us-2016-36198532)** > > Ahead of the Indiana poll Ted Cruz calls Donald Trump a 'pathological liar' after Mr Trump suggests Mr Cruz’s father was linked to JFK’s assassination. But, that was grossly simplified **Velocity** , to me the media is biased, but more professional that many right wingers think, and it makes them fall for false equivalencies regularly. So it does not really fit your definitions. As many on the left can tell you, mainstream goes for leftists ideas just by serendipity. BTW I do make a habit of not going to left sites that ignore evidence or fall for their propaganda, **but the only exception** has to be made when one notices in discussions like this one that the opinion on what the mainstream media is doing, according to people on the far left, is ignored. Items like this are common in their criticism of the media: > **[Why does NPR obediently repeat obvious distractions from the president? -...](https://www.democraticunderground.com/11742996)** > [@](#): > > Listening to NPR this morning, they’re going on about immigrants and the border and what the president and his hard-right flack Mulvaney said about it. (I won’t even repeat it— what they said isn’t important. It’s a lie and we shouldn’t dignify it by talking about it.) > > So why is NPR repeating the president’s lies? Those are lies that are obviously designed to distract from other more important things. > **[How the media is failing the country: a historian on Dems and "socialism" -...](https://www.democraticunderground.com/11742972)** > [@](#): > > @julianzelizer > > The difference between how much the news media has been covering liberal “extremism” in the Democratic Party versus conservative “extremism” in the Republican Party is a problem. Here are a few thoughts. > [@](#): > > Especially problematic is the fact that social scientists have demonstrated the “asymmetric” nature of partisan polarization—the GOP has moved much more to the right and is more ideologically driven than Democrats [There is much more](https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=forum&id=1174), and I have to say that some of it is silly and should be dismissed, but the point here is that many on the left do not see mainstream media as their media, while the right does think that FOX and others are “fair and balanced” ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2019, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-media-bias-work-within-the-organization-itself/833277/87 "2019-05-03T17:44:23Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Thank you for the example of the MSM covering up for Kerry as described. > > Regards, > Shodan And thank you for showing all how it is not important for many on the right that swindlers can drive the agenda for many editors of the right wing media. On edit: I realized also that I missed the Snopes link about the swiftboaters: > **[John Kerry Swift Boats](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/swift-justice/)** > > Quotes from Swift boat veterans about John Kerry. So yeah, Jerome Corsy remains an asshole of historical proportions. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2019, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-media-bias-work-within-the-organization-itself/833277/88 "2019-05-03T18:18:51Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > I sense that most posters here in this thread fall into two categories: 1) “No, the media is not biased,” or 2) “Yes, the media is biased, but in a good way - they’re biased for my side.” You see no hints of “Some of the media is biased in a bad way”? Wow. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2019, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-media-bias-work-within-the-organization-itself/833277/89 "2019-05-03T18:37:53Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > You see no hints of “Some of the media is biased in a bad way”? Wow. But my reading of Voyager’s post was that _most posters here_ don’t see it that way. I don’t think the media is biased in a “good” way, even if I do agree with them on some issues I still consider bias to be undesirable. Media bias can be minimized, but there are countless instances where bias shines through. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2019, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-media-bias-work-within-the-organization-itself/833277/90 "2019-05-03T22:19:57Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > I sense that most posters here in this thread fall into two categories: 1) “No, the media is not biased,” or 2) “Yes, the media is biased, but in a good way - they’re biased for my side.” I sense that most posters here in this thread believe the definition of bias is, “I don’t like the story you’re reporting therefore, you are biased.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-media-bias-work-within-the-organization-itself/833277.md?page=4)