Such power the liberal journalists have! It’s no wonder Trump didn’t have a chance in hell of winning the last election.
Which leads to a self-reinforcing cycle - liberals hire other liberals, and so on.
Yup - that’s what they told each other, over and over. And underlies much of the Trump Derangement Syndrome we see in the MSM - they were wrong about his chances of being elected, and are furiously determined to either drive him from office, or prevent his re-election, to sort of retroactively justify themselves.
And having systematically excluded any POV but the liberal one from their ranks, the press is blindsided by the fact that the rest of the country does not see the liberal POV as self-evident.
Who was the winner of the SDMB contest to predict the electoral college totals in 2016? It wasn’t a Hilary supporter - they had all convinced themselves of what was going to happen.
Will the MSM learn anything from this? I doubt it.
Regards,
Shodan
Who was the winner of the SDMB contest in 2012? Was it a Romney supporter? Not sure what this tells us about anything.
Make up your mind, Shodan-Do liberals journalists have too much influence, or are they ineffective boobs? Do try to be consistent when rehashing tired old talking points.
And this is proven by the fact that the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Businnes Week, Bloomberg, CNBC, Fox Business, et al have overwhelmingly pushed for Bernie Sanders’ and Alexandria Occasio Cortes’ “democratic socialism” in their coverage. Are you claiming that 58% of business coverage is “liberal and thus biased against conservatives?”
Also, you conveniently omit some other things the article states.
I know journalism is supposed to be a dying profession, but I thought it still employed more than 430 people. Oh, wait a second.
But we know that of the certainly a large majority of the small minority of journalists who donated to Clinton over Trump, it wasn’t 96% of journalists, it was 96% of contributions.
Which means the average liberal donation was $888.37, and the average conservative donation was $280. Maybe conservative journalists are just cheap.
And for that matter why do they say “About 430 people who work in journalism” when they talk about liberals, but say “About 50 identifiable journalists” when they talk about conservatives? Are those two terms exactly comparable? I can “work in journalism” as an advertising sales representative, a printing press operator, or a TV camera operator who works on news programs without being an “identifiable journalist.”
Last but not least
Would you agree we don’t really know whether those people, who work for the very news organizations we call “mainstream media” are liberal, conservative, or poltically indifferent?
You’re right, it has always been a fringe position. I should have said “significant minority”.
There exist localities where enough people are anti-vax as to warrant local coverage of the issue. For example, just over 1/3 of my workplace was “anti-vax”, as in not going to vaccinate themselves or their kids, despite the fact that we literally administered vaccines to (willing) patients. When vaccine stuff is in the news, I hear patients in our lobby take sides. By my estimate, from personal experience, one in ten people around me don’t trust vaccines. It would make sense for a local newspaper to run a story about the vaccine controversy. It might even make sense for a national paper to run a story, so far as I know.
A quick search of the internet for real statistics yields a 2015 Washington Post article called “Here’s how many Americans are actually anti-vaxxers”[1]. They cited a 2015 Pew Research Center poll of 1,000 American adults, which found that 9% of the American adult public thinks the MMR vaccine is unsafe for healthy children[2]. The same report says a different poll found 30% of Americans said parents should be able to decide not to vaccinate their children[3].
If a significant number of people take a position, that position becomes newsworthy regardless of how right or wrong it is. Media organizations can cover both sides of that story without bias. They have to be careful, but it can and should be done.
[1] Blake, A. (February 9, 2015). Here’s how many Americans are actually anti-vaxxers. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/02/09/heres-how-many-americans-are-actually-anti-vaxxers/?noredirect=on
[2] 83% Say Measles Vaccine Is Safe for Healthy Children. (2015). Pew Research Center. Retrieved from 83% Say Measles Vaccine Is Safe for Healthy Children | Pew Research Center
[3] Anderson, M. (2015). Young adults more likely to say vaccinating kids should be a parental choice. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from Young adults more likely to say vaccinating kids should be a parental choice | Pew Research Center
I’m not Shodan but I think that’s a false dilemma. With enough effort and discipline even diehard liberals can (theoretically :D) minimize their bias. It is the ethical thing for a journalist to do and I have faith that hundreds of journalists try very hard to do so every day. These same qualities are in fact the only way to break out of the cycle of confirmation bias.
In all practicality, it is much easier to let another person keep you in check. That’s where editors and salaries (not freelancers) and workplace diversity comes into view. It falls on the managers and higher-ups to encourage this sort of in-house journalistic peer review, as described by Hilarity N. Suze.
~Max
Too late to edit, but regarding my last point
Which, incidentally,means that fewer journalists identify as Democrats than the general population. But that 14% “other” is a pretty big number. Are they Libertarians, Greens, Constitutional Unionists? Who knows. All we can tell is that 72% of journalists say they AREN’T Democrats.
Disproportionate influence and always getting one’s desire are two different things.
I really have to strongly object to this kind of blatant false equivalence. While it’s true that CNN is currently on an anti-Trump kick, it’s only because Trump went to war with them, declared them an “enemy of the people”, and banned one of their reporters from the White House for asking difficult quesitons – a ban that was subsequently overturned by the justice system.
But that’s largely a side issue. The major truth here is that networks like ABC and CNN strive to present the facts. When confronted with this reality, conservatives like to cite instances when, say, CNN said something that wasn’t true. No. If CNN “said something that wasn’t true”, it was a mistake. A rare one, but the kind that inevitably happens in journalism. What Fox News does is LIE. Consistently, systematically, systemically – they omit key facts, present one-sided versions, and spin the news to suit the demented Republican audience that they serve. And they have become laughably detached from any sane reality.
No evidence has been offered that tired old talking points are degraded by the process of rehashing. Nor that consistency is an improvement.
Honestly dude, if I had to actually [DEL]deal with[/DEL] report on some of these politicians on a day-to-day basis I would renounce my party affiliation too. Even if I was on the other side.
~Max
Hired as a “contributor”. Fox News likes having pretend disagreements. Makes for good TV.
And Brazile is ethically flexible. Fox material for sure.
Some bias is overt. Some implicit.
Some news sources proclaim their bias, others hide it or pretend it is not there.
A good news organization should have an editor that stomps on overt bias and chews out the person who wrote the piece.
Implicit bias is a lot harder to combat. Choice of words and how things are phrased can be anywhere from blindingly obvious to incredibly subtle. It is near impossible to stamp out completely. Again, a good editor can often spot such things and have it cleaned up before publishing.
This assumes they strive to not have bias in their reporting but these days editors are an expensive luxury many publications are getting rid of and other publications embrace being on one side or the other (which is ok if they advertise their bias).
The worst of the lot are the likes of Fox News who pretend at “fair and balanced” reporting but are anything but.
Sorry, it was disputed before. It is enough to notice that bias outside the organization does not = bias in the organization.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18227265&postcount=15
[Underline added]
Is the contention that liberal news can not attract advertisers? Is the world so screwed that corruption can not be reported on because you can not do business without corrupt money?
The way then it should be done: Instead of climate change deniers, put vaccine deniers there:
There’s also:
Juan Williams
James Carville
Tamara Holder
et al.
Are they all “ethically flexible”? :dubious:
They are “liberals” working for Fox?
Then yes, they are. They are tokens enabling an evil news agency and I am sure they know it.
You don’t know who they are?
And “evil news agency” is the silliest argument that I’ve read on this board in quite a while.