Going against the conventual wisdom I would like to offer the herictal
position that the “media” is conservative as opposed to liberal. I would
define “media” as any broadcast, publication, organization or prominate
personality dealing with current events or policy in a politcal context.
I do hear, mainly from my two local talk radio stations the term liberal
media at least 30 times a day, every day, uttered by coservatives to other
conservatives on conservative stations on conservative talkshows.
Who has more sources of political news or opinion? Liberals or Conservatives.
I thought I could start with list of prominate Conservative sources of “media”
and see if others can offset this with more liberal sources.
Publications
Washington Times
Wallstreet Journal
National Review
Weekly Standard
Human Events
Insight Magazine
American Spectator
Conservative Digest
American Legion Magazine
Radio Programs
Rush Limbaugh
G Gordon Liddy
Dr Laura
Michael Reagan
Oliver North
Michael Medved
Organizations
Accury in Media
Council of conservative Citizens
Focus on the Family
Christian Collition
American Enterprise Instutite
Concerned Women of America
CATO Institute
Heritage Foundation
Rutherford Institute
Fox News
Drudge Report
Eagle Forumn
Independant Women’s Foroum
Judical Watch
NRA
Gun Owners of America
Hudson Institute
John Birch Society
ACLJ
World Net Daily
Jewsih World Review
700 Club
Landmark Legal Foundation
Prominate media conservatives
George Will
Janet Parshall
William Safire
Mona Cheron
William F Buckley
Tucker Carlson
Phillis Schafly
Fred Barnes
Elaine Donnelly
Paul Wyrick
Laura Ingram
Robert Novack
Mary Matilyn
Reed Irvine
Kate O’Beirne
John McGlocklin
Arianna Huffington
Bruce Fein
Pat Buchanon
Kathleen Parker
Tony Blankley
Paul Harvey
Peggy Noonan
I believe this is a good rundown of the conservative media that
conservatives claim is dominated by liberals.
The smearing of the media as liberal is one of the greatest scams of American history. I like to think we’ll one day wake up and realize it, but I’m skeptical. I’m always skeptical.
You raise a good point, Icerigger: there are plenty of prominent conservative commentators out there, but a marked dearth of moderates and liberals. George Stephanopoulos is one of the rare exceptions. If anyone can, I’d like to see a list of the prominent liberals in American media. Five getcha ten the list would be far shorter. The so-called “moderates” in the media are no breath of fresh air, either. Watch Paula Zahn or Tim Russert sometime. The softball questions they hurl toward all their guests are disgusting
If the media are so liberal, why the fascination with Bill Clinton’s marital infidelities, but the flat-out ignoring of the marital infidelities of Bob Dole, Newt Gingrich and George Bush, Senior? Why do the media give so much air time to the old Starr scandals, even though Clinton’s been out of office for over a year now—and there are plenty of fresh scandals out there for us. Why did the media hammer Clinton on the allegation that he’d tried marijuana, but left Bush Junior alone when he said he didn’t want to talk about the allegation that he’d used cocaine?
Over 90% of the media outlets in the United States are owned by less than ten companies. Think about who owns NBC, ABC, CBS, your local newspaper… wouldn’t you think there’d be a vested interest in pleasing the owners of the media outlets? Corporations have a tendency to be conservative, some of you may have noticed, so it’s not much of a leap to link corporations and conservatives—and thus the media outlets that those corporations own.
I’d like to see evidence of the American media’s liberal leanings. I just don’t get how anyone can accuse them of it. Even during the 2000 presidential campaign, Al Gore went under much more scrutiny for every little misstatement he made, while Bush Junior got a free ride. Bush flat-out lied about his environmental record in Texas during the debates, f’Chrissakes! Shouldn’t that count for something?
You have to hand it to the republicans for their media strategy. They have done an amazing job of getting extreme right opinion into the mainstream while simultaniously excoriating the media for being liberal. It is like an alternate reality when someone like Russert can be considered a moderate by anyone.
As I argued in another ongoing thread to be a left wing pundit you have to be moderate and nonthreatening. Stephanopolis is a sorry excuse for a liberal which is probably the only reason he is acceptable for television. There are a few others but most are centrists who the stations pawn off as liberals. I understand Carville is going to Crossfire which would be unprecidented if he were intelligable.
I have yet to see a study that even attempts to show real liberal bias which is almost proof it doesn’t exist with the glut of right wing think tanks around these days. Instead they rely on studies of voting patterns without looking at actual views, seperating out political reporters or looking at editors. Or they go the way of Bias and present no real evidence at all. The Daily Howler is having fun with Goldberg lately, it is worth a look to see a partial analysis of his methodology (or lack thereof) and the inaccuracy of his simple factual claims.
The Windshield case thread is a pretty good example of how well conditioned republicans can be to see bias and how little evidence they need. Summerby had a pretty good example the other day what happens when they try to show it using actual data. Sullivan attempted to show just how bad the NY Times was by counting, among other things, the number of times right wing extremist was used as compared to left wing extremist. Right wing was used 4 or 5 times the amount left wing was demonstrating to his satisfaction that he had exposed a nest of nasty liberals. When Summerby applied the criteria to the Moonie Times he found they were even more liberal.
Gore certainly got savaged in the election which doesn’t necessarily suggest a right wing press but it sure doesn’t support the idea of a liberal press either. To me the biggest factor wasn’t so much a political bias but a bias towards filling the page with utter garbage with an emphasis on what was easiest to report. No analysis, no fact checking, style over substance at every turn and letting the candidates write the stories. The Bush campaign had a lot of help from the right wing pundits but they clearly understood the press better than Gore’s and were more successful at manipulating it.
NPR is pushing the definition of “mainstream,” just due to its tiny audience. I’d also point out to the OP that the Liberal Media Bias (“LMB”) is alleged to reside in the reporting of the news, not the commentary. Except, of course, for the much-hated New York Times editorial page. I’d agree that there is a clear conservative majority among the mainstream pundits. The question, to my mind, is whether there is any liberal bias on evening news and the front section of the newspaper, not whether there’s a liberal bias on the Sunday morning talk shows and the editorial pages.
I’m surprised people still buy into this “the media is liberal/conservative” silliness. Conservatives says it’s too liberal, liberals say it’s too conservative.
The media, at least in the U.S., is STRONGLY centrist, oxymoronic though that may be. The media’s general position is to take the most non-controversial position possible and to adopt whatever stance will garner the least controversy. The mainstream media coverage for genuinely different political viewpoints, right or left, is almost nonexistent.
Arianna Huffington, judging by her Salon articles, decided to switch from the increasingly-crowded right side of the street to the left with the change of administration. Perhaps there’s some value to reading her, since her views are untainted by principle and she is therefore free to be more objective. Or perhaps she’s still just a ho who should be ignored.
It’s necessary, btw, not to fall into the fallacy of the excluded middle (literally) used by many conservative commentators, both in the media and on this board. “Not conservative” is not synonymous with “liberal” - a plurality of Americans call themselves “moderate”, and that term does not simply mean “confused” or “undecided yet”.
Yes, several of them represent conservative POVs in main stream media.
BTW the listing of Wall Street Journal is only partly correct. The editorial page is indeed very conservative. However, the news page is not. In fact, most of those working on the news are liberals, who sometimes point out errors on the op-ed side of the house.
Of course this issue has come up many times on these boards.
I agree that the existence of a Rush Limbaugh show is not really relevant to the question of liberal media bias.
Anyway, one quick and dirty way to measure bias is to do a NEXIS type search for news articles that have phrases like “ultra-conservative” Then do a similar search for phrases like “ultra-liberal.” I did this once, and, as I recall, use of phrases like “ultra-conservative” significantly outnumbered the use of phrases like “ultra-liberal.”
Well, perhaps it’s because ultra-conservatives significantly outnumber ultra-liberas. Or perhaps “ultra-liberal” is an oxymoron because to be “ultra” anything is to be un-libreral.
“LIberal bias” might be an oxymoron too, but before we go any further we should try to estsablish a definition of “liberal” that we can all agree on.
One thing to consider is whether the term ultra-liberal is used to describe the far left, as ultra-conservative is used to describe the far right. Frankly, that just doesn’t seem to be the case. Usually “socialist” is trotted out when describing the far left, and if it isn’t then something like “leftist” usually is. Considering the tendency of many to call themselves moderate and to tar their opponents with extremism, it wouldn’t be overly surprising if left-wing ideologues were simply called “liberals”. That term can often be damaging enough that the “ultra-” simply isn’t necessary to get it across.
The far left doesn’t get much attention in mainstream media so it wouldn’t be surprising to get little notice. If you went by mainstream media you wouldn’t have a clue what the WTO protests are all about. They are refered to by a variety of name such as radical leftists.
In any case, content analysis is simply not something that can be done quick and dirty and have results that are at all meaningful.
Icerigger may be correct that there are more right-wing than left-wing commentators/alternate news sources available to consumers these days.
Certainly there’s been an upsurge in largely right-wing talk programs and internet sources of “news”.
A key question to ask yourself is, why? Could traditional media practices have had anything to do with the rise of Rush and his clones?
And do you feel the American people are well-served by having the mainstream media droning in one ear and the people Icerigger cites, bending the other ear?
Should news reporting be a battle of competing predjudices?
Thats just what I have been suggesting in this thread .
Everyone is biased on way or the other. The majority of the mainstream media votes democrat. This affects their reporting of the news, simply because of human nature. Until the media voting patterns match that of the American public, there will always be a bias present.
I like the idea of liberals and conservatives presenting the news with an admitted bias. Then the viewer can form their own opinion. This would be more honest than our current system of the Media elites attempting to remain neutral and doing just straight reporting, but in reality their bias creeps into every viewpoint.
Right data, silly interpretation. What this really means is that the ultra-conservatives gets press coverage (i.e their voice is represented), while the ultra-liberals are mostly ignored. (their voice is silenced)
Or in other words, media bias is conservative rather than liberal. [sub]Or, more likely, this is just a really stupid way to try and measure media bias…[/sub]
One way the media opens itself up to be called a liberal media is that liberals usually define themselves and centrists and mainstream - basically they lie - they are liberal. conservatives usually come right out and say they are a conservative commentator.
Also a fair definition of a liberal in my humble O is one who thinks society can be best served by people not directly involved with an issue so they can look at the issue objectively, while a conservative thinks that the people directly involved should be the ones to deal with the issue.
It’s not all inclusive and there is exceptions, but I don’t what to hear a definition about a liberal being open minded - I don’t want to puke over my new keyboard.
