I’m not sure you can infer anything from the number of citations alone. For instance, an article can cite the NRA and still be pro gun control. The context is what is important here. In fact, you’ll see this in nearly every political debate on these boards. A poster will cite information from a source opposed to her view and then go on to disparage it. Hell, I know I’ve cited HCI, or whatever they’re calling themselves these days, many times. Ditto for Pete Shields. In fact, I’ve probably cited them more than the NRA and Wayne LaPierre. Does this mean I’m pro-control? Hah!
Thanks, andros. A rare moment of lucidity and impartiality for me.
If your definition of liberal is that the reporting seeks a wide range of views on the event, then the mainstream media is liberal and that is the definition of mainstream media, you get all sides of the story.
What conservatives complain about on their talk shows and such is that any news that allows a liberal view to be put forth with the others is a liberal show.:eek:
DP White: Wait a second. The claim by FAIR, et al is that the media essentially reflects a conversation between conservatives and centrists. You see a rational discourser from Brookings facing off with a shoot-from-the-hip conservative from the Heritage Foundation.*
That does not reflect a wide range of views. (And it makes for a fairly odd debate.)
The Economic Policy Institute and the Center for Defense Information, on the other hand, get short shrift.
Unclebeer: Ok, but look how few times progressive foundations are cited. (16%). That’s an awfully low figure. The debate is invariably framed between “free market” and “some intervention, but we’ll be careful”. (Again, on gun control I concede the point, though I hasten to add that I haven’t looked into the specifics).
S pointed out previouly, all of the above are “commentators” who are paid to give their opinion, not present the news in as unbiased a way as possible.
When it comes to Journalists / Anchors / Reporters; From a June 1997 WSJ article…
The line between politics and journalism has long been blurred by political operatives entering the media. The (conservative) Media Research Center has spent the past decade tracking this revolving door between politics and the media; the current count: 322 Democrats vs. 82 Republicans. On the very day CBS announced (hiring form GOP Rep. Susan) Molinari…ABC tapped Jim Williams, press secretary for Chicago’s Democratic Mayor Richard M. Daley, as a correspondent–and not a peep was heard.
CBS News itself has a longtime partisan political operative influencing its political coverage. No, not Ms. Molinari, but senior political editor Dotty Lynch, who directed polling for George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Ted Kennedy, the Democratic National Committee and the 1984 Mondale campaign, all before joining CBS in 1985. And Ms. Lynch is hardly atypical. David Burke served as Sen. Kennedy’s chief of staff from 1965 to 1971. By 1977 he was a vice president at ABC News. In 1988, he became president of CBS News, a post he held for two years. When Sen. Kennedy ran for re-election in 1994, who was at his side but Mr. Burke, “advising him on strategy,” according to the Boston Globe. In 1995 this newspaper reported that President Clinton brought Mr. Burke along on a February trip to California, “to provide political and communications tips.”
So where does the New York Times get the audacity to denounce Ms. Molinari’s appointment in an editorial headlined “The GOP News From CBS”?
During the Reagan and Bush years the revolving door between the administration and journalism slowed, but the pace picked up with Mr. Clinton’s victory. For example:
Sidney Blumenthal, a correspondent for The New Yorker and former reporter for the Washington Post, will join the administration as a senior political adviser, it was reported this week.
Donald Baer, assistant managing editor of U.S. News & World Report, came aboard as director of White House speechwriting and research.
Carolyn Curiel, a “Nightline” producer and former New York Times editor, took a White House speechwriting slot.
Rick Inderfurth, an ABC News reporter during the 1980s, joined United Nations Ambassador Madeleine Albright’s shop in New York and has been nominated assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs.
Thomas Ross, senior vice president of NBC News, became special assistant to the president and senior director of public affairs at the National Security Council.
Tara Sonenshine has traversed from being a “Nightline” producer to the NSC to Newsweek’s Washington bureau, then back to the NSC–all during the Clinton years.
Strobe Talbott, Time magazine’s Washington bureau chief in the late 1980s, is now deputy secretary of state.
Having a revolving door between politics and journalism is not necessarily a bad thing. Indeed, men and women with extensive political experience, regardless of ideology, can be a great asset in the political news business. But only if they are capable of leaving personal biases behind in search of fair, balanced reporting. This can be said of NBC’s Tim Russert, who worked for Mario Cuomo. It can be said of his colleague Pete Williams, who served under George Bush. Many others qualify as well.
Susan Molinari hasn’t spent a minute in the anchor’s chair, yet she’s already been declared guilty of trying to package a partisan ideology as news. Passing judgment on her performance before the fact is bad enough, but this dedication to “objective journalism” is simply preposterous coming from the liberal media elite
Surely I’m not the only person who thinks this debate is futile. Maybe I am alone in having the time and ego to think that my thinking this is a silly argument is of any importance. This fight has been going on since John Cameron Swazy (sp?) brought you the Korean War. The fight is confined to TV news. Apparently everyone thinks that newspapers, magazines and news letters are entitled to have their own political view point. Apparently there is some idea that news programing has to be squeaky clean impartial and that any arguable slight departure from absolute evenhandedness is cause to roll on the floor and foam at the mouth about the unfairness of the whole thing. We count the number of times a topic is addressed; even the number of times a word is used, and draw conclusions from those stastics.
Do you people have some God given right to be spoon fed everything? Have you no capacity for critical thinking? Doesn’t anybody understand that TV news is a business and that any slanting of the program will lose viewers, advertisers and money? If you are depending on the network evening news for your information on what is going on in the world and complaining because you are not being told precisely what you want to hear then you are doomed to a life of disappointment and woeful ignorance.
I think I’ll go off to some quiet place and lie down for a while.
Actually, much of the debate centers around mainstream publications such as the NYT, Time, Shmoozweek, etc.
No. Some. Well, the slanting must be subtle. Seriously, I think it is valid to complain that a certain POV is, um, skipped. You know, ignored. Whatever my critical facilities, it is difficult to evaluate positions that are not put forward.
Now, my opinion of the work of EPI, for example, is mixed. I suspect that I would be sympathetic to their stance on unemployment insurance reform, the living wage (but not the miniumum wage), income redistribution policy and ergonomics standards. I probably part company with their free trade and minimum wage stance. Not sure about their views on environmental and educational policy.
Thought this cite was worthy of being added to the thread. It tests Goldberg’s assertion that conservatives are more often labeled as such than liberals and finds it contradicted by the evidence.
“Doesn’t anybody understand that TV news is a business…?”
I believe part of the criticism of broadcast news stems from the fact that it involves a publicly-owned resource - the airwaves. The idea that TV and radio utilize a broadcast spectrum owned by all of us was behind the Fairness Doctrine, equal time rules and all of the protections that the Right and Left have been eager to discard like so much useless baggage.
But never fear. Who needs a fair, professional and dependable broadcast news service? We’ve got lots of nifty alternatives, like Matt Drudge and Michael Reagan. :rolleyes:
