It isn’t so much bias as it is that one party or the other closely identifies with the issues advocated by the advocacy group. NOW and NARAL, for example, are largely wedded to the abortion issue, which an overwhelmng amount of the time puts them at odds with Republicans and in league with Democrats.
Besides, the real issue for purposes of the OP isn’t partisanship, it’s the ideological label attached to the organization by the media. NOW and NARAL are described in neutral terms, while groups like the CWA are described as “conservative.” Why, one wonders, are NOW or NARAL rarely described as “liberal”? Alternatively, why is the CWA rarely described without an ideological label?
So why do you pass off the media’s lies (or withholding of information) concerning the Appalacian Law School shooting as general misreporting, while citing the coverage of the Iraq war as conservative bias? In both cases important facts were withheld, and yet only the latter is evidence of bias?
I think Jon Stewart said it best: “The media isn’t biased toward the right or left, it’s biased toward sensationalism.”
The news networks want as many viewers as possible, so they report on the stories that will have people tuning in. The majority of Americans wanted their country to go to war. The networks understood this, and kept a lid on most opposing opinions. By the same token, people are worried about guns. So every time there is a shooting, the networks try to make it look as shocking as possible. And that’s why they didn’t mention the use of guns to stop the shooter. Otherwise, viewers might actually have had to think–and that’s not what the viewers want (and, consequently, is not what the networks want).
Stossell was interviewed on Faux News this morning. He made no apologies for his reporting. He thinks with Barbara Walters leaving 20/20, he will be the sole repoter on the program.
Because there is a difference. I wouldn’t suggest that not hearing “Republican President George Bush said today…” is evidence of conservative bias, for example, in that we would just “assume” that any president must be a republican. That, quite frankly, is a little silly.
This has been true for a while. But I think you’re trying hard to avoid the bigger picture of who owns media enterprises and what opinions they have on what should be covered. It is not simply a manner of sensationalism. Why is there so very little foriegn news covered, for instance? To get a decent helping of information about the world I live in I have to subscribe to a British magazine.
I suspect some of the bias others have mentioned in terms of mentioning whether someone is a conservative is that many people self-identify as conservatives, while liberals are called such, but not normally self-named.
This is only part of the story. There are plenty of things to report on over the years to get viewers’ attention. The world is a big, interesting, scary, and shocking place much of the time. Which sensational items are aired over others is not just some trivial matter.
NPR didn’t, and they are still afloat “somehow”.
Wrong. This is just false. You know how many gun deaths there are every day? You know which shootings tend to be reported? It was a big deal around my area that there was a shooting on the highway in Woburn, Massachusetts. Big deal. How many people are shot all the time other communities? I saw the same thing when I lived in Ohio. Shootings in Cleveland happen rather frequently, but a standoff in the suburbs is a big deal.
It is a falsehood that conservative=pro-gun and liberal=anti-gun. A falsehood fostered, to their mutual profit, by the GOP and the NRA. The supposedly pro-gun and conservative Republican Party doesn’t have good record when it comes to individual gun rights. As we speak, they control the Whitehouse and the legislature, but how many executive orders have been rescinded and how many gun laws have been repealed? Oh, that’s right…none.
Not to turn this into a hijack, though. To address your original point, the media is, by and large, anti-gun. That doesn’t translate into the media being liberal. The rich, powerful owners of the media conglomerates would have no interest either in liberalism or in you being armed, now would they?
I think the posts I have seen here (I apologize if I overlooked something) have missed what I consider to be important about this. Conservatives charge that the media is biased, citing everyday reporting of polarized issues, and surveys showing that the vast majority of reporters are left of center. Liberals counter that editorial boards are mostly right of center.
They’re both right. Editorial content is more overt in its bias, but consumers realize this and apply filters. Straight journalism is supposed to be “just the facts,” but biases can leak through, and one way that bias happens is simply in the choice of what stories get reported on and which sources get quoted.
By the way, I think the characterization of NPR as liberal is not quite right. I’ve been listening to NPR almost every day for close to 20 years, and several years ago I noticed much more bias (mostly in the decision of what stories get covered), but in recent years I think they’re doing a very good job of being balanced.
As noted above, the survey by FAIR suggested there is not such bias in reporters in regards to economics issues…If anything, they are right of center on these.
And, when you talk about bias in what stories get reported, you have to consider not only the views of reporters but of who controls the news outlets. (E.g., how did GE’s NBC cover the PCBs in the Hudson?)
Since sleeping brought this up again, I would just like to point out that it appears to be crap.
In addition to the usual expected distortions, inaccuracies, and counting many different versions of the same AP story over and over, the main reason that the armed students weren’t mentioned is that the guns played no role in the capture of the shooter.
What did Besen (one of the unarmed “biggest heroes” say about what happened?
So the fact that two students had guns could have made a difference, but it didn’t. One of the armed guys kept embellishing his story for days afterward.
Their Morning Edition piece on the Bush state-of-the-union message provides a more typical example of what their editors consider balance. The two people interviewed for this segment were former Clinton White House chief of staff Leon Panetta (a Democrat) and one-time GOP strategist Kevin Phillips. Balanced, right?
Except Phillips is best known these days for his new book on the Bush “dynasty”, “the politics of deceit” and his perceptions regarding the pernicious influence of the Bush family on the body politic.
Not surprisingly, both Panetta and Phillips panned the Bush speech.
Even if you agree that the state-of-the-Union message was largely a crock of shit, you should find something objectionable in NPR’s idea of “balanced” reporting.
Thank you for your in depth detailed data-driven analysis of NPR, Jackmannii. I could complain about a segment I heard where they had a Cato person on without providing a balancing opposing view…But, that would be just about as scientific.
I dunno Jackmannii, a LOT of people panned that SotU. Bush’s approval ratings dropped after it, and many of the big name pro-Bush internet pundits thought it was a washout. I can’t recall a single person on NPR who thought that Dean’s yeeearrrrrgggh speech was any good either. Must EVERYTHING that happens both be conemned and praised, so as to achieve balance?
The fact is, NPR at any one point often has people without directly opposing views. But that’s because their coverage and discussion spans much longer periods of time and many more shows, all of which. When they cover something like the wall being built in Israel, you might tune in one day to hear a Palestinian view, and a Likud party member the next. If you only tuned in on one day, you might think the coverage was radically skewed.
My example is part of a long-standing pattern followed by NPR. You could update it on a daily basis - for instance, with today’s followup report on the Lord Hutton/BBC affair in which the correspondent casually stated (with no concrete examples) that “many politicians and observers consider the (report exonerating Blair) to be a whitewash”. No reference to those who feel otherwise or who have given Blair renewed support.
But I guess we’ll hear about them in detail on another broadcast. :rolleyes:
And, I could point to Cokie Roberts’ (who I think some conservatives particularly hate for supposed liberal bias) comment yesterday that the Democrats calls for a committee to investigate the intelligence failure is all about election year politics.
The point is that all your “evidence” amounts to is evidence that Jackmannii considers NPR to have a liberal bias. And, considering this is coming from a person who claims to inhabit the political center but (in another thread on this subject) didn’t even seem to know of the existence of anything left of the Democratic Leadership Committee’s views on economic policy (in particular, the influence corporations in politics, as I recall), I might just take this with a grain of salt.
Yup, when all else fails, accuse me of being a stealth conservative. It’s easier than coming up with a genuine response. (then again, from your position on the political spectrum, virtually everyone must appear to be right wing).
The “corporate media” claptrap has never moved beyond the unfounded assumption that since corporations own giant media concerns, they, well, must be conservative. They just must be!
Except corporations happily coexist with and fertilize liberal as well as conservative concerns.
I know you’d like to convince us that Daddy Warbucks regularly calls in editors to compel them to kowtow to the “corporate line”, but few will fall for this fantasy.
If this is how you rate bias, then I have to question your sincerity. The government puts out an official report, and there are also skeptics of that report. Where’s the bias?
Um, you could also cite the considerable numbers of people who feel the report heavily damaged the BBC and the people in and out of Blair’s party who feel it gave him a considerable (if possibly temporary) boost.
Or one could just casually refer to undocumented accusations by the shrillest of Blair’s critics.
If you can’t (or won’t) see the bias there, then I suggest you examine your own sincerity.
NPR does do certain things well, and its reports on news and issues where partisan spin is difficult or unimportant, are a major reason why it’s one of my major sources of news.
To pretend that it doesn’t lean to the left (and that it doesn’t compromise its professionalism in doing so) is silly. To imagine that the benefits to one’s views justifies this spin is delusionary.
First of all, I did hear exactly this (both the BBC fallout and the bolstering of Blair’s position) discussed on NPR, so you have no point. But second of all, what you think a story should be to satisfy you is not a measure of balance. From YOUR OWN anecdotal report, they stated the government’s view, and stated that there were critics of the government’s view. That’s gold standard for minimalist balance on pretty much EVERY report on government statements. There are people that support the government. There are people that don’t. There are people that don’t know what day it is. We can’t hear from all of them in every report.
Second of all, I started out by agreeing that NPR swings left. So, example two of you having no point.
Some of us must be listening to parallel versions of NPR in parallel universes.
If you’re going to have a story that cites reaction to a report, you make at least some effort to include reaction from both sides. It doesn’t have to be divided equally, but references to supporters and naysayers should be incorporated in the story. That’s not my idiosyncratic opinion, it’s good journalism.
Huh? You agree, so there’s no point?
Talk to jshore about it. He thinks any suggestion that NPR tilts left must be a sinister invention of the radical right.