Also, on matters of defense and international relations, a “Liberal” is stereotyped as someone who is:
[ul]
[li]Anti-military (in fact, loathes the military and will spit on soldiers when given the chance)[/li][li]Anti-defense spending (would cut the defense budget back to just a few crossing guards on the Canadian and Mexican borders)[/li][li]Anti-Israel (and probably secretly anti-Semitic)[/li][li]Pro-Islamic militant[/li][li]Pro-Castro[/li][li]A “Blame America First” type[/li][/ul]
A “Conservative”, in contrast, is stereotyped as someone who is:
[ul]
[li]Unquestionably pro-military (would give the Defense Department all that they want and much more even if it’s for weapons that are useless and obsolete)[/li][li]Pro-Israel (so much that he considers anyone who’s opinion on Israel differs even slightly from the right-wing of Likud’s as an anti-Semite or a self-hating Jew)[/li][li]Xenophobic (especially hates our so-called European “friends” since they’re all dirty decadent godless socialists)[/li][li]Belligerently hawkish (wants to invade any country that he thinks is looking at us funny)[/li][/ul]
My original claim still stands. There are multi-billionaires capable of financing a newpaper or a TV station or network to spread their right-wing views. Why don’t they simply do that, until there is no bias in the news business anymore?
The reason that there is a limited market for right-wing news outlets probably is that they would have a hard-time staffing such outlets competitively. These outlets would be derided internationally for hiring only right-wing gasbags, or for promulgating absurd editorial viewpoints, and would have a hard time gaining respectability.
Much easier to bitch and moan about left-wing bias.
Or, it could be that these conservative capitalists don’t give a rat’s ass about what views are being spread, just as long as they sell newspapers and commercial time. Perhaps these hypothetical plutocrats are more interested in maintaining personal wealth and influence than with swaying the proles to their side.
But there’s an underserved market out there!! All these righties complaining about the quality of the news they’re presented with!!! It’s a gold mine, I tell you, a gold mine!!!
Only because the arguments presented are really crappy. We already suspect at least 30% of the population will see media bias by virtue of the fact that even in a “fair and balanced media” people more than a standard deviation from the balancing point will see bias. You’re free, of course, to say that even if they’re so far from the center, they can still recognize it, and then I’m free to say, well, if they can recognize it, then so could journalists, and the fact that 90+% of them vote democrat or something doesn’t imply they’re incapable of fair reporting. It’s really interesting, in fact, how hard it is to make a good bias argument when you have to start from the position that everyone is biased.
When I champion various relativisms, philosophically, I am often presented with just such a challenge. I have found ways to respond to each of the cases to my satisfaction. I have this recollection that you have a problem with positions that start out questioning everything. Maybe it doesn’t apply here? Well, let’s not drag in other threads out of the mud they’ve sunk in. We’ll just take the old canard at face value: if everyone’s biased, how can you be sure their claims of bias aren’t biased? If not everyone’s biased, then how do you know that it is the journalists that are? Why not economists, or engineers, or farmers, or who knows who? When does a professional consensus equal bias?
They’re excellent descriptions of the human condition. Economic departments have a “right wing bias.” Farmers have a “interventionist bias.” Workers of whatever class is currently threatened by imports and/or immigration have a “protectionist bias.” It’s great chat around the table with a beer but the question isn’t just “are humans a bunch of prejudiced fucks” but “what is the alternative?”
The link you provide gives some objective measure of a property it wants to call bias. OK. Let’s take it’s finding: there’s media bias. What’s the answer?
Yeah, I know that’s the answer. You don’t care if there’s bias because it distorts anything. You care if there’s bias you can ascribe to your political opponents because that’s your goal: staining the opponent. There’s no further aim than to smear shit.
Every “conservative answer to the Main Stream Media” I have seen (and I haven’t paid much attention to any of them) spend too much time playing “Gotcha” with the MSM and not enough effort finding Conservative-friendly stories on their own.
Actually, FOX isn’t all that conservative. They are moderate. The MSM, however, tilts so far left that FOX’s being in the middle looks like they are on the far right.
No, actually they are quite strong, which is why the same arguments are presented and accepted without question when it comes to things like FoxNews. But the same kinds and level of argumentation are waved away when they prove bias at NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, etc.
No, actually I care very much about bias. The issue is that the left in general, and the SDMB in particular, is so far in denial on the topic that it’s not really a very good topic for discussion. When one side simply dismisses or ignores any evidence no matter what, you can’t really have a debate.
The fact that both of those happen are both pretty factual, however the derivations of either both lead into tenuous areas of ‘not fact’ which is, in fact, biased.