CNN is called the Clinton News Network, Fox News is NOT “fair and balanced”, the New York Times is left-wing, the Wall Street Journal is right wing, etc. Is there truly a moderate, unbiased source for news?
There is no such thing as unbiased if any information is to be filtered. This is true in any context, not just journalism.
BTW – You should separate out bias in reporting from bias in the op/ed pages. Many papers are schizophrenic in this regard. (See dailyhowler.com for countless examples.)
No.
The media is run by people. People have biases. Bias does NOT equal dishonest.
Remember, most mass media wants MONEY (yay, alliteration!). There are two ways to try to get money…
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“Tried and true”, ie - the conservative way: Give the audience what they want (or what the company thinks they want). Taken to an extreme, this results in boring, repetitive, idiotic shows.
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“Shock and titillate”, ie. - the liberal way: Try something completely new and fresh and “outside the box”. Taken to an extreme, this results in crap like Janet Jackson’s errant boob.
Ironically, many entertainment forms conservatively try to package their product as liberal… that is, using the “tried and true” method of “shocking and titillating” the audience.
'Course, you were primarily referring to news sources. The best bet, if you TRULY want to get as close to the truth as humanly possible, is to check out as many sources as possible, ranging the gamut from CNN to MSNBC to Fox to Drudge to Reuters to… well, whatever. They’ll probably all publish similar stories, given significant events, occasionally with varying points of view.
The MOST important thing, however, is that YOUR OWN personal, internal censor scan through this information and make your own opinion.
Do you mean they have a bias one way with the reporting, and a bias the other way in the op/ed?
From The Devil’s Dictionary, Second Edition:
Media bias, n.: When the mass media is reporting bad news about someone whose political philosophy you share.
Unbiased journalism, n.: When the mass media is reporting good news about someone whose political philosophy you share.
Umm, CNN has no liberal reporting whatsover. It rarely has any moderate reporting. And the NY Times carries Safire and a lot of other crap like that. Hardly anywhere close to liberal media.
There are no major liberal media outlets in the US. None.
This is more a matter of opinion than fact. It doesn’t appear to be a debate (at least not yet), so I’ll move this thread to the IMHO forum.
bibliophage
moderator GQ
By making the assumption that Congress defines the middle between Left and Right, Groseclose & Milyo find Fox to be pretty close to middle of the road. If you take the middle of the actual scale they use to measure Left vs. Right, the mainstream television news is fairly middle of the road. You can check out their paper here: http://www.yale.edu/isps/seminars/american_pol/groseclose.pdf
It’s very simple:
Rightwing loons: CNN is lefwing.
Leftwing loons: CNN is rightwing.
Non-loons: CNN just wants attention and has no political agenda beyond that.
You`re missing something here.
How can someone filter or scan the info when the source only gives or heavily favors one side.
A lefty paper will not give equal time to the right side of an issue and vice versa.
A bias CAN be dishonest when vital information that may or may not equalize the writers bias is not presented. It will be left out intentionally if it harms the viewpoint of the author.
You jest!
The “liberal media” myth is just another variation of the persecution complex, also displayed by certain fundamentalist Christians. You know, the people who swear up and down that the Muslims, Jews, and Atheists are consolidating their power so they can slowly but surely outlaw Christianity. It must be nice to hold so much power and at the same time be able to whine about not having any.
I would agree that people should consume as much variety of media sources as possible, but come on, “liberal” media? The media that is owned by increasingly large corporations? I think if you are looking for a media slur, “corporate media” is more accurate, since it’s easier to make the case that the media serves corporate interests rather than liberal interests.
I don’t know that you can prove to me that the major media aren’t biased towards the liberal viewpoints. Granted, my proof is now about 20 years old, but in the early 80’s Michael Dukakis ran against then Governor Ed King for the Democratic nomination. The Boston Globe ran a very influential, and ‘fortuitously’ timed series about a scandal in the King Governor’s mansion. Because it was the Globe, and because it was obvious who was the darling of the leadership of the Democratic party, there was very little other reporting on this issue, rather than simply parroting what the Globe reported.
After the election, Ed King sued, and won, against the Boston Globe, it’s editorial board, and publishers, for knowing libel deliberately intended to give the primary to Michael Dukakis. The suit did go to trial, and was decided there. It was about 1987. Ever since then I’ve never forgotten that the Globe, and most other sources will lie if it’s something they believe strongly about.
And, yes, this is only one instance. However, I have trouble believing it was the only time the Globe’s editorial staff actually thought that the public good was worth more than their integrity. How many other times have they done something similar, and not been called on it?
Didn’t we have this thread just three days ago? I’m sure you can still find it on the first page over at Great Debates.
Anyway, another vote for the “corporate media” thing. Though an unscrupulous leader could easily manipulate that into bias in his favor (“Give me favorable coverage or I’ll give exclusive interviews to your competitors!”).
… By, uh… doing what I… y’know… already said: Checking out multiple media outlets, examining for oneself which they believe is an accurate view, based on what information they manage to find. This is known, to the professionals in this field, as “thinking”. It’s a little time-consuming, I know, but… well, if you want a well-informed opinion, it’s terribly necessary.
If all you’re looking for is “Which mass media outlet should I parrot?”, then, well, that’s a whole 'nother issue, ain’t it, me bucko?
And eating oysters CAN kill you. Doesn’t mean they necessarily WILL.
And when the news of an important issue is simply reporting of one source’s allegations? What do you do then? What do you do when the major news source for your region has been proven to be willing to falsify reports to influence issues? When because of the reputation it has, still, as a world-class newspaper, the other news outlets in that market are still willing to quote single source allegations from that paper? Seems to me you, and anyone else, looking for a spread of information such as you mention is SOL.
On a more exhaustive web search, I found I had misremembered this judgment, or hadn’t had it completely remembered. My apologies. Apparantly the case was adjured at least once, reversed, and tried, resulting in a defendant’s verdict. I can’t find out whether this was a second jury trial, so I was remembering a first jury trial that was overturned and then retried, or not. My apologies, again, for mistating as fact something incorrectly.
(Doesn’t change my belief that the Globe did knowingly lie in this case to influence the election, just whether it is proven or not.)
There is no such thing as unbiased, but they all practice self censorship in the name of not pissing off their advertisers. So what stories never appear because of that.
I just heard on TV the number of car recalls has been on the rise the last few years. It’s 35 years after the moon landing. Look at how good computers are compared to 30 years ago. They can’t get the cars right?
Henry Ford did it almost right with the Model T. Don’t redesighn the cars. But Henry froze the design when the technology was still advancing. Not quite right.
Dal Timgar
More proof that having a world view doesn’t imply a bias, perhaps? You’re the best.
I gotta be honest, I find the methodology of that paper I linked to very interesting. In case you don’t get a chance to read it, here is what they did. There is some group that creates a measure of each memeber of Congress as to how liberal or conservative she is. 100 means that she votes liberal all the time; 0 means that she votes conservative all the time. According to the authors, this scale is the industry standard for people in the world of political science.
The authors took these measurements and compared them to proxy measurements based on how many substanative quotes they took from various think-tanks across the political spectrum the politician used. They found that this proxy measure produced results very close to the scale that is the accepted standard for judging a politician’s leanings vis-à-vis left/right and declared it a valid measure.
Next they took segments from a number of television news services and rated them using their proxy variable to come up w/ measures of the news services’ political leanings, left or right.
Now, they had a number of methodological problems, e.g. not taking programs from the same dates (or even near each other) and arbitrarily changing the definition of “midpoint”. However, I think that the basic method looks like it may be a heck of a good start for really answering this question of media bias. I think it is worth a look.
Although the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal are conservative, and those of The Washington Post are liberal, I find both to be surprisingly neutral, not to mention good, in their news coverage. In magazines, The New Republic constantly surprises me with its unorthodox takes on current issues.