He was suggesting that your name was red shirt backwards, not because you were a fan of Star Trek (whose security guards wore red shirts and were regularly killed), nor on a university athletic program (which has a practice called “red shirting”, which allows a member of an athletic team to take a year off from actually playing in games while allowing him to still practice, thereby allowing him to play for a fifth year), but instead because you are a communist.
Huh. The only political group I know of associated with red shirts are these guys.
Well, because red is associated with Communism, was my assumption. It’s possible he was implying that you were a member of the Thai group, but I was assuming the Communist one, especially because you’re known for your rather far left wing views. I could be wrong, of course.
I understand why some people call the Daily Show liberal: their audience. I don’t understand NPR’s classification. Are NPR listeners really like Sr. Smashy identifies? I’ve only ever met one (me) and he drinks his coffee black. I can see that NPR listeners are white, affluent and educated (if I look here), but are they as liberal as people assume them to be?
NPR is 90% of the radio I listen to but only like 15% of the total news I consume. I still find it so much easier to specify the ways in which a Fox report is slanted- little stuff like the slightly fudged ‘ground zero mosque’, neither at ground zero nor a mosque. I’d like to think that I apply the same level of scrutiny to NPR, and if someone can point out the methods by which NPR infuses their coverage with bias, I’d appreciate it. I’d like to be vigilant so I can shout at my radio as much as I do my TV/computer.
Just because NPR makes up 90% of news radio in my region doesn’t mean it makes up 90% of news in my region.
I don’t suggest NPR is unbiased. I just wonder what the hell kind of heuristics people are using to judge NPR as so obviously biased. A fellow student, upon hearing I listen to NPR snorted, ‘ha National People’s Radio!?!’ Seriously, what does he think NPR actually is? Wilbo, upon hearing the suggestion that NPR is non-partisan, snorts :eek:. Seriously, what does he think NPR is?
I listen to NPR a lot. To the extent that there is bias, I think it’s along the lines of what the NYT’s Public Editor said about his publication several years ago. And that is, that they cater to a mostly urban audience. But I don’t think they are biased in any significant way in terms of promoting the Democratic Party over the Republican Party.
All in all, I would say they are the best news source on radio in the US.
It shows weakness. Weakness must be punished.
I wonder if there’s an element of judging something by its audience.
[/QUOTE]
Clearly NPR listeners are too edumacated to organize a one-car parade. At least without deconstructing it afterwards.
I don’t find the reporting of the news to be liberal on NPR and I have never understood the charge either.
I remember a few years ago a study coming out that tracked people’s factual knowledge of events (like were WMD found?) and where they got their news and NPR listeners had the best scores.
I like NPR. It’s the only radio I listen to (not my only news source). I feel I learn both (or more) sides of an issue without an agenda being force upon me.
Plus, its the only outlet that keeps a skilled statistician on staff, the much respected Marge N. Overra, or hires such admired writers as Sara Bellum.
But never forget: in Hell, it is always Pledge Week.
I’m curious as to what you conclude about NPR’s bias because of this.
Agreed. I travel a lot and NPR is not available everywhere, so sometimes I have to contend with the local news outlets. It seems a lot of news radio in the US is competing to see who can be the most incendiary, or provoke the most outrage, or have the loudest, angriest callers, or spew the most unsourced inanities. It is so nice get off the plane after a trip, hop in my car, turn on the radio, and really take the time to appreciate adult commentary from All Things Considered, or Morning Edition, or Talk of the Nation, or even interview shows like Fresh Air. Nothing else on radio today compares.
I have a suspicion that those who label NPR ‘liberally biased’ have never actually listened.
If these two kinds of bias aren’t universal, they’re at least pervasive among all popular kinds of news agencies (with those of other political persuasions substituting appropriate everybody-knows “facts”).
You could look at who visits their website if you want more than just general demographics: Login. These visitors are most likely to also visit theatlantic.com, truthout.org (liberal site), rawstory.com (another liberal site), and democracynow.org (yet another liberal site).
Nah, Der Trihs isn’t a commie or expendable. He’s a brain damaged moron. But he gets better in his last arc.
Edit: Not talking about the poster.
I read it years ago and have no cite, but there was a passage from, I think, Manufacturing Consent, where he said something to the effect that the media are just “liberal” enough that they create the illusion of challenging the establishment, while not actually questioning the underlying assumptions of the power structure. So it would jibe with the idea you give above – the media is may be on the left side of that “narrow spectrum,” but from his POV as a radical, the distinction is so small as to be meaningless. In his opinion they are “liberal” in a way that empowers conservatives.
That’s all IIRC, and FWIW.
And if you look at the 3 questions they asked to determine this, you can see that none of them were things that right wing outlets such as Fox News would have been misleading about. Throw in some factual questions like “Was Iraq responsible for 9/11?” or “Is an Islamic group trying to build a mosque at Ground Zero?” and I’m sure the results would be much different.
The three questions were:
What party controls the House of Representatives? (at the time it was the republicans)
Who is the Secretary of State? (Condoleeza Rice)
Who is the president of Russia? (Vladimir Putin)
Those are fair questions of general knowledge, and I’m surprised at the result. They’re pretty selective, though so I wonder if oreilly and Limbaugh were really hitting stories about them at the time.
At the same time, you can see how poorly fox viewers did on even those questions in that poll, which is kind of more relevant to this thread anyway. Only about one quarter could answer even those softballs.
The three questions they asked had simple objectively verifiable answers. Is there some kind of cultural bias in them that disadvantages NPR listeners. Your response seems to be just blaming the test, because you failed it. I am actually quite horrified at the result. I have been listening to NPR for twenty years and merrily thinking that I was in some elite audience of well educated, well informed listeners. So this result is definitely dissonant.
I am sure there are other measurements that show the opposite result, but I am too laze to go look for them. But just quibbling with the three questions they asked isn’t a reasonable response.
This would seem to imply that NPR must have been misleading about which party controlled the House, since NPR listeners did less well than O’Reilly viewers.
Regards,
Shodan
Yes. In 1995, Nina Totenberg made some very obnoxious and downright hateful remarks about Jesse Helms *and his grandchildren * deserving to get AIDS. Remember, this was in 1995 when AIDS was pretty much a death sentence.
And she kept her job, no problem.
Here’s the clip from Youtube, hardly a hotbed of conservatism:
To the guy about NPR funding:
CPB gives money to PBS which, in turn, gives it to NPR, but the real money is on the local level via government-granted, taxpayer-funded grants. All of which will be, to quote Margaret Mitchell, gone with the wind after Boehner becomes Speaker (according to today’s news).
What’s weird is that this particular clip seems to have exploded among right wingers, but all I can seem to find is the exact same clip, which ends kind of abruptly. I can’t find any transcript either.
Given the proclivity of Republicans and right wingers to lie through editing, I would really like to see a bit more context around this.