You think the average person knows the difference, though?
Which is Rachel Maddow’s show?
Maddow’s MSNBC show is an editorial show. Maddow makes no bones about the fact that she has a point of view.
NPR programs - aside from Car Talk and Prairie Home Companion - try hard not to have a point of view.
Fox News shows have a point of view and pretend that they don’t.
Sir, I find your bald assertion here completely wrong-headed. Liberalism is logical and conservatism is emotional. We are the one who are generally concerned with facts and so forth, with regard to global warming (yes it really is happening) financial regulations (why, yes, the banks are using bank depositor’s money at the equivalent of a casino, that is what caused the recent crash) and economic equillibrium … why, yes, middle class income HAS been stagnant for two decades while the top 2 percent have seen ever-increasing prosperity. You conservatives can’t even look a fact in the face any more. Logical? Not even close!
I’m trying very hard to figure out what this has to do with my statement that you quoted. I am not claiming there’s any symmetry. I am claiming there’s universality: every news outlet has bias, and every political party distorts the truth.
No. I’m merely rolling my eyes at Hentor the Barbarian’s statement: “Given the proclivity of Republicans and right wingers to lie through editing, I would really like to see a bit more context around this.” I don’t think right-wingers and/or Republicans have any monopoly on lying through editing.
I totally agree, but Lobohan (“it’s her job to get at news”), elucidator (“yes, it is her job to get at the news”), and Miller (“exposing the crazy in potential members of Congress is an important part of any journalist’s job”) all recently disagreed with me on this matter. Now, I don’t hold the reverence for members of this board that some folks do, but I’d have to be full of nothing but blind hate for the place if I didn’t acknowledge that we are, on average, more analytical and culturally/politically aware than the general population. Especially these 3 well-established and intelligent members. So if dopers don’t really get this distinction, do you really expect the rest of the country to? I think the vast majority of Fox News viewers feel like they’re watching straight news.
Not in America, but most of that is because America is very, very far to the right. You may think I’m far left, but that’s because America is so far right most people haven’t heard a far left person in their lives.
“Monopoly” no; but they do so far more often. They have to, because their positions are so far off from reality. Reality does have a “liberal bias”; conservatives are all about denial of reality.
I don’t see the discrepancy, Cisco. Maddow’s POV is to point out GOP BS. You can call it news or opinion or editorializing, it smells as sweet or as sour either way.
I think that points out the failure of so-called objective news more than anything else though. NPR/CBS/NBC/ABC/AP/BBC just blandly report what the politician said or did, without adding the - to my mind all too often needed edifying addition - “what so and so said was clearly wrong/crazy/illegal/etc…” I recall CBS’s Bob Schieffer talking about this on Jon Stewart’s show and Stewart mock lamenting, “If only you had a TV show like I have.”
zamboniracer:
Wilbo523 said
I asked which Rachel Maddow’s show is.
You said
I said I agree, but these other posters recently disagreed (said her job is to “get at the news.”)
You say you don’t see the discrepancy 
.
OK, I gotcha now.
Its that modifier “ultra”. No way is NPR “ultra”-liberal, even if we can stretch the point and call them “liberal”. Hell, I wouldn’t even call Fox Gnaws ultra-conservative. Just ultra-lying-sack o’shit.
No, not really. NPR’s bias isn’t quite so political (although their coverage of Israel is pretty obviously slanted towards one side, and it ain’t Israel). NPR’s bias is towards urban over rural. So instead of Glenn Beck, you get to hear about the latest trendy restaurant all the upscale people are into now. What indie band is big at the moment. How to hydroponically grow tomatoes in the trunk of your Prius so you can be even more green. That sort of thing. You know, shit Patrick Bateman would want to know about (but no Genesis).
Which is why earlier in the thread I said there is a bias, and it is a liberal bias since their target market is mostly liberal, but it shows up in what topics they choose to cover rather than how exactly they cover it.
note: I do listen to NPR. I actually, usually, like them. They just have a fair number of things that make me yell ‘What shallow moronic pinhead would even give a flying fuck about this shit? Oh, wait, other urbanites who are just as mindlessly shallow as the talking person is. Fucking New York.’
That snotty cuisine-hustler wtih the cooking show? Lady, I don’t give a fuck about how great the Chilean wines are this year! Here, have a crystal goblet of 1948 STFU!
This was discussed on meet the press today. Steele said he assigned an analysis of NPR programming for his college students. they did 1 month and 6 month studies. They found no slant. David Brooks a right says every time a lefty appears, a righty ,like himself, is on the show giving the opposite side.
NPR and PBS give both sides. But people inured to Fox and regular news stations get used to one sided stories and see it as the norm.
Our beloved righties on this board can not see past their own slant.
A dear friend of mine is a large-L Libertarian and goes to Tea Party rallies. His main sources of news are NPR, the BBC World Service, the Washington Times, and the Drudge Report. (Really.) I daresay that, whatever your views of their various editorial slants, there is much more actual information about the world on a daily basis from the first two than the second two.
So, for those who view NPR and The New York Times as compromised by a lefty slant, I ask: what would be an unslanted source that provided as much actual news (not editorializing) about the world? I haven’t watch any of the 24-hour news networks in eons, but I always found them (Fox, CNN, MS-NBC alike) pretty thin in what they covered. Talk radio is 99% editorial and opinion with very little news. Network evening news is a shallow joke. So: Would the BBC qualify? * The Wall Street Journal*? The Economist? Do you have to scans numerous blogs to get a complete picture? This is not attempted snark, I am actually curious (in view of my friend’s surrendering to NPR and the Beeb for comprehensive coverage despite his distaste at how their funded), where else one would turn.
The bias that really shines through for me from NPR and the Times, New Yorker et al is that reporters are highly educated people from urban or suburban areas and they just can’t talk about rural America with any authenticity at all. I don’t think this a conscious editorial decision on anyone’s part: I think when you send a bunch of Harvard and Yale boys to a Texas cotton farm there’s going to be misinterpretation.
Not blogs. But yes, you have to scan multiple news sources.
For example, here’s the list of sources I at least scan regularly:
BBC news - For the non-american but still western world slant
Economist - They’ve gotten worse recently, but it does provide an economic slant
Al Jazerra - For the non-western world slant. Actually, it’s pretty decent as long as the story isn’t about Israel.
Google News - Since most US all just reprint AP articles, this gives me a good overview of the USian slant
Christian Science Monitor - does a lot of it’s own reporting, so provides USian stuff that isn’t just an AP article
Drudgereport - for the wacko right wing yellow journalism slant
Straight dope message boards - Not news of course, but it does give me the wacko left wing equivalent of yellow journalism slant
I don’t read all of these daily of course, I don’t have THAT much free time, but overall it does keep me exposed to different worldviews.
In the car I generally listen to talk radio. Which means NPR if it isn’t playing classical music, insane right wing ranting if NPR is playing classical music. But I don’t make an effort to seek either other, it’s just what’s playing while I’m driving.
the problem with news in this country is that there isn’t a network that sets the standard. In the UK you have the BBC that sets the standard. That standard doesn’t mean their isn’t a bias. Every news organization will have some kind of bias even if they do their best not to. But there is a respectability with the BBC. If you have satellite you can get FOX news in the UK but it’s considered a total joke and just laughable. Rupert Murdoch who owns SKy news in the UK would never get away with doing what FOX does in the US with SKY in the UK. Sky would be laughed out of the country. Sky is seen as leaning conservative but they aren’t the kind of propaganda network that FOX is.
FOX gets away with their propaganda and their in your face style in America in part because FOX has been responsible for creating media polarization in America where there is this whole idea of “we’re fair and balanced, only watch us because we’ll tell you the real truth”. FOX doesn’t just stop with mentioning their motto of “fair and balanced” they actually give a good percentage of air time telling their audience that the rest of the media is liberal often times using examples way out of context or with gross mischaracterizations. If you think it is ironic that an obviously bias news organization spends a good amount of their air time telling their audience that other news networks are bias it’s not without calculation. FOX doesn’t want the casual news consumer; the type of consumer that watches several different news outlets to form an opinion. Those type of viewers catch on to FOX’s dishonesty pretty quickly. FOX wants the heavy user; the type of viewer that only watches FOX because he or she believes the rest of the news is bias. These type of viewers can be sold the grand narrative that FOX wants to sell. These heavy users of FOX become true believers.
Someone earlier in this thread made an excellent point about people who only get their news from one source and how that one source becomes their normal. That normal isn’t going to be a true normal. It’s biased. Now that isn’t so frightening if the one source is NPR because for the most part NPR is straight news. But if you’re only getting news from NPR you are going to be in that bubble. You may miss some stuff. If you only got your news from NPR I’m pretty sure we could have a rational conversation of politics no matter your idealogical perspective. But if you only got your news from FOX there is absolutely no chance you could have a rational conversation with anyone who is not a heavy user of FOX because of the alternate reality you have been sold.
IANA conservative, so I’m not sure, but I think the problem conservatives have with NPR is that they give equal time to liberal views. If I were a FOX news type, for example, and heard NPR for the first time, I’d probably think NPR was rabidly liberal as well, solely because it expresses both sides in its reporting. It doesn’t matter that NPR gives the conservative side or perspective in a story, its propensity to report stories that also give any liberal perspective at all is what makes it a raging liberal mouthpiece, I’m guessing. Also, NPR does do a lot of stories on the arts and culture which, for reasons I don’t understand, conservatives consider liberal.