LOL! As evidence of liberal media bias, I see this one line quote all over webpages which use this to show that Walter Cronkite has clearly admitted a liberal bias in the media.
If you read the full quote it is apparent that Cronkite was presenting this as a common belief, not his own.
Emphasis mine.
I love how some conservatives are more than happy to use misleading quotes out of context to support their argurment of a liberal media. :rolleyes:
“Anybody who has to live with the people, who covers police stations, covers county courts, brought up that way, has to have a degree of humanity that people who do not have that exposure don’t have…”
Which explains why cops and prosecutors are so liberal.
What self-serving bullshit. Not one of Walter’s finer moments.
“Anybody who has to live with the people”. (barf)
Check out the following link. It describes how 10 Media conglomerates owns nearly all media. I can’t see how a reporter could be honestly liberal if he is enslaved to a monster corporation. And when there’s links to defense contractors, one needs not wonder which direction the bias leans…
Which is a pretty good example of what I mentioned earlier. Media types don’t think they are biased; they think they are right.
Nor did I say that FAIR had relied for their data on the partisan groups mentioned. The groups mentioned endorsed the study, which would imply AFAIK that they considered it accurate or valid. Which is what i did say.
Funny you should mention Dan Rather.
Lots of honest people have said exactly that.
Funny you should mention Dan Rather.
We?
Feel free to find any quote from Gunga Dan about Laura Bush or Nancy Reagan that is comparably gushy.
Or contrast, if you like, Mr. Rather’s spin on the occasion of Gore
announcing a vice-Presidential pick:
As opposed to how he spun the Republican choice:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/projects/rather20th/welcome.asp
So the Democrats get a free plug, while the Republicans get a repetition of what the Democrats want you to think about them.
Contrast also how he was careful to characterize Republicans during the post-election turmoil, but not Democrats.
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a4cd3b31dff.htm
Regards,
Shodan
Tom:
Tars:
Amen to that. Here we are sifting for tiny nuggets of bias while taking no notice of the elephant in the room. Conservatism is extremely, undeniably biased. How can we determine possible bias in the media with this viewpoint dominating the discussion? “Liberal” and “Left” are two different things, and “liberal bias” is a near-oxymoron. The extent to which it isn’t is not something that the blunt instrument of conservatism is suited to determine.
By and large these businesses are in it for the money. Nor are they all conservative. E.g., the top people in Disney are liberal, but they broadcast Rush Limbaugh, who’s ultra-conservative, because he makes money for them.
Note that the New York Times has influence beyond its size, because a lot of other media tends to follow their lead. OTOH some of these big media companies are involved in entertainment, so they don’t have much political impact one way or the other.
Size isn’t all there is. Perhaps the two most influential opinion leaders in the country are Limbaugh on the right and the New York Times on the left. Neither one is in the Nation’s Top Ten list.
Yes, we each think we’re just right. You may consider Stalin to be a centrist, while I find Attila the Hun to be right in the middle.
But, we can put our own views aside and debate whether the media tend to be to the left of the general populace.
I have a master’s degree in journalism and I used to be a newspaper reporter, for a couple of years. I can attest that reporters dream of doing what Woodward and Bernstein did: exposing corruption to the light of day, bringing down the mighty with nothing but your pen and the truth. In short, playing Jack the Giant-Killer. For a reporter, that’s glory, that’s achievement. Now, this is a “liberal” bias in the sense that it involves going after people in high positions of power – be they politicians or business executives or religious leaders. Of course, for this purpose a Democratic president is just as juicy a target as a Republican one.
The conservative bias of the media is just as real, however, and much more powerful. It is based on the simple fact that reporters are not their own masters. Most of them work for media conglomerates which are owned by still larger conglomerates. Personally, I never had a story killed because it might piss off some business interest, but I was just doing small-town news coverage; the only people I was ever in a position to piss off were local civic leaders. In the higher reaches of the profession, however – well, I don’t ever expect NBC News to run a story exposing misconduct by General Electric, which owns NBC. And I wouldn’t expect any other network to do it either – you know, interlocking directorates, golfing buddies, etc. It’s not that the press and media tell lies. Usually their bias is expressed by simply ignoring certain things.
Well, how about a gushy comment about Bush himself shortly after September 11th ( http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2001/cyb20010918.asp#1 ):
There’s an extensive, extensive web site devoted to Dan Rather’s bias. http://www.ratherbiased.com/
What you have from these links mainly are some quotes taken out of context by such well-respected sources who wouldn’t possibly bias things to their point-of-view, such as NewsMax, Media Research, and Free Republic! I really don’t see how the quotes prove much at all. Most of the quotes tend to be pretty inoccuous in context…You just have to take their word for it that, say, this was the typical thing Dan said about the Gore-Lieberman ticket and this is the typical thing he said about the Bush-Cheney ticket.
Very important point worthy of being repeated in bold. And, along these lines, here is the Project Censored website.
Note, the below is just based on partial stances, since where you are liberal or conservative at varies, but in general (off the top of my head):
Liberal Republicans: John McCain, Richard Riordan, (Olympia Snowe and George Voinovich i’d call moderate at best, but more liberal than the rank and file)
Conservative Democrats: Byrd, Leiberman (called a Republican lite)
I’m sure there are dozens more, but i don’t have time to go over a list of congressmen right now (maybe later, and then that might even turn into a new thread)
this PAC claims 60(!) Liberal Republicans in the House.
In general, Democrats are for a larger government and Republicans are for a smaller one. The scope of which varies and blurs in the middle.
IMO, there are at least 2 main sections for conservatism/moderate/liberalism, social and fiscal. You can be fiscally conservative but be for abortion/affirmative action/anti-no flag burning, and still get branded a liberal, While tax and spenders who oppose abortion and affirmative action get labeled as conservative. both sides (ultra conservative republicans especially, followed by ultra liberal Democrats) claim those in the middle are frauds and not real Republicans/Democrats, as they get blurred by Party Rhetoric vs. Party History. A long time ago, republicans were the Liberals fighting against the establishment. Liberal and Conservative has changed over time, and equating one exclusively with a particular party shortchanges the diversity found in said party. America is more diverse than a place where a standard line drawn in the middle divides people into one of two camps. I get called a liberal here often, and like most liberals i’m pro-death penalty, pro-gun, pro-stop taxing cigarettes…wait a minute, those aren’t liberal values! But left in a situation where i vote democrat constantly, i am forced to be considered a liberal based on that alone. I actually think i am a moderate to conservative Democrat (and on some issues very conservative), but get called a dirty pinko liberal enough by the far right i’ve taken to refering to myself as such as a matter of pride. But i wouldn’t answer that on a survey, just during a political debate, since some neocons seem to think i will become all insulted when called such, it is fun to screw with them and get happy. I really don’t care since it is just an arbitrary term that has a definition broad enough i can be both liberal and conservative, and if it is something i disagree with the guy with enough for him to call me a liberal, he is wrong on the issue anyway.
Shodan
I find it funny you’d post this then later link to a bunch of ultra conservative rags trying to prove media is biased. You’ve still only proved that there are conservative journalists and that quotes can be taken out of context. Try again. (or, don’t, since you are doing more harm to your side than good). and i read your “cites,” they were obviously written by former sitcom writers pretending to be conservatives because no one can be that dumb and funny at the same time.
One measure of media bias that has been pointed out is the tendency to describe conservative politicians as “far right” or “ultra-conservative” much more frequently than liberal politicians are described as “far left” or “ultra-liberal”
It’s fun watching folks deny a phenomenon even the leadership at many media outlets themselves recognize.
Consider this memo sent out L.A. Times editor John Carroll on May 22, 2003:
FWIW, I’ve seen this memo reproduced in enough places to believe it’s the real deal.
(1) I have pointed out that surveys do find reporters more liberal than the general public on social issues such as abortion (which is not surprising since views on issues like these probably tend to correlate strongly with things like education and broadness of your travels and such). However, this is not true on economic issues.
(2) The fact that this editor thinks there was a liberal bias here is not sufficient evidence that there was in fact one. I don’t happen to know what John Carroll’s own biases are or whether there is any credible scientific evidence on the side of the abortion/ breast cancer link. [Would you argue, for example, that an article about evolution / creation politics has to quote a lot from the side of scientists who believe in creationism?]
Nor has it been established that the LA Times is representative of the media as a group.
[quote]
**It is not until the last three paragraphs of the story that we finally surface a professor of biology and endocrinology who believes the abortion/cancer connection is valid. But do we quote him as to why he believes this? No. We quote his political views.
Apparently the scientific argument for the anti-abortion side is so absurd that we don’t need to waste our readers’ time with it. **
[quote]
Huh? Why is there a connection between a differing scientific opinion and where he stands on the abortion issue? Is this to imply that “liberal” doctors would suppress evidence of causation between abortion and cancer? Or that pro life doctors would do the opposite? If the article is about research in this field, the politics of the physicians doing studies should be left out of it completely. Provide the consensus of the scientific community. If there are studies showing results to the contrary, include them. The politics of those doing the study shouldn’t be an issue. If it is, then an entirely new journalistic effort needs to be pursued to show the doc’s lack of ethical integrity. All I see going on here is that the editor is making it a point to not let a scientific report to take place without introducing the right wings abortion ethics into the story. And it is exactly this type of top down control that forces journalism to adopt a right wing agenda.
Apparently the scientific argument for the anti-abortion side is so absurd that we don’t need to waste our readers’ time with it.
Okay, I put my foot in my mouth. I still think the editor’s tone comes across as agenda rather than scientific balance.