After reading this thread I could not help but wonder if we are leading ourselves down the path to the dark side (even though they have cookies) or if we are being lead.
Foxnews, CNN Headline news, Yahoo front page news, we are exposed to what would, on the surface, seem to be an abundance of “News” and information.
But, the content often leaves something to be desired.
So, as I mentioned in the other thread, is the dumbing down of America due to what we are exposed to or is what we are exposed to due to our acceptance of lower expectations?
Major media outlets are businesses, so they tend to give the people what they think the people want. And, in my estimation, people want news that fits their preconceptions. People don’t want to be made to feel stupid. And people don’t want to waste their time. So you get “news” from the major media that is quick/simple/un-nuanced/ and, occasionally, biased.
I think a good part of the problem is the wave of anti-intellectualism that seems to have taken hold in the country. Sure there are places where you can still get in depth analysis and solid, unbiased news, but, by and large, those places are few and far between.
the concept of unbiased news is fairly recent. Newspapers used to be VERY partisan, and you would have 2-3 papers in a city that targeted their core demographic. Remember yoru history class and the muckrakers of yore - now THAT was bias! With the death of newspapers (a slow, agonizing death), this game has shifted.
The bias was also always there, just in choosing WHICH facts to present at a given time (or which stories to run above the fold). You could get a read of the bias by looking at the editorial page, but that often would not necessarily be reflected in the news. For example, a media bias analysis that relied on who was quoted to measure bias (left wing academics, right wing think tanks) found that the Wall Street Journal had a more liberal NEWS section than many assumably liberal papers.
Other recent studies have found that the leaning of a paper is dependent on the local market - i.e. they lean in whatever way will get them the most subscribers. Fox is more right wing than other channels, but that does not make them biased in comparison to other news outlets. That simply makes them more right than other channels that are biased to the left of Fox. There is no agreed upon middle ground, since bias is not a simple left-right continuum.
Dumbing down content is not recent. Half hour TV news has long provided 1 minute “news” of key issues. Some newspapers still publish long, in depth articles (The LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times). Others publish a short synopsis of that published by the big 4. We could argue that USA Today provided an earlier dumbing down with its short articles and pretty pictures. This is all countered by the fact that more people go to the web for their news, where they can get much more information on any topic.
I have always thought that papers should declare their editorial slant. The fact is, papers are run by people, and people have biases and prejudices, and frankly, I think the insistence by news outlets that they are neutral/objective is a bunch of BS. I would much rather have two major papers in my large metro area, one who says, “we are giving you a conservative perspective” and one who says “we are giving you a liberal perspective.” That way, at least I know what the biases are up front, and I can use that as part of the arsenal I need to decide if I think the news is credible or not.
I think if people aren’t able to detect bias, to the point that the newspapers have to tell readers which way they slant, it would be an astounding affirmation of the OP’s hypothesis about people demanding that their news be dumbed down so they can grasp it.
The problem is that this self analysis and description is going to be the least accurate. A journalist may believe that they may be “fair & balanced”, “moderate”, “accurate”, “objective”, or whatever. And even if we could agree on the common labels (which we don’t), someone’s own opinion of themselves is (a lot of times) going to be a little off, in many cases, I think.
By that I mean journalist “A” is going to hold an opinion on something in political news. (“Hard” news, like reporting a forest fire, or a final score in a baseball game, is easy to identify what to be objective about. Political news is toughest. Same with the threads on these boards.) They will report on that topic. Unfortunately, what gets reported may be subconciously affected by the authors own feelings and preconceptions on a topic. Yet, when asked, they will claim, and believe, that they were being objective or accurate.
Both are supposed to be non-editorial articles. Yet they approach the story from slightly different angles. I doubt that either would consider that they did anything that needed a warning label up front.
Slightly OT- Heck, on these boards, I continue to see (reasonably) intelligent people who claim that those who don’t share their views to be “less intelligent”. (Thats why I hate that “progressive” label. It smacks of arrogance.)
I don’t think we need to all march in lockstep. I just wish we would get along better, sometimes. The drama that current news reporting seems to thrive on (for ratings) seems to be magnified as our communications technologies advance, and keeps people in a frenzy…
In older days, you had the newspaper, and maybe a radio that you listened to for a bit for your news. You get spun up, but then you calm down after putting the paper down. Now, with 24-hour news cable, and the internet, we can keep ourselves “spun up” all the time.
Or, rather, it’s very difficult to present ideas intelligently on television. Listening to someone read the news is much slower than reading it yourself so the stories have to be condensed and simplified for aural consumption. It’s also hard to consistently speak intelligently when you’re speaking extemporaneously so a lot of broadcast and punditry is just crap. Plus real-time nature of the medium makes it hard to fact-check. You can’t pause and go research something or back up and review to make sure you haven’t misheard.
The medium is the message and television and radio are crappy mediums for accurate or deep news. The sooner serious news migrates to using the Internet as its primary method of dissemination, the better off we’ll all be.
I agree that people could figure out which way the slant is, but it seems to me that a lot of people don’t want to admit it. Especially when the slant confirms their OWN biases.
But one question is, how slanted or biased is a given news source? It’s not simply a question of which of two directions do they lean.
And liberalism and conservatism are not simply mirror images of each other. Conservatism blantantly embraces certain biases, while liberalism is in large part defined as opposition to ideological bias. It’s just that being liberal is no guarantee againt picking up new biases (albeit ususally more subtle ones) as you’re battling the old ones.
And there is more diversity among non-conservatives. While there is plenty of bias among those who advocate on behalf of minority groups, others simply give more credence to science than to religion. Between politically correct people, science people, and religious people, who is the least biased? And who do journalists most resemble?
When conservatives complain about media bias, their agenda consists of 2 things: Pressing for equal time for their own heavily biased views, and dismissing any inconvenient facts that come along.
That may be true for one value of “conservative,” but it depends on where you are and what issue you’re discussing.
Granting the OP is about America, but here in Canada you’d find that some conservative positions - opposition to gay marriage, for instance - are help by people as, or maybe even more, diverse than those holding the liberal position. This is due to circumstances in this particular place and time (Canada is a very immigrant-heavy state, and immigrants tend to skew conservative on some social issues) and might not be the case elsewhere.
Either you’re confusing “bias” with “prejudice” (e.g., views on homosexuality, importance of race in today’s society, etc) or this is the most deluded explanation of liberal bias I’ve ever seen… and I identify myself as a liberal.
I can state my biases as a liberal: I’m biased towards higher taxes on the very wealthy, toward government solving problems that affect the society in general, toward cooperating with other countries in world affairs, that libertarians are nuts, and so on and so on. All these things make perfect sense to me, but I’m not so bold as to claim that my views are the result of me not having a bias. The New York Times editorial page does indeed have a bias, it just so happens I agree with it.
I’m curious as to why this effect is ‘Foxnewsification’? CNN is the real culprit here, aren’t they? They started with the 24 news cycle, they started the constant scrolls of ‘factoids’, they started the gotcha tabloid-style journalism shows, etc. Fox is a relative newcomer to the scene, and the decline of TV news was well underway long before Fox showed up. When CNN beat the OJ trial to death Fox News didn’t even exist yet.
The real problem is the existence of 24 news. Trying to find 24 hours of constant news coverage is difficult. Add in multiple 24 hour news networks and the ensuing battle for ratings, coupled with the general slide of ratings due to more competition for eyeballs from new forms of entertainment and news, and you’ve got a mess. It has nothing to do with ideology.
Actually, just to put this in here, but lately, I haven’t even been seeing it as “liberal vs conservative” with news outlets, but more “commercials and ads disguised as news.” I have CNN as one of my bookmarks, but I am really getting tired of it because everytime I read an article, it never fails that the article is “surprise, surprise” based on some book someone just published about that very subject. In fact, I would say most feature articles are nothing but blatant ads at this point. Soon, all news will be like “New extract lets you live to 100!” Bleah…
Well, racism, sexism, classism, religious fundamentalism, nationalism, and yes, left-wing radicalism and communism–these are ideological biases that liberalism generally opposes.
And I think you’ve been taken in by the biases of those who would equate liberalism with leftism. I think that the rich could have done with smaller tax cuts because they could afford it, that the government should do certain things because it’s uniquely positioned to do so, see international cooperation as the obvious solution to intractable global problems, and agree with the basic premise of libertarianism, but think libertarians often go way too far in their rhetoric.
Then again, I seldom self-identify as “a liberal”; I prefer “non-conservative”. But I think liberalism is the process of re-evaluating established mores, while leftism is support for policies designed to remedy perceived past inequities.
But what if we were to look at the issue of liberal media from the opposite direction? Read several issues of the New York Times and watch several hours of CNN and network nightly news broadcasts. Then ask yourself…that’s your liberalism? That’s what’s so horrible? On the one hand we have this conspiracy theory rapture creationism, and on the other we have the crap that’s foisted on us by the NYT and CNN. Oh God, and NPR. The horror…the horror.
Those two stories are not about the same thing. The first is the account of the arrest of six alleged illegal aliens in San Diego. The second is a follow-up story the next day about San Diego police policy. The first is about an event, the second uses that event to consider something else entirely. Not a good example of how different media outlets report the same story, I’m afraid.
Oh, your question. I’d say we’re being led, but we’re willfully following. (“We” not actually including you and me, of course. We’re better than that.)
I’ve found CNN very disappointing. There’s more real news happening all the time than one channel could possibly cover, even devoting 24 hours a day to serious, in-depth reporting. Yet they waste endless hours on celebrity-related trivia and sensationalism. Bah.
Meh, I shamelessly stole the term from the other post.
It has a better ring to it than CNNewsification but it applies equally to just about any other network or syndicated news program, whether 1 hour or 24 hours, that has replaced “Event Based News” with “Popular Demand Based News”.
Although I also understand the business aspect of broadcasting. Networks have to show people what they want to see in order to sell ad space and I’m sure there are plenty of people who want to see Paris Hilton getting out of jail.
It’s just that, well, can’t we just shoot these people and get it over with?
"After reading this thread I could not help but wonder if we are leading ourselves down the path to the dark side (even though they have cookies) or if we are being (slowly turned into inanimate and meaningless chunks of) lead.
