I think, for purposes of this discussion, we should exclude movies. “Hollywood liberals” have less influence on public perceptions of political issues than the news media. Likewise, exclude pop music, video games, etc. The Internet is technically a medium and does deal with politics, but it requires separate discussion because of its decentralized nature and the lack of content gatekeepers – the Internet can’t bias except insofar as it reflects the aggregate biases of everybody running sites and blogs, and they’re all over the place politically. Let’s also discount partisan magazines which exist to express a particular political viewpoint, as well as magazines such as Rolling Stone whose political coverage is incidental to their main editorial mission. When discussing political “media bias,” we should limit the “media” to newspapers, newsweeklies, radio news shows, radio political-themed talk shows, television news shows, and TV political-themed talk shows.
But what our present media (as defined in my post above) give us is a picture resulting from this exercise if you close your left eye but not your right. We have CNN, ABC, etc., in the center, Fox on the right, but no analogous outlet on the left. And even the “centrist” media systematically exclude left-wing viewpoints while giving time to right-wing viewpoints.
I agree; however, just because we can’t be completely objective doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to be. When the media simply reports two contradictory views verbatim, they’re not even attempting objective reporting: they’ve simply become scribes, not journalists. Instead of trying to objectively discern the truth, they’re increasingly avoiding making any judgements at all. I think some bias should be an accepted part of a journalistic process that includes using judgement to decide what is and isn’t true–I don’t think it should be an excuse for the media to throw up their hands and say “We can’t be objective, so we’ll just tell you what the Swift Boat Vets say and how Kerry’s team responds.”
From MRC:
Ten Worst Media Distortions of 2004:
During Clinton’s re-election run, according to MRC, the economy was discussed positively in 35 major media stories, vs only 6 stories that were negative. In this campaign, despite very similar economies, there have been 38 negative stories, and only six positive - almost the exact opposite of the spin in 1996.
The rest of the Top 10 are pretty good too.
I hardly think MRC qualifies as an objective source of information on the media.
From their site:
“…Leaders of America’s conservative movement have long believed that within the national news media a strident liberal bias existed that influenced the public’s understanding of critical issues. On October 1, 1987, a group of young determined conservatives set out to not only prove - through sound scientific research - that liberal bias in the media does exist and undermines traditional American values, but also to neutralize its impact on the American political scene. What they launched that fall is the now acclaimed — Media Research Center (MRC).”
http://www.mrc.org/about/aboutwelcome.asp
Putting “sound scientific research” in the same sentence with the intent to prove a preconceived notion makes my head hurt.
But mediamatters is much better, right? They get quoted a lot around here. As does FAIR. MRC is just the right-wing analog of those organizations. No better, no worse.
BG, I think that’s a great definition of the news media and it would be interesting to study this cross-section to identify bias (the books you mentioned probably do just that). However, is it not possible that those claiming “liberal media bias” are also including non-news like movies and TV shows? Often when I hear liberal media bias it is followed with pointers to gay TV characters, movies about evil corporations destroying the enviroment, or some rock star slamming a Republican. And I am not sure it is fair to exclude some of these. I think movies and TV shows have really shaped American opinion about social issues. I think music, to a lesser extent, is shaping opinions on both sides of the fence.
Sorry if I am hijacking too much. It just seems to me that someone could assert any type of bias and back it up with a long list of examples. But the debate seems unresolvable unless all sides agree to a single definition of media and review the ouput of that media with objective and consistent coverage.
As a side-note, I would have expected the Internet to reduce claims of bias. Since it offers something for everyone, people would naturally gravitate to sites that reflect their own opinions. However, I wonder if the opposite is true. People catch glimpses of alternative opinions, these opinions stick out in their mind, and reinforce the perception of bias?
The perception, perhaps, but not the reality. It’s generally easy to determine whether and how an Internet resource is biased, and, the economics of the Internet being what they are, such biases fairly reflect the personal biases of all Internet participants with a very small level of financial resources and technical expertise.
IIRC, the whole “liberal media” started with Pat Buchanan, in a speech he wrote for Spiro Agnew. Consider the source, folks.
It goes back earlier than that – see David Brock’s book, The Republican Noise Machine.
The fact that you keep trotting out Bernie Goldberg – long after he’s been proven to be merely a disgruntled ex-CBS employee who pulls “facts” from right-wing media watchdog groups – shows how desperate you are to support this claim. This is, after all, the same Bernie Goldberg who got humiliated by Al Franken on Donahue when Franken demonstrated how Goldberg’s Bias can’t distinguish the fall of the Soviet Union from a hole in the ground (see chapter 6, “I Bitch-Slap Bernie Goldberg,” from Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them for the details).
This is, after all, the same Bernie Goldberg who whines about how Phyllis Schlafly is labeled a “conservative” by the media, while ignoring that Phyllis’ own website calls her a “leader of the conservative movement”.
And this is the same Goldberg who boasts about “The Most Important Story You Never Saw On TV” (about latchkey kids and working moms), while somehow overlooking the thirty-five times said story was reported on the major networks.
Citing Bernie Goldbeerg as “proof” of a “liberal media”? Geez, you might as well call Ron Brown as a character witness for OJ Simpson…
According to Noam Chomsky, both of those organizations are right-wing. He doesn’t have any use for FAiR, either, I’m afraid.
I don’t see a good reason to exclude movies from the discussion in a world containing Michael Moore. Or Leni Riefenstahl, for that matter, although she’s dead.
I would think works of fiction (like JFK or Saving Private Ryan) can have as much influence on public perception as a news reader. And didn’t Jessica Lange testify before Congress back during the 80s about farm problems, because she had been in a movie about it? And don’t even get me started about that deep political thinker Barbra Streisand.
Something doesn’t have to be literally true to be influential. How many people got their ideas about the Civil War from Gone with the Wind or Birth of a Nation?
Regards,
Shodan
[hijakk]
Everytime I hear about the economy growing x% I wonder what that really mean (I don’t wonder enough to go and find out for myself obviously). If the economy went in the crapper and and reached a value of 5 from a previous value of twenty, we could have 100% growth and still only be at half the value of before.
[/hj]
Is there any benefit to holding our entertainment media to the same standards as we do our information media?
The problem have with the MRC is that they acutally use facts and quotes of the media to prove their case. Such proof is inconvienient to those on the left and consequently ignored and dismissed. Of course anything from a source on the left is to be accepted without question.
For example…the coverage of similar numbers regarding the Clinton economy in 1996 and the Bush economy in 2004 is striking. 35 positive/6 negative in 1996 and 38 negative/6 positive in 2004.
The following is from the MRC website:
“When Bill Clinton ran for re-election in 1996, unemployment was 5.2 percent, inflation 3 percent, and economic growth 2.2 percent. Economic conditions are similar, if not better, today: unemployment is 5.4 percent, inflation 2.7 percent, and economists’ consensus forecast for economic growth this quarter is 3.7 percent”.
Please, I beg you, find the right wing spin in that.
Interesting question. I don’t know.
I expect not, however. It seems to me that much of the entertainment media is presenting a view of the world as subjectively true, so to speak. No one in their right mind believes that the events in Birth of a Nation literally happened. But the director is putting together a series of fictional events to present what he considers a literal truth about the South after the Civil War. It’s a work of fiction.
News media, on the other hand, are presenting what they purport to be objectively true facts, and (in theory) leaving the creation of the story up to the consumer. In theory.
I think the troubles come in when they slop over into each other. If Michael Moore had presented Bowling for Columbine as a fictional movie, or if Oliver Stone had been upfront that he was making the stuff up in JFK as he went along, I think the outrage might have been less. But they were presented as if the “facts” they presented were objectively true. Similarly, if the documents that 60 Minutes had presented were genuine, I doubt if there would have been nearly the outcry.
If someone claims to be objective and then distorts or presents misleading facts to advance an agenda, I think there is a violation of the assumed agreement between the news media and the news consumer.
I suppose the first step in dealing with both kinds of media is awareness. Nobody is surprised if The Turner Diaries gets far-fetched. We know the author is trying to push an agenda. Much the same with other kinds of fiction. And, I would say, also the case with those who are more frankly partisan, Rush Limbaugh or similar. We know that they have something in mind. I think the mainstream media would get along better if they didn’t try to deny that they are somewhat similar. It’s when Dan Rather tries to claim that no, he is being completely objective and upfront in what he does, and that the facts are always on his side, that people have issues with Gunga Dan and his cohorts.
YMMV.
Regards,
Shodan
No, the problem I have with the MRC is that they started out with an assumption and found evidence to prove it, and say they are using “scientific methodology.” That ain’t science.
The reason I said “I hardly think they qualify as an objective source of information on the media” is that they say they’re not.
http://www.mrc.org/about/aboutwelcome.asp
Bolding mine.
No, the problem is that they cherry-pick quotes and use them devoid of context (as Al Franken showed [see rjung’s post above] when he skewered Goldberg for uncritically repeating a quote from MRC about Russia that gives an entirely different spin once you know the context of when it was said and what else was siad in that same broadcast.
As for the data…Your example below is particularly telling of how they misuse that too.
Well, the problem is that the right wing spin is in the presentation of the numbers themselves. What they don’t tell you (see [) is that unemployment fell from 7.1% in January 1993 when Clinton took office to 5.2% in October 1996 when he was running for re-election. And, in that period, there was significant growth in the total number of jobs. (I leave it as an exercise to the reader to dig up those numbers.) By contrast, under Bush, it rose from 4.2% in January 2001 to 5.4% now. And, the economy actually lost jobs…or at least private sector jobs…over that period. (It is important to remember also that the unemployment rate counts only active job seekers which is why it can sometimes be a somewhat deceiving indicator…Job creation over time is probably a better indicator of how the labor economy is faring.)
[url=www.fair.org]FAIR](]here[/url) for its part does much the same sort of media analysis from a left-wing perspective. But, unlike MRC, I find them focussing more on data rather than anecdotes or specific quotes taken out of context. And, when they do look at quotes, they often look at ones that are at variance with actual facts. For example, they document that in the runup to the Iraq Wa, reporters sometimes said that Saddam kicked out the weapons inspectors in 1998, or when they slightly more accurately said that the inspectors were withdrawn because Saddam was accusing them of spying and refusing to cooperate, they failed to note that these were not just accusations by a crazy dictator but were actually reported as fact in the Washington Post, New York Times, Boston Globe and other media quoting both U.S. and U.N. sources. (Subsequent to the Iraq War, Blix has mentioned as well-known fact the spying under the previous inspections regime also.)
Here are some more actual facts behind the jobs numbers in the Bush Administration:
This is just another example of how conservatives increasingly live in a “reality” where the basic facts are different (as documented by PIPA polls for example). As the electoral-vote website amusingly noted, perhaps the laws of physics are different in their world too.