On these issues that I’ve brought up, you admit there is divergence of opinion between Republicans and Democrats, on average. Now, with regards to these and like issues, the media is biased in favor of the positions most likely to be held my the majority of Democratic voters. This is because most of the media themselves hold similar views.
There are other issues, such as globalization and others that you have brought up, with regard to which there is not such a clearcut divergence between Republican and Democratic voters, and between the elected officials of these parties. On these issues, there seems, you say, to be a great deal of convergence, particularily at the leadership level. You further assert that the media is biased in favor of the positions espoused by these leaders. Here’s the point:
What you are saying may be true. It is also irrelevent (to this thread). When people talk about liberal press they are referring to the issue that I outline in my second paragraph. They are not referring to your issues of globalization. That issue, however dear to your heart, is not what is meant by the term “liberal press”. If these people are guilty of misusing the term “liberal” have the language police arrest them. But they mean the issues that I refer to, and like issues.
If for you, the globalization issue is most important, and you feel that the media is biased in that regard, then you may start your own complaint about media bias. (But get in line behind the rightwingers. They were there first.)
Thank you for clarifying all that muddle for us, IzzyR.
To reiterate, however, you have not shown where this bias manifests itself.
Talk radio is dominated by conservatives. Talking head shows on the broadcast and cable networks are dominated by the Right (and if you classify Sam and Cokie as reps of the left, you’re too biased to judge). Opinion on TV leans toward the Republicans.
While frustrating to left-of-center folk, however, this is not bias. No one with critical thinking skills believes that George Will and John McLaughlin are giving anything but personal opinion.
Editorial writers in big cities probably lean to the left (I’ve not done a survey of this). The populations of these large cities (the readers at whom the papers are aimed) tend to vote for Democratic candidates.
While frustrating for Republicans in these cities, this is not bias. Editorials and Opinion pages are for opinions, and opinions cannot be biased. They can only be right or wrong (or, more likely, somewhere in between).
I await reference to a documented study of this monolithic media that demonstrates news coverage in general (broadcast + written) to be biased in any direction. Not a survey of voter registrations of reporters or a survey of reporter’s personal opinions with the logical leap that all reporting must therefore be biased.
The closest I’ve seen (and this is still pretty far off) is a NEXUS survey showing that right-of-center think tanks are quoted in written articles at a greater rate than are centrist or left-of-center think tanks, and the leftist groups are more likely to be labeled as such.
Look at how difficult it is just to establish what constitutes a liberal/conservative right/left. You want a study of the bias too?
Look, every liberal hears the media and is convinced that they are missing the boat and skewing the news in favor of the conservatives. likewise, every conservative is equally convinced that they are skewing it in favor of the liberals. However, the fact that most of the media are themselves liberal (“or mainstream democraticly oriented”) tends to support the conservative gripes more. Nothing proved. But the facts seem to suggest that. logical leap or not, it makes sense.
About the study of think tanks - does it say that more conservative think tanks are cited, or that a conservative think tank will get quoted more often? There may simply be more liberal think tanks out there, in which case the media will go back to the same conservatives over and over. Also, if the media don’t necessarily label the right wing ones as right wing, who decided that they are indeed such? Who is this NEXUS anyway? (Some liberal think tank?)
Iz, when “people” talk about the liberal press they may well mean “a press in which the majority of journalists vote Democratic.” Some of them may mean that, anyway–though the more conservative you are, the more you’ll see as being evidence of “liberal influence,” including even positions that many or most moderate Republicans hold. What the author of the OP–hey, that’s me–was asking, however, was something other than, “Do people think there’s a liberal media because they equate centrist Democratic principles with liberalism?” (A question, by the way, which you’ve done an admirable job of answering anyway.) Let’s go to tape, shall we?
Here’s the OP, the aside on the Times’ opinion of Nader excised:
Now, you’ve done nothing to show me that the mainstream media are not “a lot like the rest of the institutional status quo.” All you’ve demonstrated, perhaps, is that the institutional status quo embodies many positions that are more commonly held by moderate Democrats than by moderate Republicans. Nor have you disproven the notion that much of what passes for a ‘liberal’ media to conservatives–attitudes on abortion, separation of church and state, general gay rights–is instead evidence on non-theism, eminently appropriate in a non-denominational news corps. So maybe instead of asking whether anyone believed in the notion of a liberal media, I should have asked if the media were liberal in the first place. …To which you would likely have responded, “Yeah, because most of them vote Democrat,” I suppose, and we’d have been right where we are.
Like jrepka says, we really need to define our conception of “bias.” As far as globalization goes, I’m making the observation that there’s a relatively narrow scope of opinion aired in newspapers, magazines, and on TV that seems to bespeak a particular set of viewpoints. This happens to be the case with most issues, and it can be empirically demonstrated that the terms of debate on public affairs programs are largely informed by a center-right, establishmentarian perspective. And all I’m saying is that if you want to talk about bias toward ostensibly Democratic positions, you need to deal with the fact that most issues of fiscal or foreign policy are approached from a centrist (i.e., non-liberal) perspective–and, furthermore, that the media’s coverage of social issues can be explained by variables other than a pervasive liberal slant–not least because the coverage, even of social issues, ain’t particularly liberal.
If you want to talk about bias, talk John Stossel and his libertarian bully pulpit on ABC. Talk Fox News Channel and their all-conservative, all the time lineup. Talk the New York Times and Washington Post dismissing third-party candidacies as irrelevant to the process, and displaying the protests in Seattle and Washington from a single, slanted perspective. How about business pages across the country trumpeting a rise in unemployment rates as being good for stock prices? Portraying all the mega-mergers as being good for the consumer, without airing the alternative viewpoint?
I’ll go back to my original observation: the mainstream media are a little to the right economically, smack dab in the middle socially, and altogether representative of an affluent, centrist, fairly secular status quo. That some people may feel the media to be inordinately biased toward Democratic positions does not make it a ‘liberal’ media in any manner whatsoever–and the question of liberalism was what was posed in the original post.
Sorry, Izzy, but to no one who is a student of politics does “liberal” equate with “mainstream Democratically oriented.” No matter how many times you say it, it’s not going to make it so.
Here’s a cite on the think tanks, by the way. The survey was for total citations, not total number of think tanks cited. Also see this, which talks about labelling. FYI, Lexis/Nexis is a full-text search engine of journals, magazines, and newspapers. Useful when attempting to quantify the use of buzzwords or sources in the news media. Completely non-partisan.
Let us not forget what business the “media” is in: Advertising. Yup. the reason they air TV shows and print up newspapers is to draw customers to an advertising forum. It is not in the interest of most main stream media outlets to piss off their readers nor the advertisers. So they are not going to swing too far away from public opinion.
But they mostly Dems, so their are going to be subtleties that show bias. For example, calling people pro-choice instead of pro-abortion. “cop killer bullets”, “assault weapons”, “THe digital divide” etc.
Here’s the problem. You are trying to lump people into x or y. Either people are x or y. There might be some muddling, but they fit into those catagories. In reality most people are z. And when pressed will identify themselves as z or y, only because those are the only two options available. If you ask most consevatives they will state the media has a liberal bias. If you ask most liberals they will state the media has a conservative bias. Why? Because the media doesn’t represent either. It represents, as Gar and I and others have stated, big business. Big business is sometimes liberal sometimes convervative and always big business.
This displays bias? It is better classified as political correctness (in the sense of calling people what they prefer to be called), since they also describe anti-abortion groups as “pro-life” (which I would argue is more inaccurate, as it implies a position which may or may not be accurate vis-a-vis, say, the death penalty).
No way. An extreme left-wing position on abortion would favor forced abortion. A moderately left-wing position would support goverment funding. The centrist postion has both abortion and childbearing voluntary (with perhaps some restrictions on late-term abortions). Once you start getting into significant restrictions you’re in right-wing territory.
Just because nobody take up the extremist position doesn’t mean that you can cast the moderates you oppose as the extremists. On economic issues, the absolute far left is Soviet-style communism (not to be confused with Bill CLinton), whereas the far right corresponds to the views of our own Libertarian.
On further reflection, an extreme left wing position on abortion is to abort all people who are already born. A centrist position is to only abort the unborn. Once you get into voluntary abortions you are talking about right wing territory. Restrictions on abortion are Nazi Germany territoy.
So, you’ve given up on rational analysis and have resorted to blatant misrepresentation both of the other side’s position and of the actual political spectrum? That’s nice.
sqweels’ comment is extremely valuable: you can’t tar moderates as extremists just because the actual extremist position is sparsely represented.
Gadarene seemed to be imlying that the media was suppressing coverage of protesters at the Republican convention, in contrast to those at other venues.
Well, let’s see…did they mention, anywhere in that article, exactly why the protesters were protesting? This is the most in-depth article (and virtually the only article) that I could find in the Post, buried on page A16 of the print edition. Most articles in other papers that have dealt with the protests–save for a remarkable analysis from the Los Angeles Times–have focused almost exclusively on the efforts of police and law-makers to cordon off the protesters and preempt violence. 'Course, the police in Seattle and D.C. were far more violent and disruptive of civil liberties than the overwhelming majority of the protesters, but heck, that doesn’t matter.
oh got it. In that case Gar would be worng. If however Gar was implying that the media was largely unsympathetic, I would agree. I would also make a prediction that they will be completely unsympathetic to the protesters at the Demo convention.
On the contrary, Izzy, I was saying that coverage of the protests at every venue has been extremely incomplete and one-sided. Don’t read an ideological antipathy into everything I write, huh?
Check out these articles for further illumination.
Oh, and an honest question: have you read any of the links that have been heretofore provided? Still no comment from you on most of them, and I’m interested to see what you thought about the think tank study.
