No problemo. I actually did feel bad about that thread, like I had come on too strong. His first post here fixed that though. 
Not when you are defining centrism it isn’t.
Regards,
Shodan
As the context shows, the main point coming from me is that it is really dumb to follow the flow, scientifically speaking, Fox news is irresponsible nowadays.
The National Guard scandal? It was all true. Bush had strings pulled to avoid the war. He missed out on this training and showing up . The paper work you love to bitch about had a 2 line response. She said that was not the letters she wrote. That is true. But she said what is on the paperwork is essentially what she wrote. Bot CBS was was guilty of presentng unvetted material. The story remains factual.
Perhaps so, but as I said before, it is irrelevant. That they (the producers of CBS, especially Mary Mapes, and later Rather) would continue to push the false memo even after any reasonable newsie would have divined its bogusness (if I may coin a new word), only confirmed what talk radio and many in the public had suspected for years (per Goldberg’s book), that the mainstream press was (and probably, most feel still is) not objective.
I don’t care if W did his NGB duty, shirked it, or was dealing crack in Houston when he was supposed to be flying fighters.
It doesn’t matter.
What matters is, this shameful incident by CBS hammers home the perception in the eyes of the public, exacerbated by talk radio continually working the refs, and you get a poll like the OP quoted. Case closed.
(Well, maybe not quite closed, but I like my theory better than Kobal’s).
So you Gonzo have taken pretty much the line others have; hey that’s bullshit, Fox is way more right than the other networks are left, and besides the incident wasn’t a scandal anyway since it was probably true, blah blah blah…
But: it doesn’t matter. Perception is reality, especially, as I tried to explain earlier, there is no true, foolproof metric as to who is more objective.
Do you not get that? Or do you have a problem with the logic? Or do you just not want to admit that much of the OP’s poll is not the fault of Fox, but rather their competition handing them the mantle of most trusted?
They refer to themselves as conservative all the time. So does Rush, Sean, and many of those you probably disagree with 95% of the time.
Yup, see the comments by RedShirt, he/she said that all media is actually very conservative…
It’s not about me. It’s about where you come down, wrt the beliefs across America (assuming you’re American, you haven’t said). If you come down on the more liberal side of each issue, say 75% of the time, I’d call you a liberal/lefty. Likewise for conservative. But if you come down on the liberal side of each issue 99% of the time, that makes you an extremist (or, possibly, radical). It doesn’t make you bad per se (unless you firebomb hummer dealerships and steer skiffs in front of legally operating whalers), but it does mean you are pretty far from what most people think is reasonable, politically.
Ah, yes, Time to point out what many “independents” or “centrists” seem to miss; how it is that when liberals say that outfits like CBS, ABC or even CNN are not liberal that that is disregarded, but when conservatives say that Fox is conservative that is agreed upon?
Point being that what many call leftist media is in reality centrist.
Not Conservative but Corporate; however, that is not much different.
http://www.alternet.org/health/141580
And that is because the mainstream media really does allow only discussions and reports to go from very conservative to center viewpoints, and at the same time convince people like you that the center is the left. However that is not where I’m concentrating, when you ignore that currently Fox news is telling viewers lies regarding a subject like climate change, it is silly to be happy with the possibility that most people trust that source.
How do the Fox defenders feel about Fox News fleeing in panic from the coverage of the Obama Q&A at the Republican retreat yesterday? It was the most interesting and signficant news event of the day (and arguably the week), but once it became clear that Obama was cleaning the Republican’s clocks, they ran away from the coverage like scalded cats.
How can that decision be justified journalistically? How was it anything but fearful, panicked partisanship? How else can they possibly justify denying their audience the chance to see the President of the United States fielding hardball questions from his fiercest opposition?
That decison alone really cemented to me how fraudulent Fox is. They really can’t abide showing any live coverage of Obama, that they can’t edit and frame and spin and process for consumption by its audience.
Mr Smashy, your reality is American process cheese food.
It’ s the same reality in which Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction are “in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.”
Your view that perception is reality is an extremist view. It’s a contagious view, and a very dangerous view. Holding it is likely to be very expensive, and get you or others killed, as demonstrated by our foolhardy invasion of Iraq.
Those of us who have spent any time actually studying reality know that reality simply does not give a Tinker’s dam what we feel it to be or believe it to be. It is what it is despite all human conceits otherwise.
If you take out how radicalized conservatives are in only trusting fox news and distrusting all other news networks, it isn’t so bad. Its not like ‘everyone’ trusts fox news. It is just that a supermajority of conservatives only trust them and distrust everything else, skewing the numbers. Liberals and independents do not have the rabid mistrust of all networks except one. Liberals tend to trust MSNBC most of all, but its not like they distrust all other networks at the same time like conservatives do.
But if you take them (conservatives) out of the equation, we are a nation that tends to believe in evolution too.
You have to admire the conservative movement for how efficient it can be. Tell them all media outlets (except the ones that tell you to vote for the best interests of the richest 5%) are biased and want to trick you. Then watch them become supply siders who refuse to listen to anything but more supply side dogma.
Look up social dominators and right wing authoritarians sometime to make sense of all these conservatives who hate and distrust all media outlets except the ones that tell them to vote for economic policies designed to benefit the wealthy. Bob Altemeyer has written about them.
I think you’ve stumbled on the crux, here.
What is conservative? What is liberal? By what yardstick are we to measure where the center is?
As has been stated many times before on this board, I think most would agree that Europe’s ‘center’ is far more left than America’s. And I’d guess that Hong Kong’s center is more right than America’s.
I personally believe that the current political climate of *US Americans *should define the center. I’m not sure if there’s any other way to do it that doesn’t start a circular argument. Since about twice about as many people are conservative than are liberal, I would guess the center is normalized for that fact.
And those on the left feel exactly as you do; that the definitions are rigged against them, due to reality.
Missed the edit window: what I meant was, Americans should define the center for America; Although I count myself in the ‘America, fuck yeah’ category, I’m not so jingoistic as to think that we should define standards like that for the rest of the world.
If Sweden wants to be socialist, or Russia wants to be the wild west, let them. Only exception is when our national security is involved (for example, OEF)
Do you ever watch Link TV. They have The Tom Harman Show, Democracy Now, Grit Tv and other shows that actually do represent the opposite of Fox propaganda. CNN is not lefty by any stretch. PBS is flat neutral. Every subject they cover, they present both sides equally. They are also careful to have differing opinions presented by equal spokesmen. It would probably seem pretty lefty to someone who thinks one side 24 hours a day ,is news though.
Right wingers think that anything objective is liberal, though. The truth has that well-known liberal bias,
I’d agree on the facts, but not on the subject matter chosen. PBS does present a neutral debate on the issues, but the issues and framing are done in a way that more often favors the left.
CNN is the same. They choose their topics to slightly favor corporatism and social moderatism even though their facts are balanced.
As opposed to Pacifica, Democracy Now, Fox News, etc. who not only choose topics and framing to favor one side or the other but are not above shading the truth or even manufacturing news stories from time to time.
FoxNews is obviously extremely biased. When I hear “We Report, You Decide” I feel enormous pity for America. I think Jon Stewart’s comedy show may be a better, more objective, news show.
Any right-winger who is both intelligent and honest (assuming such a beast isn’t rarer than the unicorn) would admit as much about FoxNews.
I don’t want to comment on other TV news – for one thing, it’s a mistake to use any TV news as the main input for coverage of issues – but it’s laughable to call them “leftish.” (American political discourse has become so twisted that centrists are called leftists, and left-of-centerites are called Communist.)
Straight Dope (“Fighting ignorance since 1973”) seems to have a very intellectual level overall; I was surprised and saddened to read this thread and some posters’ apparent beliefs that FoxNews is less than perverse. (I won’t be engaged in debate with FoxNews supporters – it would be like discussing calculus with someone who flunked 3rd-grade arithmetic.)
Just passing through. (Clicked on BBQ to see what was cooking!)
Maybe so, but we’re talking ‘leftish’ for America, not the world. The OP’s poll was among Americans
From the OP’s link:
Let’s not get too excited. Fox won by a plurality, not a majority. The majority still chose something besides Fox.
Did you see this poll yet?
Gallup: Only 5 Republican states
Looks like all the moderates have turned Liberal after seeing the “party of No” in action this past year.
I guess when Fox shows the crazy, people know the crazy.
Cue “that was an old poll with data from 2008, and is no longer operative” in 3, 2, 1…