IMHO
left leaning
CBS, NBC, ABC (interchangable without noticing the difference)
CNN
NPR
Neutral to slight right leaning
Fox News
Some ppl may view Fox as being far right, but thats just because their perspective is so far left, anything even close to neutral appears to be far right.
Bingo. Which is why strong leftists like Eric Alterman do not tend to see things like the NYT and CNN as left-leaning at all. For the Kucinich/Dean/Nader left, it’s all corporate media, all relatively conservative, and they’re correct. For the Michael Savage/Ann Coulter right (hijack: imagine* that* love child), FOX and Rush Limbaugh are solid centrists.
Just as election returns define what “centrist” really means, I submit that ratings and the marketplace do the same. When the broadcast media started to lean left compared to the population, talk radio and cable news (CNN excepted) emerged as a counterbalance.
The media as a whole is biased toward making money. Thus, the media as a whole is going to reflect what the viewers want …
I have a hard time believing that the biases are really this subjective. There has to be a middle ground to judge them by. Of course if you are on top the bottom looks farther away than if you are halfway down, but lets say for instance that the pseudo-person we judge these biases by has no political standing whatsoever, and has just learned what right and left are. To make it even better, lets pretend its not a person, it’s a brick!
From that unsubjective point of view I am curious to know who leans which way, as I would liken myself unto a brick when it comes to politics 
So you’re questioning the impartiality of CMPA and citing an overtly liberal site that declares its crusade against the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy as proof? (I’m not saying CMPA is impartial (I think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone that is) but questioning their reliability as a news source and offering a web site that is clearly pro-liberal doesn’t make for such a great case.)
I’d say the networks’ biases work out to something like this:
Right-leaning: Fox News, AIM, MRC, Wall Street Journal, CBS
Centrist: CMPA, OMBwatch, NBC, Salon
Left-leaning: NPR, FAIR, New York Times, CNN, ABC
Of course the individual reporters have their own biases and most of the mainstream newspapers and news networks have both conservative and liberal journalists. I’ve simply attempted to classify these networks in one of the above groups when, in reality, one has to consider specific issues.
The media watchdogs are not nearly as reliable as their respective supporters like to think they are. It’s not just that they have a fixed agenda and only report on the lies of the primary media for the other side; they have actually published false information in an attempt to further their causes. Both FAIR and the MRC, for example, have been known to be duplicitous in their handling of alleged media bias.
Also, interestingly enough, in some ways the primary media may be more balanced than the media watchdogs since they tend to offer opinions from both sides of the issue while most of the bias monitors are out to prove a point. This is not to say that tremendously biased–to the point of a total loss of credibility–primary sources don’t exist, but one should take criticism of the networks with a grain of salt and an eye to who’s doing the criticizing.
While it is unlikely that the media at large is balanced (what are the chances of the every news network (or, for that matter, the collective of news agencies) giving equal time to both sides on every issue?), it is ridiculous to try to label all the media as being biased toward either the conservative or liberal side. From my experience, every attempt at such a label has been rooted in partisanship, rendering any future endeavors highly suspect. Debating the political leanings of individual networks and newspapers on particular issues would be far more fruitful.
In the case of Fox news and by inference its like-minded siblings, there’s no need to look for an objective test or analysis.
A former employee recently gave an interview explaining how partisan bias is enforced by managerial fiat. It interested me because for a while I’d wondered how a publication manages to maintain a consistent bias. You’d think journalists would have an interest in independent thought and analysis and that at any publication there’d be hiccups.
Not Fox, the management issues memos indicating the slant to be taken on particular and sensitive new items.
By contrast, globally speaking, at least English language, the nearest there is to unbiased is probably the BBC and it imitators which run according to a charter of reporting “without fear or favour” and are accountable to that charter.
FWIW I don’t believe there is a single mainstream US publication that *
approaches* left-wing biased. Compare the UK Guardian.
Wheareas USlly, You will never see a story or editorial showing the US overall in a bad light. And I don’t believe there is anybody arguing that the press didn’t give GWB an incredibly soft and sympathetic run in the build up to the Iraq invasion. Wheras ordinary persons viewing the facts objectively were able to shine great big mettawattage beacons through the administration’s fabrications. Right on this message board for example.
Why weren’t these same points appearing in the general press? Not because the press gallery, whose profession it is, couldn’t discern the same flim-flam. Not least of which is the supposedly left-biased NYtimes, no they were all in on it.
Think about it: objectively discernable facts; suppressed from publication. There’s no opinion or subjectivity here. Its objective evidence of Proud-America/RW bias. 'Course if someone is able to show the same except where the objective facts damage leftish causes then the argument is weakened.
Your question is essentially identical to demanding perfect omniscience from a SD poster.
The matter is simple: To a frothing left-wing loon, the US press is dominated by right-wingers. To a frothing right-wing loon, the US press is dominated by left-wingers.
C’mon man, did you see that sponsor at the top of the list? The fuckin’ SCAIFE Foundations? Now you may not believe as i do that they’re Evil, Incorporated, but if you try to claim they’re not far-right conservative, people are going to be measuring you for a tinfoil hat in no time.
My impression, right or wrong, is that mainstream media has conservative views on the economy, liberal views on social issues and centrist views on foreign policy.
Of course, you will not have trouble finding many examples of all shades of biases, but overall this is my impression.
You’re either very young or very naive. Political views are, at least in part, a function of values and beliefs in general, which everyone has whether they know it or not.
'Round here we ask for evidence for those kinds of assertions, or as we say “cite?”
No, I wouldn’t. I think it’s much, much easier to follow the pack and report what everyone else is reporting, and/or report what your own bias tells you must be the case. Investigating everything and facing the possibility that you are/were wrong about something is very hard work.
<Spews coffee> Bwahahaha! Oh, well, they have a charter! That proves it! Just like Fox’s slogan “Fair and Balanced” means they must be!
Does the name “Gilligan” mean anything to you?
The Nation, Mother Jones and others are very solidly left, and has been noted, many see the NYT and CNN as moderate left. The fact that you don’t see them as such is not proof that they aren’t.
As opposed to most countries, where significant portions of the media just routinely show the entire nation – not one administration or action – “in a bad light?” Please show me the UK, French, Japanese or other media that have a general disdain for their nation as a whole.
Utterly absurd, and you have given the game away, sir. There are plenty of “ordinary persons viewing the facts objectively” on these boards and elsewhere that came to a different conclusion than you. You could choose to respectfully disagree, or you can arrogantly lump them all together as fools unable to see things as incisively as you. It seems apparant which you’ve chosen.
Cite?
Do you really think the pubbies around here can’t find that sort of stuff? That it’s a good-guy, bad-guy thing and that there isn’t this kind of thing on both sides? What are you, twelve?
We all have stories we want and expect to hear. The media accomodates that by giving it to us in niche marketing.
I look at it this way:
Mainstream media is all large corporations. Anything that makes it easier for them to make and keep money will be reported favorably.
They are all part of various entertainment conglomerates. Salaciousness sells very well. Anything that will permit them to broadcast even more sex and violence will be reported favorably.
Unless it directly hits lots of Americans all at once, their target audience doesn’t give doo-wha-dingle about foreign affairs. So fageddabaddit.
I was quoting the actual donors to the Center for Media and Public Affairs as facts, which you are free to dispute, but you’ll need to come up with cites that show they aren’t the donors they are claimed to be.
Here is the actual donor list. Feel free to show that these monies were not given.
I’ll even make it easy on you. You’ll notice the donation at the top for $150,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation. Here (warning PDF file) is the actual list of grants given for 2002 from that particular foundation. You’ll notice this list is directly from the foundation in question. You’ll also notice the same $150,000 donation.
Any questions?
Well, here we go again.
Gilligan was fired and the BBC harshly criticised for suggesting that the government had manipulated an intelligence document; its director general even resigned. And this was for a trivial suggestion in a morning radio news programme, while privately owned news corporations routinely make far more damning claims about various governments or parties without censure.
I would have thought that the extent to which this teacup-sized squall became worldwide news would, if anything, imply that the BBC takes any accustions of bias very seriously indeed.
The web-log you directed us to merely seems to be some random yahoos playing some strange kind of game. Surely a left based blog could find just as many examples of right wing bias at the BBC?
Bias by managerial fiat
“But the roots of FNC’s day-to-day on-air bias are actual and direct. They come in the form of an executive memo distributed electronically each morning, addressing what stories will be covered and, often, suggesting how they should be covered”
'Round here we like folks to read posts real proper 'fore comments fly,
An excellent example of how the BBC is answerable when it gets it wrong. Contrast Fox.
Nation & Mother Jones don’t fit my definition of mainstream. You’re not sufficiently acquainted with me to realise how wrong the latter observation is.
Poor reasoning: Other nations aren’t under consideration; there’s a wide gap between “general disdain” and what I’ve argued
Which persons were wrong.
If we’re thinking about the same facts.
I fear you’ve underestimated me, rather, I’m fully open to the possibility of objective evidence of left-wing bias in the mainstream US media. I simply cannot conjure any to mind myself.
Here’s what Juan Cole has to say:
(Scroll about 1/6 of a page down.) US Press as “Stenographers” for Bush War
As always, these discussions tend to confuse “straight” news reporting and opinion/commentary.
If in the course of “straight” news reporting it is apparent that the reporter feels a particular way and is attempting to steer you towards that view, that is unprofessional and biased. The ability to perceive this is not dependent on a particular ideology.
I have never understood how people can get so upset over commentary when it is clearly labeled as such. It’s similar to the outrage expressed by people writing letters to the editor about a negative review of a movie or CD. Someone is dissing a favorite artist? How dare they.
But of course even “straight” news reporting is subject to accusations of bias due to the editorial content.
BTW, furt, that blog you linked to is just a bunch of students with a chip on their shoulder. I’ve corresponded with them and pointed out one huge error on their part (it’s a post in a debate with december - I’ll look it up for you if your truly desire); they admitted their error but immediately countered with “well BBC reporters pronounce Paul Wolfowitz’s name wrong!”. Silly and paranoid, even though they may occasionally get something right.
Ummm … in my universe, the BBC denied any error, refused to do an internal investigation, and only admitted error when a government commission ruled against them and there was talk of them losing money from the licensing fee. I don’t think that exactly counts as being transparent and open to correction.
Your statement was: “USally, You will never see a story or editorial showing the US overall in a bad light.” I am suggesting that no media outlet in any country that stays in business is going to present their nation “overall in a bad light.” They may attack an administration or a policy, but not the country per se; hence the impliction that there is something wrong with US media being pro-US is moot.
Left-wing? No. As I said before, the Kucinich/Nader left has little voice, which corresponds to their small following. And I am not claiming that the media as a whole is biased to the left. As I have already stated:
Which is more or less what Juan Cole (I have no idea who he is) is saying:
But none of those things necessarily connects to a ideological bias. Do You think that Clinton didn’t use access or the lack thereof to control the press? Do you think that the fact that journalists generally know very little about their subjects somehow always favors conservatives? That the incestuous government-media relationship somehow inherently favors one party over the other? Absurd.
There is a status-quo bias, and extremists of all stripes are disregarded; but that’s because they are extremists. If Ralph Nader could get Rush Limbaugh’s ratings, he’s be on in every market. As a Libertarian, I wish third-party views were more respected; but I also know how many votes Harry Browne got last time, and so I’m not mystified when he’s never on the TV.
The news as a whole is targeted to fit the views of the people who consume news; if you want to make the case that informed people skew slightly one way or the other, go ahead, but it’s not very far from the mean.
Marketing 101 says that you don’t necessarily try to get everyone to buy; instead you have a target consumer. News media does the same thing, and so any particular outlet is going to have a bias to suit its marketing needs; and the market will correct itself as, markets (almost) always do. For every Rush Limbaugh, there’s an NPR, for every NYT a WSJ, for every FOX a CNN and BBC America.
The media as a whole is as centrist as an imperfect free market can make it. But No individual outlet is.
I’m not sure what this means, since there should be as far as possible an absence of editorial content in straight news reporting.
It does point up the regrettable absence of editorials presented in the course of news shows. I can remember in the dim and distant past people like Walter Cronkite presenting editorials that made it clear how the broadcast network viewed a particular issue. This tradition has died out (fear of negative feedback? laziness? general decline in journalistic standards?) in favor of reporters/editors inserting opinion into their stories, to the general detriment of news reporting.
The BBC gets an unfair rap in my opinion in regards to bias. I have never been able to tell whether the BBC World Service announcer favors Sri Lanka over Pakistan in cricket.
Sorry, bad choice of words. What I mean by “editorial content” is which stories are chosen by the editor to be covered by reporters, and then chosen to be reported, and then the order in which they’re presented. If you have to choose between, hypothetically, a bomb in Iraq, a massive scandal in the US election, or an earthquake in South America that kills dozens, you’re instantly creating (some kind of) bias. You simply cannot achieve true editorial neutrality due to the necessity to choose.