Unc is right in that determining the ‘ideology’ of mainstream news coverage is almost always an issue-by-issue thing; that one issue, like gun control, is generally covered from a more liberal perspective doesn’t necessarily mean that other issues are likewise covered. (And it doesn’t necessarily mean that they aren’t.) At any rate, ideological tendencies in mainstream news (or the media as a whole) don’t cleave ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative,’ even if particular issues may go one way or the other.
I’ve observed before that what many people see as a liberal media might generally be more accurately described as a secular media–at least with regard to many social issues (and the umpteen newsmagazine cover stories over the years about the life of Jesus notwithstanding). And the news media generally (but not always) cover economic issues–especially related to the free market–as distinct from social issues, which is a particular perspective in itself. I also think that Dogface is right that if anything, coverage is skewed away from so-called ‘public-mindedness’ and towards marketability. That is, news shows cover what they think people will watch–and, indirectly, what the sponsors think people will watch. To that end, I don’t think there’s any top-down elitism in play (which specter has been the impetus for charges of liberalism in the media since the 1960s). I maintain that the higher up the media chain you go, the more control you find over the content of news, in its broad strokes if not the little details–editors more so than reporters, publishers more so than editors, etc.–but when you get to the corporations that invariably own the news outlets, you find that they look to the audience (and, to a lesser extent, the sponsors) for cues about its coverage. It’s sort of media populism from on high, and undoubtedly a bit of a vicious circle: our preferences are shaped by what we’re given, but what we’re given is shaped by our preferences.
I also highly recommend the fascinating, if a bit dated, book Due to Circumstances Beyond Our Control by CBS producer Fred Friendly for a great look at the initial rise and decline of ‘public-minded’ investigative journalism in television news.
“Neutrality” and “objectivity” are impossible to achieve under any circumstances and are poor terms to use in evaluating news organizations. Another example of this would be reporting on certain issues where there is overwhelming societal opinion on one side. You wouldn’t expect a news report on the rise of serial murder to devote half its air time to quoting an anonymous serial killer who says that he finds his activities make a rewarding hobby and anyway, some people won’t be missed. :rolleyes:
Rather than “objectivity”, what should be aimed for is fairness - a genuine attempt to seek out competing points of view.
And because the temptation to respond to Gadarene on the issue of media bias after all this time is overwhelming…I’ll agree that the Fred Friendly book is well worth reading.
Bah! Those waffling floating points are so liberal as to be useless in a discussion of bias. Same with the supposedly moderate integers. Is it a two or is it a three? Can you make up your mind?
Now, give me binary, a properly conservative system. One is true and zero is false. Either-or. Black or white. No quibbling; no namby-pampy middle of the road.
I’ll give you my 2,500th post, Jack. I agree that fairness is an estimable goal, although I think it’s often a relative term.
I also think that both furt and jjimm make very good points–especially jjimm, when he says that deciding what to report is as much a normative exercise as deciding how to report it. In fact, I think that the former question–is something newsworthy?–has far more real-life impact than the latter. For any story that is reported in the mainstream news, there is a finite spectrum of ways to report it. The audience can nevertheless get the gist, whether they’re watching Fox News or CNN. If a story isn’t picked up, however, then it isn’t disseminated by the mainstream outlets, period. You only know about it if you read other sources–and the fewer the other sources, the more likely you are only to get one perspective on the story. (Obviously there isn’t time or space to report every potentially newsworthy item, even though the 24-hour cable stations could be a hell of a lot more comprehensive in this regard than they currently are.) And this is as much about media gamesmanship among interest groups as it is about the proclivities of the media outlets themselves–there are certain accepted ways to get your new study or lawsuit or press conference or whatever picked up by the wires and the networks. If you’re not proactive, nobody’ll hear what you have to say. Which is unfortunate, since putting the initiative in the hands of the newsmakers means that the news is shaped all the more before the news media even gets their hands on it.
I agree that fairness is an estimable goal, although I think it’s often a relative term.