Mea Culpa.
I know it is a right-wing thing to constantly accuse CNN of being biased, which I find incredibly hypocritical coming from people who watch a network that is deliberately, clearly and very publicly the propaganda wing of the Republican party.
But I’d like to see one or more non-biased sources or analysis showing that CNN actually is biased. If you got one, I’ll be glad to look it over.
This. Is there a definition of “mainstream media” that excludes reliable, non-bullshit papers and sites?
ETA: are reliable non-American sources with worldwide coverage such as BBC and al-Jazeera not part of “mainstream media”?
The Five, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham - all prime time shows. Add in Fox and Friends and their highest rated programming is all pure right wing propaganda.
What are the CNN eqivalents to those shows?
Thank you very much for the invitation, but I don’t have anything but my own judgement. To that end I just took a look at CNN.COM and it appears that the main thing going on it the world is attacks on Donald Trump.
Is this really all the main thing going on? Or even important? I mean, the dude’s embarrassing for sure, but I think he knows what he’s doing to the extent that he’s keeping himself very much at the top of the news, and pretty much ALL the MSM are falling into line for him. They’re clearly being played.
Biased? Well, I see no attempt to even acknowledge another side to the fracas.
Personally, it’s not something I can do anything about, and so it’s all very tedious. I like to stay informed about important issues, but I don’t enjoy a continuous and impotent diet of controversy.
People here seem to forget that Mainstream Media used to be pushed by the left though in their case it was labeled “Corporate/Government Media” back during the Bush years. CNN, MSNBC, and especially FOX News were seen as exclusively pushing the neo-colonial/imperialist agenda of the US Government. People still referred to it as such up until a few years ago and if you asked them what the only reliable American media was they’d reply they got their news from Jacobin.
Two issues here, as you pointed out. One is “which news to focus on.” I agree with you that CNN focuses rather too much on Trump. Hence I prefer The Economist (and the New York Times, and the Straight Dope Message Board, and NPR…).
The other issue is bias. While there is some leeway for opinion on this, that’s where you’re pretty much mistaken. CNN doesn’t demonstrate much of a bias in the news they do cover, except indirectly as a by-product of the first issue.
In other words, if Person or Thing X generates 10 newsworthy things per day, and 9 of them would be characterized as objectively “bad” in some way; while Person or Thing Z also generates 10, but 9 of them are objectively “good,” then a news outlet may appear to be “biased” simply by focusing most of its attention on X rather than Z, even if they spend 10% of that time unbiasedly reporting those 10% of things that are “good.”
Since Thing X happens to be the President of the US, I don’t fault CNN too much for this focus, but I agree with you it’s a bit much. Again, *The Economist *devotes more space to underreported, worldwide people, places, events, and phenomena.
I think that was well put. It may be that I’m oversensitive to the focus bias.
On “The Five”, one of the five is usually a liberal. Tucker Carlson usually spends a large portion of his show debating with people who vehemently oppose his views. I haven’t watched Hannity or Ingraham enough to comment. Over on Fox Business, “Varney and Company” and “Kennedy” often have liberals on to debate the issues.
In my opinion, the token liberals on Fox get far more airtime than the token conservatives get on the other networks.
The difference being that CNN brings on conservative leaders and members of Congress to speak while Fox has 19 year old far left college students who they proceed to roll over and shout down. Or they have their hired tokens like Bob Beckel and Alan Colmes who are just there for the paycheck. I’d love to see Tucker Carlson bring on Sheldon Whitehouse or Elizabeth Warren but management would never allow their talent to get laid to waste as they would.
I was about to mention this. Conservative outlets have a fetish for stage-managed debates with radicals, naifs, and other assorted punching bags because their viewers like to watch someone get “destroyed”. :rolleyes: Of course this kind of spectacle gets more airtime on Fox.
I don’t find CNN particularly politically biased. I do find it incredibly superficial, sensationalist and inane, with so many high-speed flashy cuts in their endless self-promotion it could induce epileptic fits. Watching it just makes me want to slap Wolf Blitzer repeatedly and shout “DIDN’T YOU USED TO BE A REPUTABLE NEWS SOURCE? STOP WITH THE TRIVIAL BULLSHIT!” Which is why I don’t get my news from CNN. I gave up on MSNBC due to the high smugness content, and most of my viewing of FoxNews involves horrified fascination.
Mostly my actual news sources are the BBC and Channel 4 news and occasionally Sky News and AJE in the UK (television and radio), the Financial Times and Economist plus online articles from the Guardian, Independent and Telegraph and some local US papers for actual print media, and a variety of other sites on the internet including this one. All sources taken with appropriate grains of salt. I also find shows like Last Week Tonight and The Daily Show (although I only occasionally watch the latter) useful for flagging stories that I may have missed elsewhere.
They may get more facetime, but they certainly don’t get more talktime.
My news feeds are Fox, CNN and BBC. I figure the truth can be found by triangulating the three.
The problem with picking the middle value between extremes is that, sometimes, things are true.
Jane says I killed someone. I say I never killed anyone in my life. Therefore, the correct answer is that I seriously wounded someone? No. The correct answer is to perform an investigation and figure out what happened based on facts and logic, not from taking the two most extreme positions (or the most extreme “credible” positions) and splitting the middle.
I do the same, though I mainly use Fox to wind myself up, as I also do by buying right-wing British tabloids occasionally.
In particular, the way Fox labels stories about ‘MSM’ reporting with a ‘Bias Alert’ banner is amusing, if also saddening.
Drudge
Is that considered MSM since they pull in all kinds of sources from Al Jazeera to CNN to Fox?
I watch local news for the weather and local stories.
I find BBC & NPR to be my go to sources for news. Fox & MSNBC are biased. CNN is wrong or lost far too often to care any more about their reporting. I still like the NY Times for additional details.
CNN really isn’t biased much. Not sure why it is interpreted as such. It also sadly not very good and hasn’t been for years.
This is me almost exactly except I haven’t been exposed to a lot of MSNBC or the NYT to confirm your observations.
Yeah, to echo what others have said, CNN is just bad, not biased. Too sensationalistic in its presentation and too focused on pop culture and ephemeral events. BBC and NPR are my sources for news.
While that is true for zero sum situations reported as fact - ie, someone died - what we are faced with today are reports with various spins, shading and agenda’s. Was it an accident? Was it murder? Was it justified? Was the reason “X”? Was it “Y”? I read the right’s take, the left’s take, and (where applicable) the international take. Often times, the truth IS in the middle.