Several years ago, the NYT Public Editor wrote, in his weekly column, about this issue. Although he was speaking about the NYT, I think it’s valid for most media outlets. His hypothesis was that the paper had a big city, urban perspective that could be perceived as liberal bias, since large urban areas tend to be more liberal than other parts of the country. This “perspective” was reflected in the types of stories the paper chose to run or not to run, even if none of the facts in the stories were being skewed one way or the other.
Made sense to me, and I think this is an entirely different matter than being biased. The reporters and the paper reflect the environment they are in and the primary customer base they are catering to. Readers in Omaha, Nebraska might not want to read about two gay people celebrating their nuptuals, for example, but it might seem perfectly ordinary to someone in NYC.
So, is all the reporting in the lead-up to the Iraq War just an anomaly? Yeah, it leans left but it so happens that on what might be the biggest political issue of the decade, it just fed us total lies and fabrications without any sort of due diligence or fact-checking. :rolleyes:
I don’t want to read the report, but I am surprised. The Wall Street Journal is as pro-business as it gets and I always thought that put it firmly right leaning. I question there criteria.
Considering that the war in Iraq had a fairly strong level of support among Democrats, I fail to see how this indicates the NY Times is conservative. Also, I don’t really see the war in Iraq as being a liberal/conservative issue. There are many conservatives who oppose the war now and opposed it then. There are many liberals who supported the war then and some who support it now. Among the groups that actively opposed the war from the beginning was the ultra-conservative John Birch Society.
If you want to start looking at liberal/conservative issues, you really need to examine reporting on things such as gun control, abortion, welfare reform, tax reform, government spending issues, health care and those kinds of things. That is where there is a pretty clear liberal/conservative split and one where you can detect a pretty clear liberal bias in the Times.
It makes them part of the corporate structure. They are conservative in that regard. They take the corporation stance over workers every time.They are blatantly anti union. The NYT is definitely not liberal.
Falling lockstep in the Iraq war was not as much a conservative stance as one that no longer does real reporting.
No kidding, CNN is not a lefty news source. All of mass media is owned, controlled, and dominated by conservatives. This is a fact not hyperbole. The FCC even works for corporate America. The only liberal leaning news sources available are on the internet. PBS is the best source for unbiased news or news that doesn’t blur into entertainment. The media was never liberal. It was labeled liberal, as if liberal is a horrible word, by corporate America and then neoconservatives because the news reported facts that didn’t favor a conservative agenda/big business.
There is no longer strong investigative journalism. It doesn’t exist in mainstream media. There is a complete lack of responsible journalism today, even with the highly respected news outlets like The New York Times and Washington Post. The reporting on Iraq is a perfect example.
The New Media Monopoly, by Ben Bagdikian, will explain the influence, importance, and ultimate erosion of responsible news information caused by corporate control. It is frightening when you consider the power and influence mass media has in shaping public perception and opinion. People can’t make informed choices when the news fails to report important stories, only represents one side of the political spectrum, and saturates broadcasting with conservative pundits.
It is because, up to now, the WSJ’s reporting division has always been carefully insulated from its editorial division and allowed freedom of action and editorial independence.
I cited a peer-reviewed study in the last thread we had about this which measured media bias. They found that most news organizations were not just to the left of the country, but to the left of the Democrats in Congress. They also found that the least biased news program on TV was Brit Hume on Fox.
Columbia Journalism Review This is what Time Warner owns. Media consolidation has pretty much eliminated a multiple viewpoint. The FCC wants more consolidation.There is very little differing opinions available any more.
The study did not say that. It said they were to the left of the average congressperson in a Republican-majority Congress. Indeed, most of them were to the right of Joe Lieberman.