Whoops, I need to make a correction. I was doing part of the George Will shenanigans from memory, which was faulty. It wasn’t a speech he wrote for Reagan. It was the debate with Jimmy Carter. Will secretly helped coach Reagan and then went on Nightline and praised the Gipper’s performance. What a dick. Yet he continues to appear on “liberal” ABC each Sunday.
:rolleyes:
Let me pluck a paragraph from 2sence’s excellent post:
“CNN’s flagship political show is Crossfire. It features well known conservatives Bob Novak and Tucker Carlson. It contrasts them with centrists James Carville and Paul Begala. Not a liberal in sight. Begala and Carville are strong minded Democrats but that doesn’t make them liberal. They helped Bill Clinton orchestrate the Democratic Party’s move to the right by co-opting Republican issues of welfare reform and free trade. They are sell outs.”
Time and time again, this is what we get: the right debating the middle. It’s presented as being right vs. left, but it isn’t. It’s right vs. middle. The left is left out.
I would say that only someone pretty far to the right could believe that all Democrats were genuine, dyed in the wool, liberals. Senator Lieberman and former President Clinton, to cite two examples, are too far toward the right end of the Dem’s 1/2 of the spectrum to be counted as liberals. Moderates might be a fair term.
One problem with debates like this is that the two terms, “liberal” and “conservative” are too vague and ill-defined. The image seems to be of a straight line with a notch at the exact mid-point – 1/2 left, 1/2 right. An over-simplication, IMO, but let’s use it for discussion.
On either half, there is an enormous range of opinion between that midpoint notch and the end of the line. My estimate would be that the Repubs streach from the midpoint to about 1/3 the way toward their end, and the Dems streach from the midpoint to about 1/3 the way toward their end. A lot of people are to the right of the Repubs and to the left of the Dems. Yet the Repubs seem to believe that the terms “Democrat” and “liberal” both mean the same thing; that both terms refer to everyone to the left of the midpoint. And the Dems believe the same about “Republicans” and “conservatives”.
We could talk more sensibly if we had more precise terms. Heck, if we just plain had more terms. As we talk as though Repub and conservative were synonyms and Dem and liberal were as well, we have, in effect, only two terms for the whole political spectrum. This is plainly inadequate.
2sense - that the memos were forged was clear before the 60 Minutes story aired. Three of the four experts CBS consulted told them that the documents could not be authenticated.
James Carville is centrist? My mistake, then.
Y’all are correct, then - there are two points of view in the news. One is the extreme, hard-line, fanatic, ultra-right-wing viewpoint of Fox. On the other is the centrist.
“Centrist” in this context meaning pro-abortion. pro-gay marriage, pro-Democratic, pro-government spending, anti-military, anti-Bush, anti-school voucher, and anti-Republican generally.
You know, centrist. 
Regards,
Shodan
You think you’re going to get conservatives to stop calling Clinton and Leiberman liberals? Now that the election’s over, conservatives have gone back to calling John McCain and George Pataki liberals.
Here’s a litmus test: how many politicians describe themselves as being a liberal? Reputable cites required and nothing more than twenty years old (or I’ll point out that the Blessed Reagan used to be a Democrat).
Well then lets look at the views of who the conservatives called the number one most liberal senator in the senate (that’s John Kerry).
He is for civil union and against gay marriage. Against abortion, but believes in a woman’s right to choose. He is pro-democrat. He is for the war but does not like the way it is being handled by the current administration.
That is pretty close to the center as it gets and he is still seen as liberal by conservatives. Shows what conservatives believe to be “liberal”.
There is a difference between spinning the news that is delivered versus choosing what and what not is delivered. Fox spins more than any liberal media source, but the liberal media completely omits stories that doesn’t support its agenda. Unfortunately, conservative commentators are too busy pointing out the absurdity of the left to take the time to cover stories that would really give balanced coverage.
Can you provide some examples of stories that the mainstream media surpressed?
2sense said:
Cite?
You can find plenty at the website of Project Censored – http://www.projectcensored.org/index.html – but these are suppressed stories that would embarrass conservatives, not liberals. If there’s a right-wing analogue to Project Censored I don’t know about it. There is, of course, Accuracy in Media (http://www.aim.org/), which is a right-wing analogue of liberal news criticism organizations such as Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (http://www.fair.org/) and David Brock’s Media Matters for America (http://mediamatters.org/).
I agree with Rob Cordy on The Daily Show. The facts are biased against Bush.
I didn’t say “supressed,” nor did I mean to imply it. I can count on five fingers of my fingerless hand stories that covered something positive about the invasion of Iraq. I didn’t see mention of, or at least adequate coverage of, the French massacre of civilians on the Ivory Coast. Nor do I ever hear about the Geneva Convention not being applicable to the terrorists or insurgents. The sheer volume of coverage of Abu Grahib and the Falluja marine betrays a liberal bias, and that’s before the spinning even began. Why don’t you ever see pictures like these on the front page of the NYT:
Now in defense against the liberal slant I will admit that the media tends to point out the faults of any incumbent’s policies regardless of his/her political affiliation. Not only does controversy sell better, but I think the media is petrified at the thought of ever being viewed as the propaganda arm of the US government.
Maybe for the same reason you don’t find a listing in the news of all the people who didn’t commit crimes on a given day.
“Good news” isn’t news because decent behaviour is the default of a civilised society.
We expect our soldiers to care about the Iraqi people. So it’s newsworthy when some of them don’t live up to that expectation (e.g., Abu Ghraib, Falluja).
Are you saying that expectation is a liberal bias?
Reason being, the Conventions areapplicable.
Fear and Quaking in FoxNews.
I disagree, I think is would be dishonest in anyone reporting the news w/o 1st stating their personal bias. This is where Fox is way ahead of the curve.
Also I think part of the liberal viewpoint is that you feel you are int he center and unbiased, which would explain why the ‘conventinal media’ thinks they are fair and objective and why liberals agree.
While I know what you mean when you say “good news isn’t news,” I don’t think its applicable to coverage of a war. Everything that happens in Iraq, good or bad, is essentially news if its a change from the way things were previously. People from other countries who watch CNN may think that decent behavior is far from the default of the US.
[Bolding mine]
You still think the Geneva Convention applies to terrorists and insurgents?
I’ve posted this before, but it bears repeating: During WWII, a bunch of German spies were captured wearing American uniforms in the Battle of the Bulge. They were lined up against a wall and summarily executed. No one batted an eye. They were not wearing their uniforms, they were not subject to the Geneva Conventions.
But insurgents, whether they even have uniforms or not, are generally acknowledged to have the right to be treated according to the rules of war. That goes back a lot further than the Geneva Conventions. When the British captured American rebels during the Revolut, when the Union troops captured Confederates in the Civil War, when the Republicans captured Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War, they didn’t just line them up and shoot them. Why is the situation in Iraq any different?
Well, you can’t cover everything that happens. The disagreement here seems to be about “balance”. You have to weight the coverage according to the magnitude of importance. When you have fatalities occuring daily, unresolved and new allegations of abuse, a fuel shortage, power outages, etc. - how pertinent is it that some soldiers gave out candy or toys to a group of kids? How much time should you devote to that? If you were living in that situation, what would you consider to be the most important news? Would you really think there should be equal time spent on that type of “good news”?
At what point does featuring this “good news” become promoting propaganda for the US? Is that the role of an independent media?
As we know, most people from other countries consider the invasion/occupation itself to be a deviation from decent behaviour (as do many inside the US). Is it CNN’s job to popularise or justify the war?
The situation in Iraq is different because the insurgents have tried to use the rules of war as a fighting tactic. For example, waving a white flag, waiting for Americans to leave cover, then opening fire on them.