I would love to respond regarding Dan Rather, but I am not really familar with him or his reporting. I get my news from the Web and NPR (thus my interest in seeing your cites). From the little I have heard and read it did appear to me that he was biased and that his bias was apparent in the news stories he was reporting on several times during his career.
Back to the choice of adjectives: I do think the stats are stunning, and shocking. I believe that African Americans and Hispanics are just as smart at caucasians and have the same drive to succeed. I believe that the legal field is a popular one for people to go into and that while lawyer jokes are common, lawyers are actually revered in our society. With these two beliefs finding that only less than 1% of the qualified applicants of law schools are African American and less than 3% are hispanic shocks me. It stuns me. I am not a big believe in affirmative action. I am saying nothing about fixing anything or making a call on whether anything is broken. I am saying I am stunned.
Out of curiosity I went to Google News and searched for the word stunning. Most of the hits are in relation to sports (“the stunning upset of the favored champion”) and there were a couple of references to the stunning results of the Jackson trial. Hell, Fox news uses stunning to describe Lance Armstrong, Michael Jackson (again the trial results) and James E. McGreevey’s declaration that he was gay and would resign as NJ Governor… (Does this mean FOX is biased?).
Ok, so first we need to be able to tell enunciation from endorsement. Is giving voice to something the same as endorsing it?
What exactly constitutes “fair and unbiased reporting”? If you can give some examples then maybe we can get on the same page as to what constitutes unfair/biased reporting which trespasses over into endorsement of particular views.
(Assuming I even believe there is any important bias in NPR) Because for the same reason why so we should help anyone. Because there are more good reasons to do something, then not to refrain from it.
As Scott Plaid said I think there are more good reasons to keep NPR around than “bad” reasons to let it disappear as a not worthwhile thing.
I mentioned before that I think the ability to get unbiased news in the United States has been sharply curtailed. Most news organizations, even FOX, would say that they adhere to high journalistic standards. Nevertheless these are profit earning companies at heart and there are ample examples of the news being skewed to better serve the corporation’s interests than journalistic integrity. They may not outright lie but the choices they make on what to report as well as how they spin their stories allow for a lot of latitude while still making the claim of journalistic integrity and maintain a straight face.
I believe NPR is one of the last if not the last bastion of a news organization in the United States that genuinely tries to adhere to the best journalistic ideals. While they may lean left now and again they make a serious attempt at keeping that in check and do a pretty good job of it. The missteps are few and more than outweighed by the value in reporting and analysis they provide their listeners.
For my money this is a legitimate benefit to our society as a whole. Whether you listen to NPR or not it is good to know they are there. It is good to know that a news agency exists that will gleefully call bullshit wherever they see it because they do not have to worry about a major advertiser pulling an account or worry about their CEO who has to worry about pissing off favorite political connections or worry about their shareholders.
There is and equivalence which was the whole point of the piece:
If the reporter stopped there I would (incorrectly) conclude that Bush is widely supported by Catholics. After all the largest lay Catholic orginization invited him to speak and rousingly cheered many of his points. By adding the next portion:
The reporter continues on and (correctly) reports that the Knights are not a representative sample of Catholics and they lean conservative. I now have the information to come to the correct conclusion that the Knights support Mr. Bush while Catholics at large are very much split down the middle.
One more thing, what other quote would you rather the reporter had used in his piece? The one he selected went perfectly into his report and gave the explanation of why the Knights support the president despite his disagreements with the Pope.
Whites are underrepresented in the NBA. Are you telling us that this isn’t a problem? Salaries for NBA players are probably much better, on average, that those for lawyers.
I would consider it a problem if the number of Black law school applicants was about equal to their % of the population, and if those applicants had about the same qualifications as Whites, and if the numbers of Blacks accepted was considerable smaller than the % of applicants. That would imply the likelihood of racial discrimination.
Why even trot out that ridiculous example John? NBA basketball players make up approixmately .0003% of the workforce. Blacks are grossly (oops I threw in my bias I suppose) underrepresented throughout the professional workforce and higher education. The causes and correct course of action is a matter for another thread but your example is a strawman in the extreme.
Well, you could start by taking the time to discover who in the U.S. is actually on the far left. My claim is not that no person in the U.S. can be characterized as far left, it is that the country has shifted sufficiently to the right and that the far left has sufficiently atrophied as to no longer play any genuine role in U.S. politics. If you are going to try to paint Kucinich as “far left,” what in the world are you going to use to describe the CPUSA, The Peace and Freedom Party, The Socialist Workers Party and other groups who really do exist, but who are pretty well ignored in national politics.
To use a classroom analogy, you want to set up all the grades on a bell curve and give the bottom 15% an F even if most of the grades were in the high 90s and no one in the bottom 15% scored less than an 85. I prefer to use grades that indicate the actual scores and if everyone is above 85, then there are simply no Fs to be handed out.
All the nonsense being spewed forth about objectivity being ‘impossible’ is just whack.
Unbiased journalism is not ‘impossible’ but requires specific training in objectivity, research and fact-checking and the will to practice it consistently. Objectivity in journalism can be attained when it is a collaborative goal (and that includes reporters, editors and publishers).
In school we spent hours of class time poring over newspaper articles and headlines while our journalism prof. would rip apart every subjective sentence, pointing out slanted stories and the occasional sighting of downright yellow journalism screaming THIS BELONGS ON THE OP-ED PAGE. When he got pissed enough he would air-kick the offending reporter out the window, “take THAT you witless coward”… One time he didn’t even bother to speak: He came in, posted the offending article on the bulletin board, kicked his briefcase out the door, and stormed off. He was purple as a beet.
With training one can report neutrally but only if one is fully cognizant of one’s own biases while doing so. Editors in the not too disant past played an active role in this process. Fact-checkers were busy, and if not feared at least well-respected.
The kind of lazy interview-based reporting in the popular media today is anathema to traditional journalists, and is perfectly designed to slant a story rather than convey facts. A reporter will interview a ‘spokesman’ for either side of an issue and then ‘summarize’. The bias comes when the reporter chooses the best interview source for ‘his’ side and the worst interview source for ‘their’ side. His source for facts is the interviewee. (Actually an interviewee should ALWAYS be suspect in the reporter’s eyes). How often does a reporter independently research or the claims or statistics provided by a favorite source? Interviews are all well and good, but it should be a reporter’s JOB to dig out the facts, not to interpret or to summarize other people’s opinions. Dig, dig, dig and you may even be able to see it for yourself before anybody else does - that’s where the term ‘scoop’ came from. HARD NEWS and eyewitness news we used to call it, you don’t see much in the popular media now.
I feel like you are moving towards a solution here and affirmative action. To me the problem is not with the law schools, but could either be with the primary schools or maybe even the minority culture.
I think the relevant question to ask is why do African Americans make up such a stunningly small percentage of those qualified to be accepted into law school? Similarly, why is the percentage of hispanics qualified for law school so shockingly small? Is it a problem with their primary/elementary school educations? Is it that they don’t want to be lawyers and are not taking the test? What is the nature of the problem that creates the situation where the minorites that make up roughly 40% of our population only make up 2% of our lawyers?
IMHO the problem is not with the law schools and cannot be fixed with affirmative action. If someone isn’t qualified, they shouldn’t be allowed in. But I still believe there is a problem.
Your bias is slipping thru here, treis. College enrollement rates for Blacks is more subject to the ups and downs of the economy than that of Whites, and while a higher percentage of Whites than Blacks attend college, I don’t see how that difference could be characterized as a “gross” misunderrpresentation. Cite.
I think we’d all like that the gap to be 0%, but 8% cannot reasonably be called a gross inequality.
And you didn’t address the second part of my post. Why not?
I disagree. It is impossible to be perfectly unbiased. As this thread showed earlier what to many looks like a fair and balanced piece is perceived by others to be slanted even if unintentionally so.
There are simply too many variables. A reporter cannot help but distill what they are seeing through their experiences and prejudices. Certainly they can attempt to be aware of those and mitigate their bias but no one can acocunt for every little niggling thing. You are also correct that adding in editors and fact checkers and the like can mitigate the bias even further. In the end you can come out with a very balanced and nearly bias free piece. Still…I bet with any bit of reporting that goes beyond the minimum of information (e.g. “President met with Congressional leaders today. Rain expected this eveving. Cubs lose.”) you can find someone out there who thinks there is a spin on it.
In the end though I would say it gets nitpicky. A well done piece with a serious attempt at being fair and balanced I would generally call unbiased and good enough as long as it isn’t subjected to some crazy amount of scrutiny. The writer/reporter can esily defend their piece as accurate and fair and that is the bottom line most times.
I apologize, when I meant higher education I meant those working in higher education as either professors, researchers, etc. I would also point out that your cite is for high school graduates and is for college enrollment. I think the more important number is college graduate rates for the entire population.
Becuase this thread is entitled “Why the Pubbies Are Trying To Muzzle NPR” not “Are blacks discriminated against in higher education.” I merely wanted to point out that your example was a strawman.
[QUOTE=treisI merely wanted to point out that your example was a strawman.[/QUOTE]
It wasn’t a strawman. There was nothing exagerated about it, nor did it distort the original argument. You might consider it a bad analogy, but not a strawman. However, I don’t think it was a bad analogy either.
Y’know, over on Bricker’s thread that was spawned by this one (“Fox News Is Biased” – you’re welcome, Bricker!) someone pointed out that there were a variety of broadcast news sources that provide a rough equivalence in reporting the big stories of the day – he said, “If you turn on Fox, MSNBC, CNN, etc., at 1 p.m. on a weekday, you’ll get pretty much the same story, just with some slight variations in spin.”
I was wondering. Is there ANY analogue to NPR on the radio out there for providing good, unvarnished coverage of national news and events, with in-depth reporting, etc.? Because I’ve spun aruond the radio dial, and I have found flat NUTHIN. Nuthin’ but nuthin’. This alone would be sufficient rationale for government funding of NPR. At drive time, it is the ONLY alternative to a mountain of partisan commentary (hate radio, Air America) and (the vast majority) out and out brain-damaged crap.