Media Bias Anyone?

[BeAChooser]

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/pub...rs_try_to_help_the_candidate_they_want_to_win

September 11, 2008

Seven out of 10 voters (69%) remain convinced that reporters try to help the candidate they want to win, and this year by a nearly five-to-one margin voters believe they are trying to help Barack Obama.

... snip ...

Interestingly, while 83% of Republican voters think most reporters are trying to help Obama, 19% of Democrats agree, one percentage point higher than the number of Democrats who believe they are trying to help McCain. Unaffiliated voters by a 53% to 10% margin see reporters trying to help Obama.

Forty-five percent (45%) of Democrats say most reporters are providing unbiased coverage in the current presidential campaign, but only 20% of unaffiliateds and nine percent (9%) of Republicans agree.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

Wow, a lot of people say there is a media bias. Therefore, it is true.

 

[Upchurch]

Wow, a lot of people say there is a media bias. Therefore, it is true.

Same reason why the sun used to go around the Earth until people decided differently.

 

[dirtywick]

Doesn't really matter if it's true.

 

[leftysergeant]

The media are showing bias and defending their candidate.

They focus on what Obama has said in detail. They run as few spots on McCain and Palin as possible.

This, naturally gives the impression that they want to paint Obama in a favorable way.

Actually, they are trying not to let us see McCain drooling on himself.

 

[PixyMisa]

The media are showing bias and defending their candidate.

They focus on what Obama has said in detail. They run as few spots on McCain and Palin as possible.

This, naturally gives the impression that they want to paint Obama in a favorable way.

This is precisely what they are doing.

Actually, they are trying not to let us see McCain drooling on himself.

You are quite, quite irrational when it comes to politics, aren't you?

 

[PixyMisa]

Wow, a lot of people say there is a media bias. Therefore, it is true.

No.

But the widespread perception of media bias is a problem for the media whether they are actually biased or not.

Which they are, blatantly. The problem is not the bias so much as the pretense that they are, to borrow a phrase, fair and balanced.

 

[leftysergeant]

This is precisely what they are doing.


You are quite, quite irrational when it comes to politics, aren't you?

Not at all. I was just pointing out that all too often, for his purposes, when McCain opens his mouth, something irrational, absurd, mean-spirited or false comes out. Like his getting his panties in a bunch over the lipstick comment.

I just take it as a sign thast he too much resembles Ronald Reagan in the worst way.

 

[Coffee]

Bias in news reporting is nothing new and I am surprised that people seemed shocked by it. The press is not under any obligation to be independent when it comes to politics. Freedom of the press allows them to be as biased as they want to.

 

[TellyKNeasuss]

The Republicans have been conducting a campaign to convince the public that the media has a liberal bias for decades. So it's natural for people to have a knee-jerk reaction that says that the media have a liberal bias. But no one has ever been able to demonstrate that there really is one-sided coverage. Here in Denver, the newspapers have been giving substantially more coverage to McCain-Palin than to Obama-Biden for the past 2 weeks. In fact, I can't even remember the last time there was even an article about Biden in either of the major daily newspapers here.

 

[Ziggurat]

But no one has ever been able to demonstrate that there really is one-sided coverage.

The charge isn't that the media engages in one-sided coverage, the charge is that it's biased. That's not the same thing. And there have in fact been studies on the question of media bias. Here's a bit about one of them:
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/Media-Bias-Is-Real-Finds-UCLA-6664.aspx

 

[gdnp]

Yes, it has been previously demonstrated that the Republican party has done a good job in convincing the American people that the press is biased towards the left, just as they have convinced many that John Paul Stevens is a liberal even though he was a swing vote moderate for much of his term. Thank you Karl Rove.

 

[Brainster]

I don't think there's any doubt that the press leans to the liberal side; in 2000 and 2004 Slate asked all their staff to report whom they planned on voting for; IIRC the results were along the lines of 31-4 in favor of the Democrats.

Howie Kurtz had a simply amazing column yesterday about the media coverage of the election:

Maybe it's a sense that this is crunch time, that the election is on the line, that the press is being manipulated (not that there's anything new about that).

News outlets are increasingly challenging false or questionable claims by the McCain campaign, whether it's the ad accusing Obama of supporting sex-ed for kindergartners (the Illinois legislation clearly describes "age-appropriate" programs) or Palin's repeated boast that she stopped the Bridge to Nowhere (after she had supported it, and after Congress had effectively killed the specific earmark).

As Power Line noted:

Obama did support sex education down to kindergarten. Kurtz thinks that's OK, because the sex education for five-year-olds would be "age appropriate." He's entitled to that opinion, but my opinion, and that of most voters, is that any sex education for kindergartners is a terrible idea. In any event, whether you think teaching five-year-olds about sex is a good idea or a bad idea, the ad is true.

Likewise with the ad that says Governor Palin killed the Bridge to Nowhere: it's a simple fact that no one, including the Democratic Party in Alaska, thought to deny until Palin was selected to run for Vice-President. We wrote about it here. As the Anchorage Daily News reported on March 12, 2008:

Palin ruffled feathers when she announced - without giving the delegation advance notice - that the state was killing the Ketchikan bridge to Gravina Island, site of the airport and a few dozen residents.

Mark Steyn adds on the manipulation issue:

But, if you were really savvy, you'd "manipulate" the media into a stampede of lurid drivel deriding her as a Stepford wife and a dominatrix, comparing her to Islamic fundamentalists, Pontius Pilate and porn stars, and dismissing her as a dysfunctional brood mare who can't possibly be the biological mother of the kid she was too dumb to abort. Who knows? It's a long shot, but if you could pull it off, a really cunning media manipulator might succeed in manipulating Howie's buddies into spending the month after Labor Day outbidding each other in some insane Who Wants To Be An Effete Condescending Media Snob? death-match. You'd not only make the press look like bozos, but that in turn might tarnish just a little the fellow these geniuses have chosen to anoint.

 

[leftysergeant]

How many people read Slate? The left-leaning media are quarantined to the internet and low-powered signals by the corporate raiders who own the strong signals. They come in and buy out all the stations they can, put up idiots like the Rushblob and Michael Wiener and flood the markets with their ranting. Of all the stations that carried Air America Radio and changed formats later, nearly all were bought out by the conglomerate thugs. It's an ownership thing.

The corporate media are adamantly right-wing and they are silencing any dissent their money will allow them to silence.

 

[Ziggurat]

How many people read Slate? The left-leaning media are quarantined to the internet and low-powered signals by the corporate raiders who own the strong signals. They come in and buy out all the stations they can, put up idiots like the Rushblob and Michael Wiener and flood the markets with their ranting. Of all the stations that carried Air America Radio and changed formats later, nearly all were bought out by the conglomerate thugs. It's an ownership thing.

The corporate media are adamantly right-wing and they are silencing any dissent their money will allow them to silence.

Air America sank because nobody listened to it. Rush is so prominant because people listen to him. Corporations prefer Rush to Al Franken because there's no money in shows with no listeners, but lots of money in shows with lots of listeners. The difference is driven by listenership. Decry that all you want to, but that's the reason. Dollars win over ideology in any successful business.

Of course, that also has something to do with why newspapers are failing.

 

[leftysergeant]

Air America sank because nobody listened to it.

Hard to listen to a signal so weak that it is drowned out by stations two thousdand miles away as soon as the sun goes down.

The right wingers own the signals and only grudgingly allow a liberal station to come into a market. Do you really believe that there is more of a market for high school football and basketball than for a dissenting political voice? There is no market for a dissenting voice on a station that covers thousdands of square miles, but there is a market for another Spanish music station in the same area with twenty other similar? Don't feed me compost and call it chocolate mousse.

Of course, that also has something to do with why newspapers are failing.

Newspapers are losing advertising revenue to the senders of unsolicited junk mail because that has become the medium of choice since Nixon didled the Post Office around.

 

[geni]

I don't think there's any doubt that the press leans to the liberal side; in 2000 and 2004 Slate asked all their staff to report whom they planned on voting for; IIRC the results were along the lines of 31-4 in favor of the Democrats.

And something like 100% would say that they supported truthful journalism and proper research. Are you suggesting that these kind of figures have some kind of relationship with journalistic output?

 

[Ziggurat]

Hard to listen to a signal so weak that it is drowned out by stations two thousdand miles away as soon as the sun goes down.

It's always interesting to see the excuses ideologues will dredge up to excuse the failure of their ideas in a competitive market.

The right wingers own the signals and only grudgingly allow a liberal station to come into a market. Do you really believe that there is more of a market for high school football and basketball than for a dissenting political voice?

Do you have evidence that there is not? Yes, I get that you think "dissenting political voice" is more important than highschool sports, but your incredulity that actual demand might be otherwise doesn't constitute evidence that the public isn't more interested in the latter than the former.

Newspapers are losing advertising revenue to the senders of unsolicited junk mail because that has become the medium of choice since Nixon didled the Post Office around.

Yeah. And that explains their steady slide in readership as well. Try again.

 

[leftysergeant]

It's always interesting to see the excuses ideologues will dredge up to excuse the failure of their ideas in a competitive market.

Competetive market my foot. There was a good rerason for the old rules against media consolidation. It has, under Republican meddling, become an oligarchy. That simple. There is no free market anymore. If you don't have the money, you don't have a voice.

 

[applecorped]

Competetive market my foot. There was a good rerason for the old rules against media consolidation. It has, under Republican meddling, become an oligarchy. That simple. There is no free market anymore. If you don't have the money, you don't have a voice.

Democrats don't have money?