Another Study Finds Liberal Media Bias

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
41

[quote]Marmadogg wrote:
The right wingnuttery has been working the ref for decades and liberals are finally starting to catch on.

Question to the right wingnuttery on this forum:

When doing a new segment on the Holocaust does the MSM have the responsibility of discussing an opposing viewpoint?

FYI - There is no opposing viewpoint for facts. Belief does not make something a fact.

Happy Holidays![/quote]

Yea, it was probably my imagination that Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw were somewhat biased toward the democratic party all those years.

It’s also my imagination that most reporters vote for the more liberal candidate of the two.

No wait…there is proof!

The reporters who would answer the question of who they voted for in the most recent Presidential election voted for Kerry by almost 3 to 1!

"In March and April 2005, the University of Connecticut?s Department of Public Policy surveyed 300 journalists nationwide ? 120 who worked in the television industry and 180 who worked at newspapers and asked for whom they voted in the 2004 presidential election.

In a report released May 16, 2005, the researchers disclosed that the journalists they surveyed selected Democratic challenger John Kerry over incumbent Republican President George W. Bush by a wide margin, 52 percent to 19 percent (with 1 percent choosing far-left independent candidate Ralph Nader).

One out of five journalists (21 percent) refused to disclose their vote, while another six percent either didn?t vote or said they did not know for whom they voted."

Gee do you think that the 21% who refused to answer all voted for Bush?

Nothing new here as they have been voting for the democrat for a long long time.

In this survey they voted for the democrat in every Presidential race since 1964! And by margins as high as 94% (that’s just about everyone)! As low as 81%.

"In 1981, S. Robert Lichter, then with George Washington University, and Stanley Rothman of Smith College, released a groundbreaking survey of 240 journalists at the most influential national media outlets ? including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS ? on their political attitudes and voting patterns.

Results of this study of the ?media elite? were included in the October/November 1981 issue of Public Opinion, published by the American Enterprise Institute, in the article “Media and Business Elites.”

The data demonstrated that journalists and broadcasters hold liberal positions on a wide range of social and political issues. This study, which was more elaborately presented in Lichter and Rothman?s subsequent book, The Media Elite, became the most widely quoted media study of the 1980s and remains a landmark today."

http://www.mediaresearch.org/biasbasics/biasbasics3.asp#The%20Media%20Elite

Okay, it’s time for you to post back about how the survey was to small to indicate a real trend. And also, how they vote does not mean that they are biased in there reporting.

Please come back with those two things-Don’t disapoint me…

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[quote]Marmadogg wrote:
…

FYI - There is no opposing viewpoint for facts. Belief does not make something a fact.

Happy Holidays![/quote]

What there are, w/r/t facts, are selective disclosure. Leaving out facts that are necessary to understand a situation is misleading – in fact, under the securities laws, as I’m sure you know, that would give rise to 10-b(5) liability for fraud via omission.

And of course, I’m sure you also realize that placement of facts in the story, use of adjectives, and using disputed items as facts are also quite misleading.

ADDENDUM: Check this link for a very good example of a journalism professor taking apart a Washington Post article for the inherent bias with which it presents “the facts.” RantingProfs.com is available at DomainMarket.com. Call 888-694-6735

Merry Christmas!

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Liberal - as in: against an illegal war; against secret prisons; against torture; against spying on US citizens; against nation building; against the most bloated, corporate driven, corrupt, reckless government of modern times… and Pat Buchanan.

Cheney Praises Fox News Channel
Vice President Calls Network ‘More Accurate’ Than Others

Ambush!
Why was the press complicit in keeping afloat a story so easily debunked?

[Ted] Koppel was unmoved. People watch [John] Stewart “to be informed,” Koppel insisted gloomily. “They actually think they’re coming closer to the truth with your show.”
http://www.cjrdaily.org/politics/ambush.php

That’s very telling - the mainstream “liberal” media could have done exactly like the Daily Show had done and exposed the flat out lies and “flip-flops”. The Daily Show, more than anything else, highlighted quite clearly the CONSERVATIVE bias of the MSM. (Actually they just follow the party line, “conservative” is no longer a valid label for the Republicans of the Fourth Reich.)

It’s not WHAT the MSM reports as much as the hundreds of things they DON’T report, especially during the run up to the election. The domestic spy story of today was touted by the same MSM as a conspiracy theory over a year ago.

The election problems of 2004 and likelyhood of vote tampering were and are not touched by the “TV” MSM where most people get their news, yet it’s probably the biggest unreported story ever in our so-called “democracy”.

GAO Report Finds Flaws in Electronic Voting
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/102105Q.shtml

EXCLUSIVE: SECURITIES FRAUD LITIGATION FILED AGAINST DIEBOLD, INC

Leon County, FL to Dump Diebold After Undetectable Hack Reverses Test Election

Voting machines hacked, Leon official says
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/state/content/state/epaper/2005/12/17/a28a_voting_1217.html

New tests fuel doubts about vote machines
A top election official and computer experts say computer hackers could easily change election results, after they found numerous flaws with a state-approved voting-machine in Tallahassee.

Would this not be considered major news to most Americans - and what is the reason the majority of Americans don’t know about it or think it’s just a conspiracy theory?

[quote]“Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record.”[/quote] ~1984

White House Web Scrubbing
Offending Comments on Iraq Disappear From Site
The Washington Post
Dec. 18, 2003
http://foi.missouri.edu/bushinfopolicies/whwebscrub.html

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I plan to cite this study whenever anyone accuses the ACLU of being liberal. I can now accurately point out that the ACLU is actually a conservative organization. Don’t the results of this study seem counterintuitive?

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“An Advocate for the Right.”
? Headline over a New York Times “news analysis” of Judge John Roberts? judicial philosophy, July 28. 2005

vs.

“Balanced Jurist at Home in the Middle.”
? Headline over a June 27, 1993 New York Times story on Supreme Court nominee Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Ginsburg was counsel to the ACLU by the way.

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“Balanced Jurist at Home in the Middle.”
? Headline over a June 27, 1993 New York Times story on Supreme Court nominee Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Ginsburg was counsel to the ACLU by the way.

*****Have you been paying attention? The ACLU has been revealed as a conservative organization…so her liberal leanings were counterbalanced by her role in the ACLU.

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I have been…and you?

Do you think Ginsburg is a moderate?

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Traditionally, conservatism focuses on individual rights and opposes big government. That’s basically what the ACLU does, as of late at least. Now that the administration is conservative, fighting its efforts of stripping rights with the Patriot Act makes the ACLU liberal?

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[quote]dermo wrote:
I plan to cite this study whenever anyone accuses the ACLU of being liberal. I can now accurately point out that the ACLU is actually a conservative organization. Don’t the results of this study seem counterintuitive?[/quote]

Some of them do – and that might be a failure of the chosen form of measurement (citations of think tanks). Or, it might be that certain organizations – and I think this would definitely apply to the ACLU – have extremely polar positions – very liberal on some issues, and very libertarian on others. The libertarian positions are considered conservative by this study (it attempted to classify everything as either liberal or conservative). It’s funny that actual defense of free speech would get a “conservative” label for a position, but I’d be fairly certain that would be the explanation.

For NPR, I’d guess it’s much more likely that the form of measurement – think-tank citations – was the problem. I think NPR likes to use academics a lot, and they weren’t categorized as part of the spectrum.

50

[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
I think NPR likes to use academics a lot, and they weren’t categorized as part of the spectrum.[/quote]

Maybe because of it every one of my (academic) colleagues (including my wife and I) listen mainly to NPR… NPR actually is very good at telling the whole story – and both sides of it. The fact that they don’t have the pressure of large audiences upon them seems to help a lot in that respect.

By the way, if you get hold of a full copy of this study before I do, let us know. My wife read the article and she can’t comment on it because the methodology is not properly explained.