Have I mentioned the press is going to win this election for Obama?Â
“Off the record, every suspicion you have about MSM being in the tank for O is true. We have a team of 4 people going thru dumpsters in Alaska and 4 in arizona. Not a single one looking into Acorn, Ayers or Freddiemae. Editor refuses to publish anything that would jeopardize election for O, and betting you dollars to donuts same is true at NYT, others. People cheer when CNN or NBC run another Palin-mocking but raising any reasonable inquiry into obama is derided or flat out ignored. The fix is in, and its working.” I asked permission to reprint without attribution and it was granted.
Some are saying this is the media’s last gasp, but that’s wishful thinking. The news media is becoming more leftist as revenues drop and jobs in the field become more of a volunteer advocacy position than a career, so whatever they’re losing in influence is more than offset by the increased virulence. And with a Dem Congress and President Obama we may get a socialist bailout of particular partisan usefulness, resulting in an American version of the BBC.
If they’re successful in electing their chosen candidate, why would anyone expect them to just fade away? More likely they’ll revel in their power — and find sundry wonderful new uses for it.
Glenn’s reader Eric Schubert offers this optimistic scenario:
“…imagine the backlash against the MSM if it could be shown that a reasonable investigation by the MSM would have easily revealed this secret to the public prior to the election?”
Let’s be honest: if that happens, most of them will be proud. Many of them will have actively suppressed such stories. Few will even realize their bias played any role in the decision, and fewer yet would ever admit it.  You might see such a story on Drudge and Fox News, but the MSM won’t indict itself over anything done to further their holy mission.
Too cynical? Remember, Dan Rather still thinks the memos were real.
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Hmmm… So now are you all going to believe me when I say that the press being completely in the tank for one party is a serious danger to our freedoms and our means of electing our "leaders?"
I’ve been serious all along. It’s nice to see other people are starting to see the danger too.
I will repeat myself. The complete abdication of the "free press" from executing their supposed "Fourth Estate" purpose and exposing the excesses of ALL sides of Government is a clear and present threat to the American way of life. I can’t make it any clearer than that. For a long time it’s been an annoyance to deal with the overwhelming press bias. In the last two elections we are starting to see how the press is becoming an active power broker in the system.
Perhaps it will be another 1976, a time when the press was also virulently anti-Republican and helped to stack the deck in Washington overwhelmingly with Democrats. The eventual result of that was the Reagan Revolution after this country got to see what a true Democrat leadership did. Will the same thing happen again? I hope so, but to do so requires another Reagan and I don’t see one on the horizon.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Rhlyssa in Telaar
I think there are several things going on here. First, much of the MSM continues to repeat Republican spin, even when it is pretty obviously a stretch. The lipstick on a pig flap is a good example. The MSM knew the McCain campaign outrage was entirely manufactured, but they played along and repeated it for days. I think the MSM bends over backwards to be deferential to Republicans.
But the main point, is McCain use to be a press favorite. McCain use to be accessible to the media and he would speak his mind freely to reporters. When he ran for president in 2000 he spoke bluntly about his feeling that the Bush campaign had smeared him. That’s how he got the maverick, straight shooter reputation.
McCain no longer is available to talk to reporters, which is probably not so surprising. What the MSM does find surprising is that McCain has turn his campaign over to many of the former Bush campaign staff, and they are now using the same smear tactics. In fact they have pushed the smear tactics so far, that ever Karl Rove said they have stepped over the line. Many in the MSM expected John McCain to run a more honorable campaign. They are shocked at the difference between the 2000 John McCain and the 2008 John McCain.
mikeca, it’s pretty clear to me that you and I live in different worlds.
It seems to me the NYT started its slime-job on McCain with the "lobbyist romance" hit-piece, which had pretty much no basis in reality. That was, what, February?
Would you trust someone who would say things like that about you? Seriously?
Go ahead, though. Deny and spin all you want.
You still believe the NY Times Co.
I’ll tell y’all one thing, this is undeniable proof that we black folks are fully American with a cherry on top: majority white MSM is in the tank for the black dude! I feel like crying. What a country!
On a more serious note, the whole “first black dude” has much more power in the press than I thought. There’s the historical element that the press is eating up. Think about all the documentaries and retrospectives that MSM can create if Senator Obama wins the presidency. It’s going to be awe-inspiring sick and repetitive.
Senator McCain would be boring to the press (although Governor Palin has her own brand of excitement). This is the country of Hollywood and American Idol. Hype, glitz, and instant movies. MSM is gravitating to BIGGER movie. And that’s Obama.
I may be somewhat in the tank for Obama, but I can see the slant many times no matter what McCain does.
Only a liberal would say the MSM isn’t liberal enough.
Bravo, mikeca, bravo.
I suppose the media isn’t truly fair in mikeca’s view until they don’t run a single anti-Obama report. Until that moment, they’re clearly in the tank for McCain.
The phrase, "When pigs fly," used to mean something but I get a sneaking suspicion that in mikeca’s world they already do.
When are you going to wake up to the real world, mikeca? There isn’t a single standard by which we could judge the MSM and not conclude they’re anti-Republican and anti-conservative through and through. Not. One. Standard.
Do you really want to compare the anti-McCain stories vs. the anti-Obama stories? Really?
Sometimes the MSM must run a story critical of the Obama campaign at least in an attempt to claim to be fair. So they can, as you’ve done for them, point and say, "Look! We ran that lipstick thing! We’re fair!"
Meanwhile they’re dumpster diving in Alaska and Arizona.
mikeca -
You offer that the media parroted and analyzed the lipstick on a pig narrative "to be deferential to Republicans."
In fact, they played it up – specifically the cable news networks -Â because it was controversy (manufactured or otherwise) that gets them ratings.
This works both ways, on bulk of the left-leaning mainstream press and apparent conservative stalwarts like Drudge and Fox News – they will all cross the aisle to drum up controversy and get eyeballs on their product.
This is a distinct but situationally related phenomenon from the majority of the mainstream media being very deep in the tank for Obama.
All I know is, all my diehard liberal friends are sure that the media is a bought-and-paid-for tool of the Republican party, so depth of conviction on this issue isn’t a good indicator for me. Nor do I find anonymous emails particularly convincing either way.  My question is, if there’s all this undug dirt on Obama, why aren’t the more conservative news organizations digging it? It seems to me as though Fox News or the Wall Street Journal could have some incredible scoops if no one else is paying attention to the Obama scandals! So why aren’t they?
Every time problems of apparent media bias are exposed, there seems to inevitably be someone pointing to areas where they’ve been unfair to the other side, which seems to them to cancel the idea that there’s an overall bias. But that’s weird, especially because "bias" normally means a tilt; a rifle with a bias to the left is not incapable of being shot to the right. Its accuracy is just going to need compensating for, and if you don’t even know it’s there you’re going to have severe shooting problems and blame yourself.
I do in fact think the press has been much harder on Palin because most of them don’t like her; in point of fact, we simply know, for an empirical, verifiable fact, that the working press overwhelmingly votes Democratic. They have in every single election for, literally, decades. This is pretty obviously (to me) for two reasons: a) the personality type attracted to journalism as a career, and b) the areas of the country where our major media centers developed in–Los Angeles and New York.
Although no battle plan survived contact with the enemy, and any VP pick is going to have down sides, Palin’s biggest turns out to be that she’s only got a very short time to get up to speed on a lot of issues. Some of that shouldn’t matter–for example, why she should be expected to provide instant concrete and clear answers as to the background of one of Senator McCain’s campaign chiefs who she probably only met a month or two ago makes no sense, yet she’s been pilloried for not having an immediate answer on that.
My suspicion is that at least on Palin, she’s got an excellent opportunity to exceed expectations wildly at the debate with Senator Biden. FWIW.
Oh, but to answer Elizabeth’s question: Fox News is biased to the right the way much of the rest of the press is biased to the left–i.e. biased, off-center. Like most of the press, it’s mostly centrist, and they’ll shoot at the right just fine, they’ll just miss a little more often to the right than the left.
Anyway, if you read conservative media, they have been going after Obama on a lot; the reason many of them think the press is in love with Obama (and most of the press is in love with him, McCain’s the girl they lost interest in and Obama’s the new hottie) is because the main media is mostly ignoring what the more conservative media is pointing out about Obama in favor of digging through Palin’s garbage cans trying to find that receipt where she put some chapstick on her government-issued gas card at a 7-11 in Anchorage.
As I say, I think that’s as much a function of her newnewss to the press as anything else, whereas Obama is a known quantity and boring (and yes, they already love him anyway).
My conservative friends are a lot more worried about all this than I am, for reasons I think we’ve already discussed; the country will surely survive 4-8 years of either man’s Presidency. And I think the press can only impact an election so much, because common sense usually prevails with most voters, who are smarter than most people on the right or the left tend to give them credit for.
Don’t mean to change the subject Dean but the best way to get off an expensive host and fit the limitations of an inexpensive host is to off-load comments to a system like IntenseDebate or Disqus. Server load for comments can get kind of high. Both systems will see your Wordpress comments and automatically import them into their system. Just a thought!
the main media is mostly ignoring what the more conservative media is pointing out about Obama
The thing I don’t get about this is – who decides what is "the main media"? The WSJ has a larger circulation than the NYT, by quite a lot.  Why is the NYT therefore the "main media" while the WSJ is not?
Elizabeth,
The Big 3 networks (and their little subsidiaries like MSNBC)Â mostly take the lead of the New York Times. That amplifies the voice of the Times by quite a bit. Also, the Times has echoes in the Boston Globe (wholely owned) and the International Herald Tribune (used to be a partnership with WSJ, now just the Times if memory serves).
WSJ is mainstream media; but it’s still a minority factor over all.
If data is what you want (and you’re right to want that), start with this UCLA study. Key takeaway:
Our results show a strong liberal bias. All of the news outlets except Fox News’ Special Report and the Washington Times received a score to the left of the average member of Congress.  Consistent with many conservative critics, CBS Evening News and the New York Times received a score far left of center. Outlets such as the Washington Post, USA Today, NPR’s Morning Edition, NBC’s Nightly News and ABC’s World News Tonight were moderately left. The most centrist outlets (but still left-leaning) by our measure were the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, CNN’s NewsNight with Aaron Brown, and ABC’s Good Morning America. Fox News’ Special Report, while right of center, was closer to the center than any of the three major networks’ evening news broadcasts. All of our findings refer strictly to the news stories of the outlets. That is, we omitted editorials, book reviews, and letters to the editor from our sample.
The press and media are biased, but not left or right, but rather in favor of the establishment. The complaints from right and left are much the same as the complaints by patrisans of the Israelis or the Palestinians whenever anything is written about it in foreign policy journals. Both sides demand total fealty, they complain bitterly when the media doens’t imbibe the kool aid they have on offer (and the media tends to imbibe the koolaid from both sides fairly often, mind you – it’s actually very balanced indeed. Its the anti-establishment, voices of reason and genuine principled critique, that get drowned out.
In this specific case, Dave you seem upset that the issues of "Acorn, Ayers or Freddiemae" are not being addressed and found to be the total game-ending scandal that will take Obama out from his trajectory towards victory. Of course, the possibility that the media has already looked at it, and found them to be without merit, doesn’t occur to you. Your complaint on this score reminds me of the teeth-gnashing from dailykos when the media Refused to talk about the Secret Bulge under Bush’s jacket during the first Kerry debate, or the "obvious" vote-stealig in Ohio in 2004 (the secretary of state was a .. dum dum dum.. Republican! you know OMFG), or even more recently the refusal to take seriously the allegations that Palin’s child is actually her grandchild (an allegation that began, and ended, in the blogsphere – not a SINGLE mainstream media publication, not the NYT or WaPo or CNN or MSNBC or whoever else are your media bogeymen these days, even gave that ridclousness even tangential mention.
But ok, you got an anonymous email that assures you that there are conspiracies afoot. To each his own.
Martin, thats an interesting study you cite. More interesting is the methodology:
To compute our measure, we count the times that a media outlet cites various think tanks and other policy groups. We compare this with the times that members of Congress cite the same think tanks in their speeches on the floor of the House and Senate. By comparing the citation patterns we construct an ADA score. As a simplified example, imagine that there were only two think tanks, one liberal and one conservative. Suppose that the New York Times cited the liberal think tank twice as often as the conservative one. Our method asks: What is the typical ADA score of members of Congress who exhibit the same frequency (2:1) in their speeches? This is the score that we would assign to the New York Times. Our results show a strong liberal bias.
I dont know about you but I don’t think of citations of think tanks when I think of "bias". First of all that methodology assumes that think tanks are inherently "left" or "right" – but those terms dont have the sublety to capture the difference between, for example, CATO and Heritage. On some issues, tose think tanks actually take a position that is at odds with "conservative" orthodoxy, since the latter is defined by the Republican party’s political priorities, which many conservatives will agree aren’t always exactly conservative. Nationalization and market bailouts, anyone?
At any rate, "bias" is something inherently subjective so no study is going to do a good job of really measuring it. Suffice ot say that you will find it if you go looking for it. In my opinion it balances out pretty well.
Also as far as the voting patterns of the media go, thats probably trends democratic and liberal, but you’re basically accusing the entire cadre of media journalism of being tabloid artists rather than professionals. Its a profoundly cynical view to argue that if you vote for a Democrat that automaically means you’re going to tilt your reporting to favor that side. Again, you’re welcome to that view if you like, but I don’t share it.
Martin,
It’s an interesting look at the issue and I thank you for posting it because it was fun to read. However, the authors are very careful to note that their definition of ‘bias’ has more to do with sins of omission than commission. They’re noting that some stories are likely to get more play in ‘conservative’ news outlets than in ‘liberal’ ones, and vice versa.
What CosmicConservative and the others here are saying goes a lot further than that. They’re alleging that entirety of what could be considered the MSM are such active Obama supporters that they’re actively killing negative Obama stories (which they assume exist), making up negative McCain stories, and sabotaging our democracy by "winning the election for Obama". That’s a much stronger allegation.
Aziz,
Its a profoundly cynical view to argue that if you vote for a Democrat that automaically means you’re going to tilt your reporting to favor that side. Again, you’re welcome to that view if you like, but I don’t share it.
It’s a profoundly naive view to think that when 80%+ of the newsroom votes Democrat, that doesn’t create a bubble effect. Read Goldberg. In a small number of cases, he cites active partisanship. But for the most part, it’s the bubble that’s the problem. People in the media aren’t even aware they have a bias, because they’re in the center from their point of view.
Elizabeth,
What CosmicConservative and the others here are saying goes a lot further than that. They’re alleging that entirety of what could be considered the MSM are such active Obama supporters that they’re actively killing negative Obama stories (which they assume exist), making up negative McCain stories, and sabotaging our democracy by "winning the election for Obama".Â
Cosmic may allege that; but I think you’re exaggerating the opinion of many, Dave Price included.
First, the negative Obama stories do exist, but do get ignored by mainstream media until they’re forced to pay attention. This is the bubble effect in action. It’s not much different from the time the media laughed off stories of the semen-stained blue dress, until Drudge forced them to take notice.
But beyond the passive bubble effect, there is active suppression. Remember, the blue dress wasn’t active reporting on Drudge’s part: he simply released what some reporter (for Newsweek, I think) already knew but had been denied publication.
And as for making up negative McCain stories: well, the whol mistress fraud is exhibit A. There are others. And lets not forget either making up or credulously investigating all the lies about Governor Palin’s family.
Tyrone–"The MSM is gravitating to the BIGGER movie"…I think that really does capture the way many of these people think.
Many MSM people desperately want to be cool, or at least to be allowed to hang out with the kool kidz, and base their political opinions & coverage on this desire much more than on any actual analysis of policies.
I see where you’re coming from Martin, but I dont see evidence, just a vague allusion to a "bubble effect" which doesn’t really seem to have any quantifiable impact in reporting overall. As I said upthread, the bias is pro-establishment if anything. On teh whole the complainst about bias are the only metric you will reasonably be able to invoke to assess the "bubble" and on that score the media gets equal marks from both sides. Must be doing something right.
Also, please show me on emainstream journalist outlet, ie NYT WaPo CNN or a regional newspaper like the Detroit free press or Star Tribune etc that has given even a modicum ofink to the various lies about Palin’s family or McCain’s mistress fraud (incidentally, I have no clue about that last one. What fraud? Surely as an avid consumer of mainstream news I’d be in the know about it, were the bias bubble operative…)
Martin,
Well, which is it? Am I exaggerating, or are their views actually true?
Perhaps I remember the ‘mistress’ thing incorrectly, but did anyone in the MSM actually allege that she *was* his mistress, or just say that there was enough closeness to her to raise eyebrows, especially since she was a lobbyist? I thought that the ‘closeness to a lobbyist’ part got a lot more play than the ‘potential mistress’ part, but as I said, feel free to correct me if I’m misremembering it (I’d appreciate links if you do though).Â
The reason this doesn’t strike me as a clear-cut example of bias is that the MSM was perfectly willing to expose John Edward’s infidelity, and it’s not like Elliot Spitzer got a free pass. Politicians sleeping around (even the possibility of it) is a pretty reliably interesting story. Now, if you have evidence that there’s an equally tantalizing story about Obama that the media is passing up, that would be decent evidence.
Aziz,
I see where you’re coming from Martin, but I dont see evidence, just a vague allusion to a "bubble effect" which doesn’t really seem to have any quantifiable impact in reporting overall.
I don’t have time to recite all of Goldberg, and I don’t have my copy at the office. The evidence is there, the impact is quantifiable.
You have to understand, Aziz: ten years ago, I made the same arguments you’re making now. The press’s behavior since has forced me to reexamine my views. I was sure that the media were primarily motivated by sensation, because sensation sells papers and papers sell ads and ads sell cars. But as media outlets lose money, it seems like their biases become more pronounced, not less. If money’s their concern, they have a really bad sense of economics. Of course, they are journalism majors, so that’s not impossible… (Sorry, had to slip in a dig at one of my journalist buds.)
Also, please show me on emainstream journalist outlet, ie NYT WaPo CNN or a regional newspaper like the Detroit free press or Star Tribune etc that has given even a modicum ofink to the various lies about Palin’s family…
Â
No ink, but plenty of hours and dollars investigating to see if there was a story there, based on no more evidence than the fever dreams of the left. Please show me any Little Green Footballs comment fantasy that has led to similar investigative efforts. They investigated Governor Palin’s family either because, in their bubbleheaded bleach blonde view, the stories were plausible; or because they wanted to find dirt. Neither reflects well on them.
or McCain’s mistress fraud (incidentally, I have no clue about that last one. What fraud? Surely as an avid consumer of mainstream news I’d be in the know about it, were the bias bubble operative…)
Apparently you weren’t reading the NY Times around February. Elizabeth saw it.
Elizabeth?
Well, which is it? Am I exaggerating, or are their views actually true?
Yes.
You’re not exaggerating what Cosmic believes, but you’re exaggerating if you think that everyone who sees documented evidence of bias believes it’s a conspiracy at work.
But yes, their views are true, to a large extent. The bubble blinds the media and cocoons them. The net result is almost as bad as the conspiracy would be, without the need for any conspiracy.
The reason this doesn’t strike me as a clear-cut example of bias is that the MSM was perfectly willing to expose John Edward’s infidelity, and it’s not like Elliot Spitzer got a free pass.Â
They investigated John Edwards only after the Enquirer published photos. They’re not going to overlook evidence that blatant.
They investigated Elliot Spitzer when evidence was produced in an ongoing legal investigation. They’re not going to overlook evidence that blatant.
They investigated the phoney story about Senator McCain on a tip from an anonymous staffer, and turned it into front page fodder with nothing more than that.
If you can’t see a difference here, maybe you should check a mirror for your own biases.
I have said before and I don’ t mind repeating it now.
Anyone who cannot see the obvious media bias of the MAJOR media outlets (ABC, NBC, CBS, NY Times, LA Times, Wash Post, USA Today to name but a few) is either willfully ignorant, painfully naive or else is so far to the left in their own world that their view of what is "centrist" is so skewed to the left that they can actually BELIEVE that Dan Rather is an objective reporter.
There really is no arguing with you on this. It’s like arguing whether the sky is blue. If you can’t see it, I don’t know how to pour reality into your eyeballs. Martin linked to one study. There have been others.
What most of you don’t seem to realize is that the very FUNCTION of a free press is FOUNDED UPON the principle that they pursue TRUTH, not PARTISANSHIP.
When that foundational principle is thrown out, for whatever reason, the very PURPOSE of a "free press" is thrown into question.
Those of you who enjoy wearing blinders, go right ahead and keep on doing so. You’ll either eventually see the light or you won’t. Reading a comment on a blog isn’t going to sway you.
But for those of you who eventually DO come to recognize reality, once you do so, I hope you take it to the next level from a socio-political perspective and consider what it MEANS to our culture for the press to be in the tank for one ideology.
I’m telling you, it ain’t good.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Toon of the Day
By the way, I have not "alleged" that the press, as biased as it is, is "actively killing" negative stories on Obama.
THEY DON’T HAVE TO. Because they refuse to put reporters on the case which would lead to actual stories to KILL.
Is this a conscious conspiracy? That’s a good question. I think it is at LEAST an UNCONSCIOUS conspiracy brought about by a large group who live in an echo chamber and who truly don’t want to know some things.
What would the press find if they had an army of reporters digging into every rumor about Obama’s past? What would they report if they reported on that?
Who knows? The issue here is that THEY DON’T WANT TO TRY.
Still, it isn’t necessary for the press to actively suppress news stories for their bias to actively support one side over the other. All they have to do is what they DO, which is to slant every story as negatively as they possibly can when a Republican is involved, and to slant it as positively as they can when a Democrat is. Again it doesn’t really MATTER if that is intentional or unintentional, the end result is that one side gets a free pass on things that the other side gets pilloried for.
Re: McCain’s ALLEGED (and untrue) "affair" which the NY Times not only devoted staff reporters to "dig" into, but who then ran with a story that was so half-baked and poorly researched that they had to APOLOGIZE for it, while that same editorial staff turned a blind eye to John Edwards PROVEN affair even after PHOTOGRAPHS surfaced as well as eye-witness testimony that the National Equirer had no difficulty publishing.
Again, if you can’t see it, I don’t get it.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Toon of the Day
I’m sure I’ve got my biases, but in this case my skeptical reaction is coming less from my political views and more from my cognitive/social psychology knowledge.  The fact is that people with strong views are going to view even neutral material as biased, so I take a fair amount of convincing that destructive, intentional, in-the-tank bias exists.
Yes, it’s true that Edwards and Spitzer did have hard evidence against them, and I have no reason to believe that McCain did anything sexual inappropriate with the lobbyist in question, so the cases aren’t all that much alike. All those cases show, as you point out, that if there’s enough evidence the MSM will print negative stories about Democrats. However, you’re also saying that if a staffer said that Obama was having an affair with a lobbyist, it *wouldn’t* be news. I don’t know how you can know that.Â
What would the press find if they had an army of reporters digging into every rumor about Obama’s past?
But… and this is the part I don’t get… why don’t the news outlets more popularly conceived as conservative go ahead and do this? What’s stopping them? It’s not like the press is one monolithic entity. You’re saying there’s simply no such thing as a conservative news editor? With the country fairly evenly divided between red and blue, there’s no market AT ALL for dirt on Obama? I just don’t buy it.Â
As to whether the NYT turned a blind eye to Edwards’ affair, again, I don’t know how you can know whether or not they were researching it in the days between when the Enquirer broke the story and when Edwards confessed. The photographs in question were photographs of Edwards holding a child, not of Edwards caught in the act, so it’s not like those photos were slam-dunk evidence of an affair. Right now, as it happens, the Enquirer has a story out about Sarah Palin’s supposed extramarital affair; something tells me that if the NYT had picked *that* right up and run with it you’d see that as more evidence of liberal bias.Â
Elizabeth:
The Edwards affair story was percolating for MONTHS before the Enquirer broke it. There was credible evidence of Edward’s affair a YEAR ago. The LA Times editor LITERALLY instructed his staff NOT TO TALK ABOUT IT. If you don’t think that has a chilling effect on reporters who might be thinking about doing a story….
As far as why Fox News is not digging into Obama’s past, perhaps they don’t feel that is an appropriate journalistic thing to do. There has always been an acknowledged difference between "fishing" for news and "reporting" on news. It is my personal opinion that a big part of the bias in the press is that the press has begun violating that principle on ONE SIDE ONLY.
In other words, when you discover that an army of journalists is literally dumpster diving in Alaska to dig up dirt on Palin, and is hiding sources of ILLEGAL EMAIL HACKING, the right question is NOT "Gee, why doesn’t Fox News violate journalistic integrity on the OTHER SIDE too?"
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Toon of the Day
However, you’re also saying that if a staffer said that Obama was having an affair with a lobbyist, it *wouldn’t* be news.
If you’ll only accept apples and apples cases as proof of bias, bias will forever remain unprovable until the two parties commit exactly identical missteps and we see how those are reported. But if you’ll accept that two similar topics objectively should require similar sourcing and similar evidence to receive similar amounts of coverage, then you’ll have to see that there’s a shortage of objectivity in the coverage of these stories.
What would the press find if they had an army of reporters digging into every rumor about Obama’s past?
But… and this is the part I don’t get… why don’t the news outlets more popularly conceived as conservative go ahead and do this? What’s stopping them?Â
So you advocate equal sleaze time as a solution to liberal bias? No, thanks!
Besides, if the Obama Truth Squads have their way, digging into rumors about the Senator could become a dangerous pastime. (Keep it up, Obama supporters… There is one thing stopping me from voting for Senator McCain: his anti-First Amendment law, aka BCRA, aka McCain Feingold. If you keep trying to criminalize dissent, I may conclude that Senator Obama is the bigger threat to the First Amendment.)
Its a profoundly cynical view to argue that if you vote for a Democrat that automaically means you’re going to tilt your reporting to favor that side.
I think calling that profoundly cynical is a profound overstatement. Humans are not perfect, and we all have our biases. Some of us are more aware of our biases and how they color our opinions than others of course. If the split of journalists was closer to 50/50 or at least fluctuated over time, I might be able to buy into the idea that the leftist media bias is overstated. But, the fact that studies are done like this year after year and show a remarkably consistent ~80/20 split in favor of self-described Democrats suggests otherwise.
I think 80/20 may be something of an understatement, and includes many "red state" journalists.
If you surveyed JUST the "journalists" in the major media centers, I’d be VERY surprised if the percent of Democrats is any less than 90%. More like 95% feels about right.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Toon of the Day
Elizabeth, perhaps an analogy is in order.
"Coach, Coach!! The other team is CHEATING and the Refs are ON THEIR SIDE and letting them get away with it!"
"OK, then we’ll cheat too."
Is that really what you want?
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Toon of the Day
CC,
The LA Times editor LITERALLY instructed his staff NOT TO TALK ABOUT IT.
Cite? I’d want to hear the details of this before I make a judgement. Besides, LA Times and NYT aren’t the same paper, and I thought you were saying it was the same editorial board that printed the stories about McCain that ignored stories about Edwards.
In other words, when you discover that an army of journalists is literally dumpster diving in Alaska to dig up dirt on Palin, and is hiding sources of ILLEGAL EMAIL HACKING, the right question is NOT "Gee, why doesn’t Fox News violate journalistic integrity on the OTHER SIDE too?"
I’m not necessarily advocating dirt-digging; I don’t choose my politicians based on their sex lives anyway.  However, the idea that the problem is that Fox News is hampered by their high-minded journalistic ideals made me snort my beverage.  You’re really saying they’ve got a sniff of a nice juicy Obama scandal and they’re not following up on it because it wouldn’t be nice of them?
However, the idea that the problem is that Fox News is hampered by their high-minded journalistic ideals made me snort my beverage.  You’re really saying they’ve got a sniff of a nice juicy Obama scandal and they’re not following up on it because it wouldn’t be nice of them?
So you can’t even contemplate that Fox News has objective journalistic standards — even after the UCLA study identified Fox News as less biased than most other major sources – yet none of the evidence presented has shaken your faith that the New York Times has objective journalistic standards.
You might want to check your mirror again. Your bias is showing.
Elizabeth:
Snort your beverage all you like. Yes, I am saying that Fox News is not pursuing nasty rumors as a matter of editorial decision. I think the proof of that is in their reporting. And the reverse is true when you see the NY Times report that Sarah Palin was a member of the Alaska Secessionist Party, or that she attempted to ban books in Wasilla, etc. Or that CBS ran a story based on obviously forged memos. Or that MSNBC put KEITH OLBERMANN into a news anchor chair. Or that the LA Times instructed their staff to avoid any discussion of John Edwards’ affair. Or that ABC news refused to cooperate with the Secret Service to protect an EMAIL HACKER’S identity (who just HAPPENED to be the son of a prominent Democrat in Tennessee) etc. etc. etc….
So am I saying that Fox News adheres to higher journalistic standards than the NY Times, the LA Times, CBS, etc.
I most certainly AM saying that and you can snort all you like.Â
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Toon of the Day
Martin,
I never said that I thought Fox was more or less biased than the NYT. I just have a very low opinion of modern journalistic standards in general (absolutely including the NYT). I have seen nothing to indicate that Fox is substantially more high-minded than any of the others, though.
Elizabeth:
"A man [or woman] hears what he [or she] wants to hear and disregards the rest."
Certainly you can say that applies to me. I assert that it applies to those who claim there is no entrenched and pervasive media bias which affects the slant of news reporting to the point that press objectivity has become an oxymoron.
I’m sure I won’t convince you.
You certainly won’t convince me.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Toon of the Day
CosmicConservative,
So do you have a CITE (see, I can capitalize too) to support the allegation that the LA Times instructed their staff to ignore Edwards’ affair because they didn’t want to print something negative about a Democrat? I’d really like to see it.
Elizabeth. Here is the actual memo text that was sent out to all LA Times bloggers on the Edwards affair:
"Subject: john edwards
Hey bloggers,There has been a little buzz surrounding John Edwards and his alleged affair. Because the only source has been the National Enquirer we have decided not to cover the rumors or salacious speculations. So I am asking you all not to blog about this topic until further notified.
If you have any questions or are ever in need of story ideas that would best fit your blog, please don’t hesitate to askKeep rockin,
Tony"
Now you can say that this was only directed at the LA Times blogs, but if you don’t think such an admonition from a boss about a subject that is obviously taboo doesn’t silence the subject OUTSIDE of blogs, then I have to wonder about your objectivity.
Clearly "Tony" was not interested in the Edwards’ affair being a topic published on the LA Times blogs. How much further in the organization did that disinterest go?
Well, they ignored the story for a year, and were scooped by the National Enquirer in their own back yard.
I’ll let you do the math, I’ve already done it.
Now why don’t you do some research for me? Find such an admonition against blogging about the McCain affair by the same editor.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Toon of the Day
Elizabeth,
I respectfully suggest you follow Instapundit. The LA Times instructions were well-reported there, by links to Kaus Files. When I get time to dig, I’ll try to find your links; but it looks like you’re missing out on major stories that Instapundit links.
As for this…
…because they didn’t want to print something negative about a Democrat…
…of course, the quotes from the LA Times editor won’t include such blatant motivations. Again, if the only proof of bias you’ll accept is someone admitting openly to being biased, then bias will forever remain unprovable. We might as well remove the term from the OED, because it will cease to have meaning.
But to me, a consistent pattern repeated without significant variation over years is proof enough.
I assume since you singled out the LA Times tidbit, the OTHER FIVE examples didn’t come as a shock to you.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Toon of the Day
Also, in spite of Martin’s admonishments about citing EVERYTHING, I try to keep my examples to things that have been so widely reported, at least in the blogosphere, that I ASSUME a plugged in person does not NEED attribution.
When I use an obscure reference that I don’t think will be immediately recognized, I cite it. For the most part I avoid that because it’s usually not necessary to dig for obscure examples for me to make the points I am making.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Toon of the Day
CosmicConservative,
Well, most of the other things weren’t of the same sort. Obviously I’m not going to question whether MSNBC employs Keith Olbermann, because that’s just factually true. It’s also factually true that CBS based a story on forged memos, and I agree with you that they were obviously forged and if you want to talk about Dan Rather clearly being biased you’re not going to get any guff from me. Journalists protecting a source are always controversial, so my reaction is, eh. Yes, the Times did report that Palin had been a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, based on – a statement by the Alaskan Independence Party, which was later retracted, which the NYT also printed.
Again, once you’ve moved to the level of interpreting a request not to repeat rumors on blogs as a request to kill the story no matter what the evidence, you’ve moved to the level of intepretation. It may be reasonable interpretation, but it’s still interpretation, and of course you’re going to interpret it in the light of your pre-existing beliefs. That’s what everyone does.Â
Oh, and CC, you didn’t say; should any of the more reputable news outlets be passing on the National Enquirer’s new story about Sarah Palin’s alleged affair? Why or why not?
I agree we’re never going to convince each other, BTW, but I am finding the discussion interesting.Â
Yes, the Times did report that Palin had been a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, based on – a statement by the Alaskan Independence Party, which was later retracted, which the NYT also printed.
Now for the apples and apples. Find an incident where the NY Times made a similarly damaging claim about Senator Obama based on a single unsubstantiated quote from a single source and without making any substantive investigation of their own.
Allegations that fit their preconceptions need a single source before printing, often an anonymous source. Allegations that don’t fit their preconceptions require a photo or a subpoena or multiple sources.
This is a simple filtering effect. Those preconceptions form a powerful yet subtle filter: "Oh, really? Senator McCain ate the head off a chicken? I knew he was unstable! Stop the presses!" "What? Senator Obama ate the head off a chicken? That can’t be right. Do you have any confirmation?" And no, it’s not as blatant as that; but it’s blatant, as the mistress story shows.
I suppose bias is from where you stand, but much of the press coverage seems bias against Democrats to me. There is the whole Al Gore is a habitual liar theme where Republicans took a few poorly worded statements that Al Gore made, twisted what Al Gore said, and then used the made up version to label Gore a liar. The MSM picked the whole theme up and proceeded to fact check every line of every speech and point out every exaggeration or misstatement. Meanwhile the MSM gave Bush almost a free pass to exaggerate and mislead all he wanted. The reason that was usually given for this was that reports like Bush and they didn’t like Al Gore.
The truth is that conservatives have been yelling liberal bias for so many years, that the MSM bends over backwards to be defferiental to Republicans for fear of being labeled biased.
Many MSM organizations sent reporters to Alaska find out about Palin, because they knew almost nothing about her. They had never expected her to be a VP candidate. Statements that these reporters are "Dumpster Diving" in a Alaska is almost certainly an exaggeration.Â
There is the "troopergate" scandal which is being investigated in Alaska. There has been lots of coverage of this on left wing blogs, but very little mention of this in MSM. I think if Palin was a Democrate, the MSM would be all over the troopergate investigation. Now the MSM has some reporters in Alaska following it, but they don’t report on it daily in the MSM.
I suppose bias is from where you stand, but much of the press coverage seems bias against Democrats to me.
Objectively, it’s not.
. There is the whole Al Gore is a habitual liar theme where Republicans took a few poorly worded statements that Al Gore made, twisted what Al Gore said, and then used the made up version to label Gore a liar.
They called him a serial exaggerator, and it was entirely justified. And that goes both ways: do we need to revisit the whole "Reagan/Quayle/W/Palin is dumb" memes that were considerably less justified?
but very little mention of this in MSM.
Because the trooper was demonstrably a problem employee, and tasered his own son. There’s no there there. Meanwhile, Obama gets a pass on everything from sharing property with a convicted felon political fixer to buddying up with an unrepentant terrorist to attending a radical black nationalist church.
Anyways, the press tends to begin from the same assumptions that Democrats, because they by and large are Democrats; even if they really wanted to they couldn’t cover things from the center or right because they just don’t have the context. This is reflected both in what they cover (100 front page NYT pieces on Abu Ghraib, endless calls to investigate the Valerie Plame leak) and what they don’t (very few pieces on heroic American servicepeople, no calls at all to investigate national security leaks that actually hurt national security) and in how they cover things (the economy is always struggling, social programs are always the answer).
Objectively, it’s not.
The problem as I see it is that conservatives today have their own set of facts.
Take for example the question of WMDs in Iraq or links between Iraq and al Qaeda. Conservatives have their own set of facts, that are simply not believed by centerists or the left.
And as studies have shown, if you give conservatives the government reports that show Iraq had no WMD and no operational links to al Qaeda, conservatives are more convinced then ever that Iraq had WMDs and was working closely with al Qaeda.
When you have your own version of the facts, there is no such thing as objectivity.
Because the trooper was demonstrably a problem employee, and tasered his own son.
Wooton tasered his stepson after the boy asked him to tasser him to show his cousin Bristol (Shara Palin’s daughter) that he was not a mama’s boy. The Palin family wait 2-years and only filed a complaint about this incident after Wooton’s wife had filed for divorce.
"As studies have shown?" "Centrists and the left?" Moo-hahahahahahaha.
Isn’t it interesting that when centrists disagree with the right, they’re being sensible, but when they disagree with the left, they’ve been fooled or scared or something?
By the way, it is a fact that Saddam had WMDs, just not the quantities believed; that, of course, is ultimately due to his deceptions and treaty violations, as well as his totalitarian rule. It was an intelligence failure on our part, but an understandable one.
I have yet to meet a single person, nor to read a single mainstream conservative commenter, who believes Saddam had "operational" ties to Al Qaeda. I meet a lot of people on the left who claim that, though. Interesting disconnect. Saddam was of course a sponsor of international terrorism, and substantial data suggests there were friendly ties to Al Qaeda, as well as some likely nudge-and-wink stuff, but nothing major with Al Qaeda.
Interestingly enough, I continue to hear bizarre claims from the left that most, or at least a plurality or something, of Americans believed Saddam was behind 9/11. When in fact no survey has ever shown that anything more than a small fraction of Americans ever believed that–and even prominent left-wing sources have had to admit that the administration never, ever said any such thing. Yet still, we have people like you, Mike, dragging this same old shit out and, no matter how often you’re corrected, still repeating it as if no one had let you know why you sounded so foolish.
[shrug] What can ya do? The left apparently likes to manufacture its own "facts" as much as the right does. Most sensible people see through this, even if the press itself often has blind spots in this regard.
Interestingly enough, I continue to hear bizarre claims from the left that most, or at least a plurality or something, of Americans believed Saddam was behind 9/11.
The origin of those claims is news stories like this one:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-09-06-poll-iraq_x.htm
which says:
Nearly seven in 10 Americans believe it is likely that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 attacks
Even as recently as a year ago, one third of Americans still seem to believe this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/10/washington/10poll.html
It says:
33 percent of all Americans, including 40 percent of Republicans and 27 percent of Democrats, say Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
I don’t get where you can say:
When in fact no survey has ever shown that anything more than a small fraction of Americans ever believed that
You could argue that these surveys were flawed, that the question was worded poorly, or something like that, but I don’t see how you can deny that these surveys existed.
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