Bill Moyers describes exactly the state of today's media culture. "I'm going out telling the story that I think is the biggest story of our time: how the right-wing media has become a partisan propaganda arm of the Republican National Committee," says Moyers. "We have an ideological press that's interested in the election of Republicans, and a mainstream press that's interested in the bottom line. Therefore, we don't have a vigilant, independent press whose interest is the American people." Bill Moyers, founder of the PBS news magazine "Now," on the eve of his retirement, as reported by AP http://asia.news.yahoo.com/041210/ap/d86sgqug0.html
Yea because the media in this country is SOOOOO right wing...give me a break. This is easily the funniest thing I've read all day and I read the List Eater thread in the Hangout today.
Care to explain how it's not? The funniest thing I've read today is your opinion that the American media is somehow not right-leaning. As glynch said, there are numerous sources that shed light on this subject. Look into them.
it's hard for me to imagine how you could watch peter jennings or dan rather and feel that the media is right-leaning. i have no problem saying Fox News and Rush Limbaugh lean right. i think they clearly do. but i don't get that vibe from CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC, or CBS. the state of the media as i see it...a group that tells one side what they want to hear...a group that tells the other side what they want to hear...with few exceptions.
I don't think those guys lean right, but their coverage doesn't lean left. Things like not being left out of a story causes them to go with pack mentality. That precedes left or right issues. Trying to be frist also takes precedence etc. On occasion I have no doubt that the anchors you mentioned have stories that lean left. But they have not debunked numerous stories that were wrong and helped the right. They were following the pack. The story about Al Gore supposedly claiming to have invented the internet was false but portrayed on the news and little if any correction was ever made. They did the same thing with Kerry and the 87 billion voted for before it was voted to be cut stuff. They went along with the pack mentality. They do that when stories are left leaning as well. But the point is that pack mentality trumps idealogical leaning. I think what Moyers was saying is that there are right leaning news channels and news channels that follow the pack. Thus we don't really have an independent media. He wasn't saying that all mainstream media leans to the right.
I think everyone looks at FOX and uses that to represent the "media". The media BY DESIGN leans left. It's not necessarily a bad thing but you have to look at the decisions on what to cover and what not to cover AS WELL AS how they cover what they decide to. There are definitely some institutions that lean right (FOX and MAYBE ABC) but the vast majority of them lean left simply because the people running the actual journalism outlets and the reporters tend to be more liberal on social issues (they also tend to be more conservative on economic issues) so it just depends on which topic theyre covering. I'm not among the group that thinks they were cheerleaders for the war against Iraq because all you saw on TV in the weeks leading up were protests and the whole "blood for oil" diatribe. MAybe we're also forgetting the whole Rather and CBS issue. I'm not saying that there aren't right leaning sections of the media (talk radio itself is basically a right-only medium) but I'm saying the notion that the entire industry leans right is laughable.
But Moyers didn't say the whole industry leans right. He said there is a segment that does, and the rest just run with the pack mentality, or are loyal to corporations, and not independent. So with the pack menatlity plus right leaning media(especially when the right leaning media is successful) the media will often follow to the right. Whatever the reporters own personal leanings are, the bottom line financially will still trump that. At least that is how I read the article. I do agree that most journalists lean left.
If you want read/watch/hear something slanted towards your views, you know what to do. I don't find it a huge issue, there's media that slants both ways, and there's media in the middle.
It's not so laughable when you look at the run-up to the Iraq war. If the media were as left biased as some say it is, they would have asked the tough questions they should have asked regarding this Administration's rationale for going to war. Instead, Dubya embedded the reporters, and they collectively began to wave the flag and ignore reality. Want to learn more? Watch this movie. I saw it on IFC recently, and it was very eye-opening. It includes inverviews from people across the political spectrum...Republican and Democrat, Conservative and Liberal. From the website: In his documentary feature, UNCOVERED: THE WAR ON IRAQ, filmmaker Robert Greenwald chronicles the Bush Administration’s determined quest to invade Iraq following the events of September 11, 2001. The film deconstructs the administration’s case for war through interviews with U.S intelligence and defense officials, foreign service experts, and U.N. weapons inspectors – including a former CIA director, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and even President’s Bush’s Secretary of the Army. Their analyses and conclusions are sobering, and often disturbing, regardless of one’s political affiliations. I urge everyone to see this movie.
you think media has a liberal biased? just sit back and read and watch how nbc, abc, cbs, and cnn are reporting on the Social Security issue everyone of them frame the debate in terms that we're in a crisis - this is absolutely not true, but yet the networks are following the GOPs echo-chamber and framing this debate in GOPs words
That's the inherent problem: there really is no crisis. The program will be funding itself for a long time to come. Compare that to say, the rest of the federal budget and its problems are miniscule. Of course, it is in the Republicans' best interest to pretend like there is one. And surprisingly, that's the story we hear on the news, and that's why so many normally educated people operate under the misconception that Social Security is broke, etc.
but the question is about liberal bias - right-wingers believe the media puts its bias above all else
apparently Moyers believes the same...just the other way around. more politics as team sports. wooo hooo!!!
Not to deflect too much here . but my point was really about the focus of 'get-your-attention' media. Not so much my opinion on Social Security. When someone with a degree of credibility says there's a crisis -- your pensions not going to be there for you...we're almost broke..etc -- I think the media tends to embrace that. I don't think it's as ideological as you portray. And I don't think the media is particularly bright when it comes to financial matters anyways .
